RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 4 winner Sharon Needles, the queen of darkness, is sitting at Yahoo Music in the glorious Joan Crawford drag from her buzzy new video for “Battle Axe,” the title track off her third album of “audio nihilism,” released just in time for Halloween. The video, which also stars her Drag Race nemesis turned good friend Phi Phi O’Hara in a hilarious Dynasty-spoofing catfight scene, is one of the best of the year, but when we joke that it ought to be up for some MTV Video Music Award nominations, Needles quips frankly, “Yeah, I’m not going to get a VMA. The VMAs will use drag queens as puppets. They’ll use us as decoration. … I’m sure lots of millionaire, million-hit artists will pander to gay and trans culture, because we’re ‘cool.’”

Needles may be referring to last year’s VMAs, when the Drag Race All-Stars 2 cast walked MTV’s red carpet dressed in different iconic VMA fashions, or the VMAs from two years ago, when host Miley Cyrus closed the show with a cast of 30 Drag Race contestants. But Needles clarifies that she has less of a problem with the ceremony’s 2015 host than with Katy Perry, who handled 2017 VMA emcee duties and also performed with drag queens on Saturday Night Live this year.

“I think Miley’s more of an ally than, say, Katy Perry, who most definitely panders to the gay community,” says Needles, quoting some of what she thinks are Perry’s more offensive lyrics. “‘I kissed a girl and I liked it.’ ‘You’re so gay.’ I mean, the somewhat problematic ways she speaks about the gay community, and people with mental illness, just totally turns me off.”

Sharon Needles (Photo: Producer Entertainment Group)

Drag queens, and Drag Race alumni in particular, have become MTV regulars thanks to their appearances in music videos by everyone from pop divas Lady Gaga, Kesha, and Little Mix to indie-rockers Spiritualized and Jack White. But Needles is disappointed that’s it still so difficult for musically inclined queens like herself, Jinkx Monsoon, Alaska, Courtney Act, and Adore Delano — all of whom have released albums of original material — to break into the pop mainstream.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, great, drag queens can excel!’ — but then the ceiling is so low. You’re only allowed on the first floor; you’re not allowed to go play with the big boys upstairs. Even RuPaul, who’s a massive success, has been limited to where her music career can take her. … It’s still going to be a white man’s world for much, much longer.

“I think the reason people are propping up drag queens is because it’s popular with the fans that identify with them, so we’re great for marketing. We’re not allowed to be the Christmas tree, we’re just allowed to be the decorations, and I still think we’re looked at as clowns by a majority of the society. I’m not saying that we’re not clowns, but I think everyone [should have] the opportunity to try and succeed as high as they can in the entertainment industry.”

RuPaul’s Drag Race finalists Phi Phi O’Hara and Sharon Needles reenact the Alexis/Krystle Carrington Dynasty catfight scene in Sharon’s “Battle Axe” video (Photo: Christopher Logan)

That being said, Needles realizes that fame is a double-edged sword, and she has struggled with being in the spotlight since winning what was arguably Drag Race’s most game-changing season.

“I love celebrities, and I love the concept of fame, but it took me getting fame to realize that it doesn’t exist, which was kind of a bummer. Fame is great if you’re not famous, because it seems like this elusive impossible dream world. And it’s not. It’s a fancy word that managers and producers make up so they can keep hawking you for more money. It most definitely comes with its benefits, but it’s not real. It’s Santa Claus.

“I realized that I don’t like the feeling of going in somewhere and being noticed and recognized by everyone — and that [used to be my] goal: ‘Oh my God, could you imagine if I walked into the bar and everyone knew who I was, and I’d have to take all these pictures and autographs?’ But that’s not a good feeling for anybody. It’s invasive. No one would like that. Why did I think that? I’m a pretty smart person — I know God doesn’t exist, I know Santa Claus didn’t exist — but I was 29 years old, still thinking fame was a real thing, a tangible thing, like you could touch it.

“When you work in this industry, and you are paid in not only money, but you are paid in attention,” Needles continues. “From any star in Hollywood who says they don’t do this for attention and for exposure, they’re f***in’ lying. If we wanted to be real actors, we’d be working in theater, but no. We want to glow in your living rooms. We want to live in your TV. And that’s because we want, for some sick, disgusting reason, we need to be validated by people we don’t know, like f***in’ Beth in Boise, Idaho.”

