Scene Queen

Scene Queen projects a visual style evocative of a Barbie pitch deck while embodying a striking array of contradictions. Her sound fuses the bubblegum pop hallmarks of the early 2000s with the hyperpop and metalcore currents embraced by more recent listeners, all while delivering candid, unfiltered verses beneath the dominant pink palette that confront the realities facing contemporary women, from sexuality to mental health. Following the growth of an extensive social media audience, she formalized this approach on the 2022 EPs Bimbocore and Bimbocore, Vol. 2 before expanding it on 2024’s Hot Singles in Your Area.

The project serves as the alter ego of New York-born musician Hannah Rose Collins, whose formative years were shaped by early-2000s emo and its surrounding culture through repeated exposure to My Chemical Romance, Sleeping with Sirens, and Pierce the Veil. She repeatedly aspired to intern or even record for the alternative label Hopeless Records, submitting three separate applications, yet she also nursed private concerns that the emo community’s entrenched misogyny left little room for women artists.

After experimenting with conventional pop composition, Collins merged the two approaches by developing Scene Queen, a boisterous, hyper-feminine figure defined by an affinity for pink and an unapologetic stance on sexuality that aided Collins in embracing her bisexual identity. The 2020 self-release of the single “Are You Tired?” drew the attention of Hopeless Records, which promptly signed her and issued the Bimbocore and Bimbocore, Vol. 2 EPs; those projects featured tracks such as “Pretty in Pink,” “Pink Bubblegum,” “Pink G-String,” and the collaboration “Barbie & Ken” with Florida pop-punk act Set It Off.

The contrast between her feminine presentation and aggressive sonic force quickly generated widespread notice and cultivated an intensely devoted online following. Beginning in 2023, she issued a series of sexually charged singles including “18+,” “MILF,” and “Finger,” which supplied the core material for her debut full-length album, 2024’s Hot Singles in Your Area.