Slayyyter

Catherine Grace Garner (born September 17, 1996), known professionally as Slayyyter, is an American singer, songwriter, and rapper. She started her career independently releasing songs through SoundCloud. Her eponymous debut mixtape, Slayyyter, was independently released in 2019. Her debut studio album, Troubled Paradise, was released in June 2021, and her second studio album, Starfucker, in September 2023. Her third studio album, Worst Girl in America, was released in March 2026 on Columbia Records. In addition to three solo tours, she has also toured with Charli XCX, Kesha, and Tove Lo.

Slayyyter is from Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, where she has "kind of lived [her] whole life". Slayyyter's mother is a devout Polish Catholic. Her mother introduced her to The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, and Elton John, the latter of whom would inspire her future costumes.

Slayyyter went to a small Catholic grade school, and then a large public high school, where she was "offered great music classes for the first time". As a student, she was in choir and performed concert solos. Her favorite classes were English, film studies, and art, but she struggled with other subjects. Growing up without money, Slayyyter felt insecure in comparison to her wealthy school classmates.

Slayyyter aspired to be a movie star, a singer, or a comedian as a child, and took ballet and Hip-hop dance lessons until her family could no longer afford them.

Slayyyter first got involved in stoner culture in high school, and smoked regularly with her friends.

Slayyyter spent a year in college, studying at the University of Missouri. Her time in college was an "expensive experiment" in which she started her career as a musician, writing "'80s lo-fi pop" that she produced and edited herself, but never published. At this time, Slayyyter was making music in her bedroom closet. She dropped out of college in 2016 and began making music seriously, while working service jobs, camming, and doing findomme work to make money. She would later describe this as her E-girl hustler phase.

Her most frequent collaborator, Ayesha Erotica, is from Southern California. The artists met through Twitter, which is where Slayyyter first developed a following. The artist credits Stan Twitter for introducing her to Ayesha.

Garner began going by the moniker "Slayyyter" as a spin on the last name of Ron Slater, a character from Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused. Retroactively, she likened this version of her persona to a Britney Spears impersonation.After a 14-second snippet of the song "Mine" gathered attention on Twitter with over 200,000 views, the single was released on Valentine's Day and in less than 24 hours, reached number 38 on the iTunes pop chart in the United States. The success of "Mine" and the later single "Daddy AF" allowed her to leave her job as a hair salon receptionist and pursue music full time. Slayyyter stated that, as she began recording music, men in the industry would treat her "weirdly" and "inappropriately" because of her songs' sexual content, and her history as a sex worker. These workers had since been fired, as of May 2024.

Slayyyter performing in 2019

In June 2019, Slayyyter embarked on her sold-out debut tour, entitled "The Mini Tour". The tour began on June 24 in New York City, and concluded on July 27 in her hometown of St. Louis.

On September 17, 2019, Slayyyter released her self-titled mixtape, Slayyyter, on iTunes. The mixtape was met with positive reviews and peaked at No. 4 on the US iTunes Pop Chart, and No. 14 on the US iTunes Albums Chart. "Daddy AF", from the mixtape, appeared as the opening track in 2022's black comedy horror film Bodies Bodies Bodies and 2024's romance comedy drama film Anora.

In October, 2019, Slayyyter opened for Charli XCX’s Charli Live Tour, after she was featured on a remix of "Click" with Charli XCX and Kim Petras.

During the outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic in spring 2020, Slayyyter was on a trip to meet with producers in Los Angeles. Unable to leave, she purchased an apartment in Beverly Hills and continued to make music through the quarantine period.

Slayyyter released a remix of Britney Spears' "Gimme More" to her SoundCloud in April 2020. In May 2024, she stated that she had tried to clear the sample for release but the song’s original writers would not comply with her team. In 2026, she said that it "wouldn't make sense to put [the song] out now", and that the original sample would still be difficult to clear. In October and November of 2020, she released the songs "Self Destruct" and "Throatzillaaa", respectively.

On January 21, 2021, Slayyyter announced her debut studio album, Troubled Paradise, set to be released on June 11. The third single from the album and title track, "Troubled Paradise", and its music video were released the following day.

