The bald and the beautiful Sasha Velour was always one to watch on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Season 9 — who else could make Village People cowboy couture look so chic? — but some fans, and even some judges, wondered if the 30-year-old Fulbright scholar, self-declared “amateur drag historian,” and Velour magazine editor’s high-brow intellectualism was the perfect fit for such a high-camp show. However, on the truly grand finale, when Sasha transformed Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional” into a woman-on-the-verge stalker song, and stripped off her scarlet wig to reveal a shower of rose petals, she set a new standard for American beauty. It was one of the greatest, most literally wig-snatching lip-syncs in the show’s herstory — and with that, Sasha snatched the crown.

Never remove your wig while performing, unless you have a gaggle of rose petals underneath. #DragRace pic.twitter.com/UDya2mxaw5 — RuPaul (@RuPaul) June 27, 2017





It’s almost a shame that Sasha never landed in the bottom two and thus never had to lip-sync for her life throughout Season 9, because viewers never really got to see what she can do. Sasha, a true visionary and rock ’n’ roller who masterminds the theatrical showcase Nightgowns in Brooklyn, elevates drag to an entirely new level of performance art, pulling from the past while pushing the medium into the future. Utilizing what she says is a “very strange mixture of my favorite songs, everything from straight-up punk to old-fashioned, midcentury gay anthems that speak to the kind of sentimentality that I love in drag culture,” as well as “everything from lighting effects to reveals to projections of visual art,” she creates a magical, sometimes disturbing, and, above all else, highly emotional experience every time she takes the stage.

It remains to be seen if Sasha, like many Drag Race queens before her, will embark on her own original music career (“I’m interested in dipping my toes in those waters; I may have fun with that,” she muses), but for now, she is focused on putting her own creepy, creative spin on songs by everyone from Björk to Britney. Here, she shares with Yahoo’s Reality Rocks the music that has inspired her singular aesthetic. Suffice to say, Sasha rocks.

Siouxsie & the Banshees, “Cities in Dust”

“Siouxsie Sioux was such an inspiration when I was a teenager, because I connected with these goth college students who listened to this genre of music. She showed me that femininity didn’t necessarily have to look the way that I was familiar with. It could be more exciting, and much more identifiable… My own experience of gender has been about a lot of fluidity. In drag, I like to combine aspects of masculinity and femininity, and rewrite the rules for those. I’m so inspired by the artists that have done that before, especially in such high-fashion ways.”





Le Tigre, “Deceptacon”

“This is one of my favorite songs to perform to. I feel it has that femme punk energy that says, ‘I’m tough, I live life by own rules, and I’m fabulous — even while screeching at you!’ Hearing the beat of that song when it takes over, it’s so thrilling and I get such a rush. I typically perform it with backup dancers, which is maybe a little bit opposite to the style of the song, but I love this kind of classic draggy pageantry juxtaposed with tough, rough-around-the-edges punk.”

Dionne Warwick, “A House Is Not a Home”

“This was one of those songs that drag queens were performing in the ’60s during the Stonewall riots. I love thinking about the music that has spoken to queer people, especially drag queens, over the course of time, and tapping into those feelings — that sadness and melancholy and loneliness — because I think that’s still really present in people’s experiences. This song is very much about being lonely or being heartbroken. My performance of this song is actually what the little house on top of my head [seen in Drag Race’s Rainbow Challenge] comes from. I reveal this image of the house on different papers that I hold in my hand while I sing about this loss of home, and then at the climax of the song I reveal that the house has been under my hat, on top of my head, the entire time. Even though it’s silly and campy, I play it with a lot of real pain and sorrow. And that juxtaposition of this strange little hat and this real genuine feeling of loneliness — which is easy for me to tap into, because I’ve experienced it so many times in my life — that’s what I think is really fun and powerful drag. That was the number that I auditioned for Drag Race with, so this song played a role in helping me get on the show, showing my unique perspective.”