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It took 11 years for Bonnie McKee to drop her album, Hot City, but it’s finally here. On Friday, the pop star and Teenage Dream songwriter officially released her album, featuring 2013 hit “American Girl” and 15 more nostalgia-inducing, glittery pop tracks.
Along with previously leaked songs such as “I Wanna Call You” and “Forever 21,” the LP also features collaborations with Tessa Violet on a reimagining of “Don’t Get Mad, Get Famous” and We’re Here drag star Priyanka on “Snatched.”
“I wrote my album Hot City 11 years ago. I was at the top of my songwriting game, I co-wrote 10 No. 1 hits for other artists, got a record deal, and felt like I had finally earned permission to step out from behind the scenes and be an artist again,” McKee wrote on Instagram. “But the universe works in mysterious ways and Hot City never saw the light of day.”
For years, fans of McKee clamored for her to release the music that had been shelved and for her to take another chance on her artistic career. McKee recounted to Rolling Stone in a profile last summer that it took the pandemic, a breakup, and some words from Lana Del Rey for her to take another step at her music.
“Hot City took on a much bigger and brighter purpose than just fulfilling my own dreams,” she wrote. “This album is for all the misfits who reach for the glory from the gutter, who see the glitter in the grit.”
Last summer, she told Rolling Stone she was investing all of her money from co-writing hits for Britney Spears, Rita Ora, and Katy Perry into releasing the album. (She also has a second album of newly recorded music that she plans to drop after Hot City.)
“When the whole world has told you to sit down and shut up, and you’re like, ‘Fuck you. I’m about to slay,’ there’s something inspiring about that,” she said. “That’s why I’m doing it.”
Hot Citytakes place in an imaginary, retro-futuristic city, a world with an “Eighties-Miami, expensive prostitute vibe” that lives in McKee’s head.
“I’m closing a chapter that’s been loose ends for so long. It’s been like a hole in my heart,” she told Rolling Stone. “I always felt like I was abandoning myself by not doing my artist project. I tried to fight it, and I was just so unhappy. Now, I just have to follow my heart.”