On January 26, Heidi Montag confirmed via Twitter that she would be collaborating with Slayyyter. However, in a 2023 interview with VICE, Slayyyter confirmed the collaboration would not be released due to a "sample clearance issue", revealing that the two remixed Britney Spears' "Gimme More" but the sample was "crazy expensive to clear".

From February to May 2021, she released the singles "Clouds", "Cowboys", and "Over This!" ahead of the album.

Troubled Paradise was released on June 11, 2021, through Fader Label. Pitchfork's Ashley Bardhan called the project "vibrant and ridiculous". Slayyyter promoted the album by releasing VEVO Live performances for the tracks 'Letters' and 'Troubled Paradise'.

On November 5, 2021, she released the standalone single "Stupid Boy", a dance-pop song featuring Big Freedia. Later that year, she released Inferno Euphoria, an EP of remixes from Troubled Paradise.

In early June 2022, Slayyyter played a song on tour titled "Hollywood" (later revealed to be "I Love Hollywood!" from her second studio album). She played .mw-parser-output .frac{white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output .frac .num,.mw-parser-output .frac .den{font-size:80%;line-height:0;vertical-align:super}.mw-parser-output .frac .den{vertical-align:sub}.mw-parser-output .sr-only{border:0;clip:rect(0,0,0,0);clip-path:polygon(0px 0px,0px 0px,0px 0px);height:1px;margin:-1px;overflow:hidden;padding:0;position:absolute;width:1px}2+1⁄2 minutes of the song.

On July 24, 2022, Slayyyter tweeted, "album almost done" with a lipstick emoji. On July 29, 2022, she tweeted "one sec im finishing it all!!" with a clock and hand hearts emoji after replying to a fan asking for a status on the new music.

On October 3, 2022, Swedish singer Tove Lo confirmed via Instagram that Slayyyter would be the opening act on the North American leg of her Dirt Femme Tour.

Slayyyter performing in 2023

On June 9, 2023, Slayyyter released the synth-pop single "Out of Time", which Nylon described as a "sleek" return.

On July 20, she announced her second studio album, Starfucker, with "Out of Time" serving as its lead single. The following day, she released the album's second single "Miss Belladonna".

On August 14, Slayyyter announced the third single from Starfucker, "Erotic Electronic". The music video for the single was released on August 17, with the single released the following day.

Starfucker was released on September 22, 2023, with a deluxe edition following on December 1 of that year. The more conventional electropop and dance-pop style of the album deviated from the hyperpop sound of her previous releases. It is Slayyyter's first charting album, debuting at number 17 on Billboard's Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart and peaking at number 10. The album received positive reviews from critics, with several considering it one of 2023's best.

In order to promote the album, Slayyyter embarked on the Club Valentine Tour, which consists of 17 shows across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. It began on October 25, 2023, in Boston, and concluded on February 17, 2024, in London. As part of Spotify's "Spotify Singles" series, Slayyyter released a cover of Lady Gaga's song "Monster" on October 17, 2023. On a separate but related occasion in early 2024, Gaga later commented that she "loved" a TikTok video of Slayyyter lip-synching to her unreleased song "Brooklyn Nights".

On September 20, 2024, Slayyyter released the single "No Comma". According to Slayyyter, "No Comma" was a blueprint for her future album Worst Girl in America's angsty sound*,* and was inspired by Miami Culture and M.I.A.'s album Maya. "No Comma” was also originally meant to go on a reloaded version of her mixtape Slayyyter.

After releasing the single "Attention!" with Kesha and Rose Gray, the three toured together during the Summer of 2025 on the Tits Out Tour. In an interview, she revealed that starting in late 2025, she would be based in New York City instead of Los Angeles.

On August 1, 2025, Slayyyter released "Beat Up Chanels", the lead single from her upcoming third studio album, alongside a music video. The same day, Columbia Records announced she had signed with them. The second single, "Cannibalism!", and its music video, were released on September 12, 2025. A month later, she released the album's third single and its music video, titled "Crank", on October 24, 2025.

