Julia Fox’s Debut Single Is Here
Does everyone need to be a pop star?
Someone should check in on Julia Fox’s assistant, who must barely have time to wipe their brow before the downtown icon acquires a new venture. Off the top of my head, Fox has been a model, dominatrix, gallery-exhibiting multimedia artist, Uncut Gems movie star, Kanye muse, podcast host, makeup guru for off-putting hot girls, TikTok older-sister figure, and best-selling author. She has a new design-competition show premiering Monday. Whew! Now, she’s adding a new occupation to her roster: semi-underground “girls and gays” pop icon.
If the beachside Euro-pop of Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism doesn’t pique your curiosity, Fox just self-released her debut single, “Down the Drain.” (If that name sounds familiar, it’s because it’s also the title of her 2023 memoir.) She debuted the single at Charli XCX’s Boiler Room earlier this year, gunning for the scholarship spot once filled by Addison Rae. The gist of the song is that Fox contains multitudes, if you did not already get that sense from a quick browse of her Wikipedia page.
“I’m a bitch, I’m a girl, I’m a mother, I’m a whore,” Fox repeats, in a bit of lyrical thievery that’s almost JoJo Siwa level. Like Siwa, she’s going for garish dance-pop with a transgressive attitude. The production is Crystal Castles, Grimes before she went overboard with the “we live in a simulation” rhetoric. The lyrics are weirdly kind of tame. You’d think that the woman who painted with her own blood would at least throw in some freaky imagery.
The key to successfully pivoting from social-media personality to niche pop star is ringing up the cool-kid club producers over in the U.K. Fox co-wrote “Down the Drain” with director Ben Draghi, but for the next single she might be better off mining that Charli connect for studio time with Danny L. Harle, Easyfun, or Sega Bodega. Or maybe she could collaborate with her ghost?
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