Sharon Needles (Photo: Producer Entertainment Group)

Still, Needles appreciates her true fans. “If you were to come in to my house, I have archived every fan letter I’ve ever been given, boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of them,” she confesses in a rare moment of sentimentality. “Don’t read them when you’re drinking, or it will just ruin your night! I mean, they’re very inspiring and they’re sweet, but my fans have an extra kind of damage to them. I think all RuPaul’s Drag Race fans have a little bit of damage, are a little bit dented cans, but I tend to attract those ones that remind me a lot of myself when I was younger. So if my art lifts you up or does anything, that’s great.”

And Needles believes Battle Axe, which was inspired by “strong, aggressive electronic records” of her misfit formative years (Marilyn Manson, Lords of Acid, Ministry, Revolting Cocks, Electric Hellfire Club, KMFDM, Pigface, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult), is “the record that I think people have been wanting from me.” She’s excited to keep pushing herself artistically, even if she never ends up on the pop charts next to Miley and Katy, saying, “I didn’t want to lip-synch two numbers a night in clubs for the rest of my life [after winning Drag Race], because I don’t believe in heaven — I believe in legacy.”

(And, just to put it out there, Needles says she’d happy to fill in for her idol Marilyn Manson while he’s recovering from his recent onstage injury: “I did have my people call their people, just in case anything happened to Marilyn Manson. I did happen to say that I knew every word. Adam Lambert is to Queen as I am to Marilyn Manson, so…”)

While Needles insists that she’s not a role model, the voracious music aficionado — who listens to everything from Carly Rae Jepsen, Justin Bieber, and Noah Cyrus to the Jackson 5, Dr. Dre, and Candi Stanton, and from L7 and Babes in Toyland to Bette Midler’s The Rose soundtrack — absolutely loves educating her fanbase about musical herstory.

“That’s what I use this platform for, you know? I don’t want to be so obvious about gay rights and say, ‘Let’s all save each other!’ — because what saved me was art and music. So if you watch any of my videos, if you listen to my lyrics, if you read my interviews, I am always sneaking in what they now call ‘Easter eggs.’ I’m always just sneaking in pieces of knowledge.”

Battle Axe is out now. Watch Sharon Needles’s full Yahoo Music Facebook Live interview below.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

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.”

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.”

Sharon is referring to her four-year relationship with fellow queen Alaska 5000, a top three finalist on Drag Race Season 5, with whom she split in 2013. While she says she “didn’t use any part of that breakup to be any kind of biographical song,” she does explain that one Taxidermy track, “Glow in the Dark,” is “about taking responsibility for why me and Alaska broke up, but also that there’s light at the end of that tunnel, and that you deserve and have that opportunity to be loved, and love someone else again. And ‘Dead Dandelion’ is one of my favorite songs on the album, and it’s a love song, but it’s really morbid and it’s really about how the world’s most ironic punishment is to find true love, only for you to die and for you to leave each other. And it seems like there’s no benefit to true love, because you’re both going to abandon each other for the soil.”

Clearly Sharon has just found new ways to artistically explore her longtime fascination with all things macabre. “I don’t know if my soul came from another planet or what, but I’ve always been attracted to fantasy and darkness and macabre things,” she says, reflecting on her days as “a little gay boy in Newton, Iowa… daydreaming of getting out of that desolate cornfield and becoming a rock star.” She continues: “I remember at 6 years old watching Sleepaway Camp Part 2, my first horror movie – I just remember the feeling it gave me. I remember the concept of dread, and very early on attracted to morbid things. You know, being an odd kid and being an obviously, ridiculously obvious gay kid, I tended to get lost in my head and lose myself in a fantasy world, to kind of protect myself from the evils of school and hanging out with other kids.”

Sharon is philosophical now about her difficult Iowa upbringing. “I think every gay kid’s childhood is difficult,” she shrugs. “I don’t like to be the posterchild for anti-bullying or things like that, but if people see my story and they relate to it, I’m glad that that happens. But I somehow got given the sheriff badge for the bullying story and having a rough childhood. Anyone my age – I’m 34 now; I’m a child of the ‘80s and early ‘90s – that kind of Reagan-era clash and how people treated each other was not how it is today. Yeah, it was bad, but when you become an adult, you have to take self-responsibility of how you’re gonna allow that to affect you. And I think a lot of that has fueled my art to be a button-pusher, punk-rock. Sorry, Yahoo, but I think my childhood experience has propelled me to be a button-pushing punk, and I enjoy kind of poking fun at culture.”

Check out three debut acoustic Sharon Needles performances and in-depth interview here, for definitive proof that she’s not some “Party City” queen.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.