Trixie Mattel on Her Spooky New Album and Halloween Special: “Music Was My Drag Before I Found Drag”
The renowned drag queen breaks down her new record ‘Till Death Do Us Part
by Lana Thorn 2 October 2026
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A Trixie Mattel Halloween album was long overdue. The famed TV personality, known for winning the third season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, hosting the hit podcast The Bald and the Beautiful with fellow drag queen Katya Zamolodchikova, and running her own makeup brand Trixie Cosmetics, has funnelled her lifelong love of horror into six morbidly romantic songs filled with 80s horror synths, acoustic guitars, and even the theremin. Moreover, she’s launching the album with a star-packed Halloween special informed by the self-referential fun of films like Scream.
Mattel sat down with Phantasmag to discuss how‘Till Death Do Us Part began as an at-home project, the “crisis of faith” that inspired the poppy yet melancholic lead single, and getting “the A-list of the A-list Halloween divas” to cameo in the special.
Phantasmag: We often begin by asking our interviewees about their relationship to the horror genre growing up, but since we’re here to discuss a Halloween album, I wanted to ask: What did both horror and music mean to you in your formative years?
Trixie Mattel: Well, music was my drag before I found drag, right? I'm from a very small town in the country, and I spent a lot of time by myself in the woods playing guitar. I started playing at 13. It gave me a lot of confidence, and I loved it. Then, with horror, I always liked scary shit. I think a lot of gay people like scary shit. Some people protect their kids from horror movies, but my mom let me watch any of them really young. So I’ve always loved being scared, and I pretty much see anything scary that comes out. The only thing that really gets me to the movie theatre is horror releases.
P: I understand that this began as an at-home project just for fun. Can you tell me about the beginnings of this album and when you realised that you wanted to share it with the world?
TM: Last Halloween, I was decorating my house for a YouTube video, and I was doing a big Trixie-like home, a Martha Stewart kind of special where I was decorating and making holiday Halloween foods, ultimately having a party. Because you have to pre-tape holiday content, I had decorated in late August, so I was in Halloween mode from August into October. I was just writing music for fun because now I DJ primarily — dance music is my bread and butter, but I still play guitar and write music for fun. So I had pieces of music come my way, and spooky stuff was coming out. Like “Tell Me When It's Over” or “‘Till Death Do Us Part”, or “Vampire”, which is a metaphor about being a performer. These were all songs I was writing because I was in Halloween-mode for months. So it really wasn't intentional, but all of a sudden I had four or five that were all thematically spooky, and I was like, Well, I've never done a Halloween album.
And I produce a lot of the music myself, so once you’ve made it on your computer, and it’s 80% done, you're like, Might as well just put it out. And then once I finished “In Love With a Ghost” and all that, I had pretty much made six little Halloween songs. I don't love doing music videos, but I like doing my little dumb drag queen scripted specials. So I did One Night Only a few years ago, which was my little special from home that got nominated for a Critics' Choice Award. And my friend Daniel [Vincent Gordh] loves Halloween as well. He actually has a YouTube channel where he does these deep dives into the history of horror. So I was like, ‘Do you wanna do this little special with me?’
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It started out as just comedic banter between songs. I was gonna ask him to write jokes for me for a home concert. And then once I had the idea to make it Trixie on Halloween trying to have a telethon, I was like, Well, now I'm thinking of When a Stranger Calls, I’m thinking of Scream… So many references started coming out, and everybody on our team loves horrors. We were trying to shove in as many little horror references as we could. We've got Halloween, Scream, Obsession, Poltergeist. There’s even a Christine joke that I don’t even think my fans are old enough to understand. I’m introducing my band, and they’re in these skeleton outfits, and I go, “Fun fact about him: he’s restoring a 1958 Plymouth Fury in his spare time." It’s like little Halloween Easter eggs, and I know that for people who love horror, game recognises game. I’m obsessed with The Shining, and every time I see a Shining reference in something, I light up. But to me, a drag queen home alone on Halloween getting harassing calls from a killer was obviously a yes, you know?
P: Do you have a favourite reference like that?
