Misogynists, creeps and gatekeepers beware – Scene Queen’s sex-positive, genremashing bimbocore is set to rule 2024
Hannah Collins, aka Scene Queen, stares up at the camera with a mischievous glint in her eye. She’s lying back on satin sheets, wearing pink lingerie, a stuffed Pink Panther toy tucked under her arm, a 90s pink dream phone in her hand. The imagery couldn’t be more on-brand. The plushie is a reference to her 2022 single Pink Panther, a tongue-in-cheek ode to lesbian sex. The push-up bra she’s wearing is a reference to last year’s Pink Push-Up Bra single, a blistering tirade against sexual abuse.
This is the genre-hopping singer’s very first Metal Hammer cover, but it’s also a homage to/twist on another iconic cover shoot. Namely the Lolita-like image of Britney Spears taken by legendary photographer David LaChapelle, which appeared on the front of Rolling Stone magazine in 1999, when the ...Baby One More Time singer was just 17 years old. As with everything Scene Queen does, it’s clever, transgressive and more than a little provocative.
“One of my agent’s assistants was saying that we should do a launch of hankies to go with the release of the magazine,” she says with a laugh when we catch up with her a week later, while she’s midway through her Bimbo Beta Pi tour. “For the man tears!”
Scene Queen had a whirlwind 2023. Her genre-smashing mix of metalcore breakdowns, hip hop beats and neon-pink sparkle helped turn her into one of the year’s breakout stars. Her music may sound exhilarating and exuberant, but it’s often a delivery mechanism for lyrics that go from fun to empowering to scathingly furious. Even the concept of ‘bimbocore’ - the superhumanly sparkly one-woman genre she willed into being –was designed to bait metal’s troglodyte gatekeepers as much as it was to inspire the growing legions of fans who have rallied to her hot-pink flag.
2024 looks like being the year where Scene Queen is officially crowned as one of heavy music’s most vibrant, vital figures. In March, she drops her cheekily titled debut album, Hot Singles In Your Area, and plays Download in June. Some people may hate the idea, but metal is changing, and Scene Queen is one of its disruptors-in-chief.
“That’s what I’m doing with metal,” she says. “I’m playing into the ‘I don’t really know what genres are’ thing, even though I definitely do.”
cene Queen’s debut album marks the pinnacle of two years spent building a huge community off the back of her hyperfemme and hypersexual sound. She set out the Bimbocore manifesto on her 2022 single, Pink G-String, which gleefully instructed her fans to “twerk in the circle pit”. The song also namechecked her “holy trinity” of inspirations: Britney Spears, heiress/proto-influencer Paris Hilton and actor Lind
