King Princess is a nonbinary, genderqueer, and lesbian American musician & songwriter. She sings and can play guitar, bass guitar, and drums.
She has a few famous relatives that I will briefly mention to get it out of the way. Her dad is recording engineer Oliver H Straus Jr and on her dad's side of the family, her great-great-granddad is Isidor Straus. Isidor was a US Congressman and the co-owner of Macy's department stores (from 1888 to 1912). He and his wife Ida Straus died during the sinking of the titanic. King is also related to Wendy Rush (they are both great great granddaughters of Isidor), the widow of Stockton Rush who founded the deep sea tourism company OceanGate and then lost his life in a submersible in 2023 on the way to the wreck of the Titanic.
King spent much of her childhood following her father to work at his recording studio, Mission Sound. There, she learned several instruments, including bass, guitar, piano, and drums, as well as music-production techniques and insight into the music industry. Her inspiration in those years had come from the rock music of the bands Led Zeppelin and T. Rex, as well as Jack White. A record label offered to sign Princess at the age of 11, but she refused to do so because of her experience watching other artists work with a music label in her father's studio. The labels would control the artists' products and change the feel of the music. She did not want to sign with a record label until she had a definition of her music, how she wanted to run the production, and with whom she would work.
In 2012, King received a scholarship to attend Avenues: The World School, a private school in Manhattan, after submitting a CD of songs she had written.
6 years later in February 2018, King Princess released the debut single, "1950” The song is a tribute to the romance novel The Price of Salt (1952) by Patricia Highsmith, to the LGBT community and to queer love. The song reached a wide audience when English singer and songwriter Harry Styles tweeted a lyric from the song. Later that year, she earned Breakout Pop Artist of the Year honors from Vivid Seats.
Then in 2019 she played at Lollapalooza, Coachella, and the 2019 Glastonbury Festival. Also in 2019, Zelig Recordings released King Princess' debut studio album Cheap Queen. She produced much of the album itself, including programming many of the instruments.