TM: There’s a joke in the beginning of it where Katya and I are talking about Poltergeist, and she's suggesting movies that we should go see after my special. Katya goes, "What about Poltergeist?”, and I go, “Oh my God, that movie bums me out. Did you know that little girl died of an abdominal obstruction?" Which is true. That little girl passed away, and Katya almost died from an abdominal obstruction like three months ago, so then she goes, “Same, girl.” It was this weird moment where we couldn't not make that connection. And I love Poltergeist. The only thing I didn’t get to do — and I really wanted to — was a shot of me in blonde hair in front of a TV [mimicking the iconic visual from the Poltergeist poster]. But there's always next year. The nice thing about Halloween is we’re in a golden age of horror right now, where the universe keeps giving us these scary movie bangers. We have an Obsession joke in it. We have some really good celebrity cameos that are gonna blow your tits off. And because it’s a telethon, we got some celebrities to call in, and they’re really good. I'm talking the A-list of the A-list Halloween divas. Luckily, these women all love Trixie, so they were super nice about doing little voice notes for me.
P: ‘Till Death Do Us Part represents somewhat of a return to the more acoustic singer-songwriter style music of your debut album, Two Birds, but also brings in some playful synths. How did you decide on the sound of this new record?
TM: So you can tell that I've spent the last few years producing dance music, because I'm much more into synthesisers. I'm really into analogue synths right now, into little hardware that produces retro analogue sounds. You can see that this music was written on my guitar, because it’s easy for me to set down and bang out an idea. But then in the production, I'm using the same program that I use to make remixes for Paloma Faith and J-Lo and everybody. So my brain is still into synths, and that really lent itself to 80s horror soundtracks.
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Then I feel like I'm giving this Trixie vibe, which is always me with a guitar singing songs that are heartfelt with jokes, but then, as for the instruments I'm adding compared to Two Birds or any of my other records, I'm much more gratuitous with synthetic sounds on this album. I've gotten so into it. Dance music weirdly has turned me onto the mix of real and not-real sounds together. I love a theremin. When else am I gonna use a theremin but this record? Theremin and a lot of big, fat, chunky analogue synths that sound like they’re recorded on tape. I really wanted some parts of it to feel horror, whereas in the past, let's say if I was doing a solo, I would probably use real instruments. But I used every opportunity in this to be like, We're using arpeggiated big fat synth basses. We're using weird 80s horror movie synth leads. And once I started to really commit to the Halloween bit, I could push the metaphors further, too. If it’s a love song, it’s still going to be all about spooky shit.
P: Speaking of love songs, how did you approach these playful romantic tracks, and what makes a good love song in your opinion?
TM: I think a good love song is all about specificity. I know we all want music to be universal because we want to listen to a song and put ourselves in it, but I like when the breadcrumbs of somebody's actual romantic experience are left over in the song, and there are small details about their life: what road they were driving on, or what bar they were at. These details add colour, and that, to me, is a good love song because it feels so intimate.
P: Do you have an example of that? A perfect love song for you?
TM: These aren’t exactly love songs, but Jason Isbell, for example, is such a good songwriter. His music always has really clear, unflinching details from his own personal life. It really puts you in the shoes of the person. It's the difference between saying, “I love you”, and talking about the moment you knew you loved somebody. It’s more impactful.
P: Did you ever consider calling the album Lee Cronin’s ‘Till Death Do Us Part?
TM: I did not — I couldn't think of anything better than ‘Till Death Do Us Part. I've been thinking a lot about marriage, and marriage is kind of all about death when you think about it. Even love is about death, and it’s hard to think about how you want to spend your life with somebody without thinking about the fact that that amount is finite.
P: I want to ask about “Polish Moon”. I'm presuming it takes its name from the Allen-Bradley Clock Tower in Milwaukee.
TM: It does, yeah. Milwaukee is a city of immigrants, and in some ways it’s segregated because so many people immigrated to Milwaukee to work in factories. Over by Rockwell Automation in Milwaukee, there's this huge clock, and people in Milwaukee call it the Polish Moon because of the Polish immigration in that area. I live over there, so I'm always walking by it on my way home from the gay bars. So I’m walking home, and I’m a little bit drunk at night and looking at this big clock, thinking about being from Wisconsin and how much I always miss it. I think about how much Milwaukee shaped me, how it made me a drag queen. I always think if I hadn't left, I could've been even more, really. Because I miss Wisconsin. So “Polish Moon” really is a love song to Milwaukee.
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P: You released “Ghost on the Moon” ahead of the album, which is a really tender, melancholic track. What made you decide that was the perfect song to kick off this era?
