MTV Royalty – Princess Superstar looks up to Bono

Music TeleVision can't leave Ibiza alone. The transnational media giant's track record in Ibiza is a bit rocky tho, with one particularly ill-tempered pile up in 2001 where they were forced to bring indoors their very well received open air festival.

Campari-MTV thingy @ El Hotel - September 1, 2005 (Photo: Malou)

But they've been back in some guise every year since, and on Thursday last week (September 1) teamed up with Campari and Pacha to bring over the Tom Middleton (a late replacement for Glasgow's Optimo), Jason Bacon, Treva Whateva, Datarock, Maxence and the aforementioned Princess, to provide a soundtrack to a night quaffing cocktails at El Hotel in Ibiza Town.

Princess Superstar plays the Campari-MTV thingy @ El Hotel - September 1, 2005 (Photo: Malou)

The self-titled Superstar is on the touring treadmill promoting her ‘My Machine' long player, whose opening single is the hip-pop-meets-tacky-disco ‘Perfect'.

The New Yorker (born Concetta Kirschner) is perhaps best known in Europe for her ‘Bad Babysitter' single of 2002 which included the saucy lyrics: "I'm a sit on the couch and masturbate then call my boyfriend Gabe and see if he ate."

Clearly destined to appear on this White Isle, she's come over several times - once performing live for a Lynx deodorant gig (for which she received "barrels of money") and also for Manumission in 2003 (for probably rather less).

The latter appearance was under her ‘Djs Are Not Rockstars' banner. We asked her who she had in mind when she thought of the name.

"I'm going to get in trouble here – Felix da Housecat and Armand Van Helden. They're my friends but they can be divas."

Campari-MTV thingy @ El Hotel - September 1, 2005 (Photo: Malou)

Well someone had to say it. Read on for more strong opinions on literature and lupine Germans.

Is Ibiza what you expected it to be?

I didn't really know too much about it. In New York it's not really a popular place to go. But I know there'd be a lot of glow sticks and things like that. And Germans. And I wasn't disappointed. It was really fun. It was crazy. I had never seen a club that big before.

Are you going to see the Kaiser Chiefs (at Manumission's Ibiza Rocks) tomorrow?

Yeah, Bones and Ramsey, who are my friends from London just called me an hour ago so I'm going to go.

Wolf and Princess Superstar @ Ibiza Rocks, Privilege - September 2, 2005

Is rock a kind of music or a state of mind?

In K-Mart now they have Ramones shirts and I hate that. That's not rock'n'roll at all. It's definitely a state of mind tho. Because you can make dance music and be punk rock about it.

What kind of music are we likely to hear tonight?

Punk rock, dance music. It's definitely a mixture. It's all dance music but I mix everything from old school hip hop to classic rock, but in the dance vein.

Will there be rapping?

No, but I'll be playing some stuff from my new album.

Congratulations on making New York's 50 Most Beautiful list (according to NY Metro). They wrote:

Musician

Spotted at Bette by Yvonne Force Villareal

"Perfect skin and bleached Dead Head hair that comes together perfectly; very tough and tender." 

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/news/beautiful/

The list includes actresses Liv Tyler and Susan Sarandon, Calvin Klein Executive Kim Vernon, a trapeze artist, students, a gallery owner, painters and even a philanthropist. What do you think of the competition?

Have you bagged many of them? Would you like to?

Maybe the philanthropist. No, joking.

I read in an interview you liked a Nabokov story about a writer with writer's block. Do you often use literature as inspiration?

Yeah. I do actually. You know a lot about me. Should I be afraid?

I just did a ten minute search on Google.

I read a lot. I read everything but I like science fiction. My new album is like a science fiction story. My favourite is Philip K. Dick. He wrote the one that became the movie ‘Total Recall', ‘We Can Remember It For You Wholesale', that's what he's most famous for. And also Minority Report.

Can culture be separated into "high" and "low" brow?

For me no. I make fun of both things, high culture and low culture. To take one more seriously than the other is a mistake. I take music very seriously but I think what I do best is make fun of culture. There's this balance, a fine line between being serious and making fun of everything, and making fun of myself.

Is high culture more easy to make fun of because it takes itself more seriously?

Yeah, but then again you're not going to go ‘Huh huh huh! Look at that Da Vinci!' If you mean like the snobby people, like some of the people on this list, yah.

Where would you place ‘My Machine' on the high to low culture spectrum?

It totally spans from like high culture then by the end you're definitely low culture.

How important is your art in this age of invasions and global weather disasters?

When September 11 happened I was going to give up making music. I was just like ‘What the hell am I doing in the whole scheme of things?' I was really depressed and it was a really overwhelming time for me. But I read this article in the New York Times something akin to art is the new religion. For people that are very urban, art is the new religion. And that really inspired me, ‘You know what I'm actually doing a service here'. Even if I make people laugh or entertain them or whatever that's an important thing to do in this world.

Have you been to New Orleans?

Yeah.

Howell Raines (former ed of NY Times) wrote in the Guardian (a UK online newspaper) today:

"Every great disaster - the Blitz, 9/11, the tsunami - has a political dimension. The performance of George Bush during this past week has been outrageous…. Now the younger Bush seems determined to show his successors how to holiday through an apocalypse… The church-going cultural populism of George Bush has given the United States an administration that worries about the house of Saud and the welfare of oil companies while the poor drown in their attics and their sons and daughters die on foreign deserts."

Would you follow Bush's lead and holiday through an apocalypse?

That's kind of a trick question because here I am in Ibiza. And it is kind of heartbreaking. It's such a weird thing to be partying when so many people are suffering. The only thing that I can say about that is one day when I make more money I do hope to do stuff like Bono does. I really do. Musicians when they're successful make piles of money, it's just ridiculous money and it's really important to do stuff with it for the less fortunate.

Can you give us any upcoming dates for gigs or general advice for future survival?

My show would help you for future survival. Because my show is putting on this crazy play almost of ‘My Machine' which is my concept album and basically there's like visuals and costumes and it's totally in the future and it's quite political but you wouldn't really know it because you'd be laughing and dancing the whole time. Which is the best kind of politics I think. I'll be touring throughout Europe and in the United States in October, November so just check my web site princesssuperstar.com.

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Later that night the El Hotel gig was littered with island faces sucking back the complimentary cocktails. Princess Superstar played an interesting and tight set but it's not the most appropriate venue for a rave. That view was certainly shared by the local police who pulled the plug half an hour before the scheduled kick out time, at which point most of the guests decamped to Monza just down the road at Penelope.