On January 13, 2026, she announced her third studio album, Worst Girl in America, alongside the release date for the album's fourth single, titled "Dance...". After a month, on February 22, 2026, she announced her fifth single and its music video, titled "Old Technology", released on February 24. The album was released on March 27, 2026. Every track was accompanied by its own music video.

Slayyyter is primarily considered a pop artist. Various sources refer to her as a hyperpop musician, but Slayyyter herself has stated the label doesn't accurately reflect her sound and she "want[s] to be seen as a pop vocalist". Her music style has been likened to Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton, as well as sounding somewhat "like Charli XCX on whippets". Slayyyter cites Spears, Fergie, Timbaland, Nelly Furtado, Lady Gaga, Marina and the Diamonds, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Heidi Montag, Janet Jackson, and Whitney Houston as some of the artists she listened to the most growing up and who ultimately influenced her musical style. Slayyyter cites Blackout by Spears and The Fame by Lady Gaga as the two pop albums that have "affected her most in this world." Slayyyter’s visual style has been defined as "distinct MySpace-era". She frequently collaborates with British-based artist Glitchmood for visuals. During her Starfucker album cycle, she shifted dramatically to a more mainstream and cinematic 1980s synthwave and synthpop-driven electropop and dark industrial club sound with nu-disco influences. She has described her third album, Worst Girl in America, as a punk, electronic, club, and house music album with some influences from her second album, but has also stated that she feels like she's transitioning to an entirely new, more mature sound.

Slayyyter lives in Los Angeles, where she has been based since 2018-2019 after previously growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, and has a strong interest in fashion design, especially celebrity fashion and glamor fashion. She considers herself a visual artist as well as a music artist and has been involved in modeling as a side interest.

In 2019, it was revealed that Slayyyter had made a series of tweets in 2012 and 2013 containing racial slurs. She later apologized for the tweets, saying that "I have grown and changed so much in the past eight years and the person I am today is not who I was at age 15. Eight years is a lot of time to reflect, grow, mature and better yourself as a human being. And I know that being young or uneducated about the matter also does not excuse any of these things, but please know that people do change." As a result, Slayyyter committed funds resulting from her CD and vinyl sales to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and Black Trans Travel Fund — two charities benefitting black trans youth.

The artist stated in 2026 that she grew up "super Catholic", and went to a Catholic grade school in St. Louis for free because her family could not pay for tuition. During her education, she felt restricted by the church's rigid definition of Christianity, and began calling herself an atheist. Slayyyter retains a personal connection to God and spirituality to this day, has since spurned atheism, and is no longer afraid of being openly religious. All of her tattoos are of Catholic iconography, and she has Jesus's name tattooed on her arm.

Slayyyter has publicly stated that she is bisexual. Slayyyter supports the gay community and drag queens, and has performed at Los Angeles Pride. Slayyyter is also a lover of Burlesque performance.

Slayyyter stated that alcoholism and ADHD run in her family, and that she has struggled with alcohol and drug use during her career.

A cinephile, Slayyyter has expressed admiration for the work of Richard Linklater, Sean Baker, Brittany Murphy, and Brian De Palma. Uptown Girls, Spun, Eyes Wide Shut, Josie and the Pussycats, Basic Instinct, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Showgirls are among her favorite movies. Slayyyter's favorite director is David Lynch, and she was inspired by his hands-on approach to direction when self-directing "Cannibalism!" in 2025.

Slayyyter previously tried to keep her real name private, going by the pseudonym Catherine Slater, which has been referenced in media as her real name, in an attempt to keep fans and press away from her family.

• The Mini Tour (2019)

• Club Paradise Tour (2022)

• Club Valentine Tour (2023–2024)

• Wor$t Girl In The World Tour (2026)

• Charli XCX - Charli Live Tour (2019)

• Tove Lo - Dirt Femme Tour (2023)

• Fletcher - In Search of the Antidote Tour (2024)

• Kesha and Scissor Sisters - The Tits Out Tour (2025)

• Official website

• Slayyyter at AllMusic

• Slayyyter discography at Discogs