TM: I was having this extreme crisis of faith with Trixie, with drag, with everything, with music, where I was getting really self-critical, and I did not think anything I was doing was good, and I didn't think anything I'd ever done was good. I was in London. I was going to film Queen of the Universe Season 2, and I felt so emo. We all wanna say, “Poor me” on level 11 sometimes, and then if you really think about it, you’re like, It’s not that bad. But you feel so fucking bad. And I just felt like a total loser. Like a talentless hack who was not capable of making anything good. I was going through a time where my self-worth was very attached to what I could produce, so if I wasn’t happy with what I was producing, I wasn’t feeling like I was worth anything. I don’t feel that way now, but this is from years ago. That’s the oldest thing on the record — I wrote that in 2022 or 2023 and just never put it out.
P: Do you have a favourite track on the album and why?
TM: I love “Ghost on the Moon”. I really think it is beautiful. There are a lot of internal rhymes and word tricks I’m really proud of. Weirdly, I like “Tell Me When It's Over”. It's like elevator music. Sometimes constraints are helpful, and a few years ago, when I was on my little three-month sabbatical, I had never written a song that was one loop over and over again. With the guitar, I can do anything, but I’d never written something with the same chords over and over again the whole song. And it forces you to get creative in other ways, with the lyrics or with instrumental elements and tempo.
So that was the first time I ever wrote a song that purposely was a loop. Creatively, when you can do anything, you can get really stumped. But if you're like, I'm gonna write this in an hour, I'm gonna write this only using the guitar, and I’m gonna use a metaphor about the bubble bath, sometimes you surprise yourself. I wrote “Tell Me When It's Over” when my last relationship was slowly ending, and it was like when you can see the end coming, but neither of you really wants to expedite it. It's that limbo. So I think I naturally made that elevator music for it because it reminded me of the Beetlejuice waiting room, that stage of a relationship where they're calling numbers, and you're just waiting.
P: Has Katya heard the album?
TM: What's funny is that, as much as we create together, our solo content is so different. So as much as we love to make stuff together, I think we both look at each other's solo content like, ‘You're a freak, bitch.’ She doesn't really like music with singing. She doesn't like English-language music, and she doesn't like a lot of singing in music. So in general, she doesn't listen to any of my music, but she does have a little cameo in this. She has a whole scene at the top of the show. So I was lucky to get her because she went on her break right after that, so it’s probably the last thing she filmed before she went to focus on her wellness.
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P: If you had a companion movie watchlist, or specifically a horror movie to watch before listening to the album, what would it be?
TM: Probably Scream. Scream is very draggy. It's making jokes about horror movies while doing a horror movie, and here we're making jokes about drag queens doing a Halloween special while doing a Halloween special. And a lot of the jokes are references. Spoiler alert: there’s a part where the killer’s doing a PowerPoint, a corporate template of a PowerPoint, and the fake company is the Savini and Craven Group. So we’re trying to be a little bit Scream, and I don’t pretend to be as clever as Wes Craven or Kevin Williamson or anything, but I’m a fan. When a Stranger Calls is also up there.
P: What do you want to explore next in your musical career? Is there another subgenre you want to try out?
TM: I’m not with a record label or anything. I feel like, if you were smart, you would probably be an artist who picks one genre and sticks to it. But I just get into different things all the time. So, right now, I'm working on a lo-fi hip hop collection of songs for relaxing and studying to. Lately I've been all into relaxing. And I'm also working on an instrumental 80s synthwave record. Again, the nice thing about not being with a label or anything is that nobody's in charge of me. And my fans are so nice; they're always interested in what I'm doing. So my fans, if tomorrow I was like, ‘I'm doing techno,’ they would be like, ‘Let's listen to the techno.’ I’m 37, and I’ve really learned that music is music.
I think when I was younger, I would’ve been more like, ‘This is the Trixie sound,’ but I’m so much less precious about it now, because I make things for the sake of making them, not for the sake of being monetised and sold. Even on this record, a lot of these were written for fun. “Ghost on the Moon” was written when I was super depressed four years ago. These things are things I'm making on my own on my days off, whether or not I ever plan on putting them out. So the creative process right now is a lot more about making and a lot less about trying to project, ‘Is this good? Can I sell this?’ That's so irrelevant to me now.
P: That’s the best way to create.
TM: And I’m really into skill-building right now. Obviously, I love house music. I've been really into French house. I've been into super-filtering and chopping up. I'm really into sampling. I'm obsessed with making things from samples right now. I love to get on an airplane and be like, I’m gonna use an audio clip of Sarah Paulson from American Horror Story saying, 'I don't want a cupcake.’ Sometimes putting some personal weird game into it gets me to produce something really surprising.
‘Till Death Do Us Part is out now. Mattel’s Halloween performance special launches on her YouTube channel October 5th.