Sharon Needles, the Season 4 winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, is one of many Drag Race alumni flooding the marketplace with original music – most recently with her sophomore album, Taxidermy. But with her edgy, indie musical influences (among them My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, Throbbing Gristle, and Ministry), Sharon is no typical pop queen.

“I’m more Courtney Love than Courtney Act,” Sharon jokes, rocking a stained G.G. Allin T-shirt, Blade Runner/Adam Ant warpaint, and a Pete Burns wig, as she visits Yahoo Music to publicly perform stripped-down, so to speak, for the very first time. “My musical tastes are all over the board. I didn’t hang out with a lot of pop-culture-obsessed gay youth. I hung out with a lot of punks and people in rock bands, and I never identified as one [thing]. The ‘90s genre – you know, the raver, the Goth, the punk – I was so interested in all of it, so my musical tastes ranged from ‘90s punk, U.K. glam, surf-rock, EDM, electronica, industrial… and then, of course, I got my Britney Spears in there, too.”

All of these elements (except maybe Britney) are evident on Taxidermy, a darker, more personal, and more somber work that veers away from the campy, clubby sound of Sharon’s debut album, PG-13. “I have a large repertoire of music that I enjoy… I wouldn’t say she was typecasted; I dug my grave and I have to lie in it, and I don’t mind being Elvira with a d—,” Sharon admits. “[But Taxidermy] is written a little bit more about the person behind all this [makeup]. PG-13 was a tongue-in-cheek kind of Elvira-inspired, punny, fun Halloween record. But I’ve been in the spotlight as a drag queen for four years now, and that beats you up quite a bit.”

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