Trixie Mattel, the folk-drag superstar and RuPaul’s Drag Race alumna, has had quite a year. After taking home the crown on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3, the queen released her second studio album One Stone to rave reviews.
Now, Mattel has embarked on her second tour with her second one-woman show, Now With Moving Parts. The show features Trixie singing songs from her two albums, along with covering popular songs, lip syncing for her life and offering up poignant, funny stand-up comedy throughout.
After attending one of her shows at New York’s Irving Plaza on Saturday night (May 5), Billboard Pride has made a list of 5 things we learned from Trixie Mattel’s new show, Now With Moving Parts.
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1. She came up with a new name for her act for more than one reason
Trixie is not known for having the most…family-friendly act. She talks often about sex, alcohol, death and more. So when the star saw families attending her one-woman show from last year, Ages 3 And Up, she was concerned. “There was a toddler sitting in the front row as I was talking about rimming my dad,” she explained. When the time came to create a new show, she decided to give it a name that would not necessarily inspire families to bring their kids. “But you know what, they’ve got to learn at some point,” she added.
2. She affectionately calls herself “the Ed Sheeran of drag”
The drag star said at her show that amongst the various different queens who have made their way through RuPaul’s Drag Race, she considers herself to be one of the whitest. After explaining that she believed Ed Sheeran “looks like he crawled out from under a bridge to ask you a riddle,” she also explained that due to her skin tone, her ability to write music on a guitar and to loop her vocals, she is essentially “the Ed Sheeran of drag.” To prove it, she performed a looped cover of RuPaul’s “Covergirl,” a la the “Shape of You” singer.
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3. She is a master of mashups
As Trixie was explaining that the audience attending her show was predominantly young white women, she started to play “Sk8r Boi” by Avril Lavigne as a singalong for her young fans. After a verse and a chorus, she began playing and singing Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” saying she wanted to have a song for the older gays in the crowd. Then, Mattel took the two seriously different songs and mashed them together, first playing the tune of “Landslide” while singing “Sk8r Boi,” and vice versa. “You people are so easy to impress,” she declared after finishing to thunderous applause.
4. She is still close friends with Thorgy Thor
Trixie let her audience know that her fellow All Stars 3 competitor Thorgy Thor was in the house, constantly calling her out and making jokes. One particular joke, though, clearly got to her — after finishing her “Sk8r Boi”/”Landslide” mashup, she simply said “Thorgy is sitting somewhere shaking right now.” Trixie was referencing Thorgy’s claim on All Stars 3 (that she later clarified) that Stevie Nicks was not a gay icon. As soon as Trixie said it, Thorgy, sitting in the VIP seats above the stage, simply shouted down “Fuck you!” while giggling. Trixie laughed and asked the audience to clap for the queen.
5. She’s got an audience that likes to participate
At multiple points during her show, Trixie spoke directly to members of her audience, telling them how drunk they were, making fun of their clothes, etc. But at multiple points, her audience decided to get more involved. As she was performing a bit about her disdain for religion, a fan walked up to the stage to inform her that she had some loose hair clinging to her outfit, picking it off for her. Trixie thanked the fan, and shouted at the audience, “So the rest of you saw it and didn’t say anything, huh?!” Another fan played a game of call and response with Trixie when she was making fun of people who work in Human Resources. When the woman in the audience told Trixie she worked in HR, the star said, “What do you do, do you fire people?” The woman responded just by shouting “If you do your job right, we won’t have a problem!” The star broke down laughing, saying “She just scared me so much! You know she takes her job seriously!”