Music & clubs

Berlin’s queens of pop: Eat Lipstick

The electro-punk duo behind Eat Lipstick prepare to glamourously ring out the new year on Dec 29 at Wild at Heart.

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Photo by Pavel Mezihorák

The electro-punk duo behind Eat Lipstick prepare to glamourously ring out the new year on Dec 29.

Having emerged from Berlin’s glittery gutters for a supposedly one-off electro punk gig at Lido on Halloween ’08, Eat Lipstick, the evil brainchild of DJ Anita Drink and satanic guitarist/karaoke host The Shredder, has since evolved into a four-piece glam rock disaster. We met the two founders in the backroom of Exit, the fashion boutique of Miss Drink’s alter ego Juan Chamié before they glamorously ring out the year at Wild at Heart on Dec 29.

How did Anita Drink and The Shredder emerge?

The Shredder: After some satanic spells, The Shredder came from the person under this. It formed in Berlin, because apparently that’s where the demon is. He came straight from hell into this vessel.

Anita Drink: I’m a gospel singer at heart, honey. So, I don’t know about all the demon shit, but that’s why we work together so well. We got the dark, and we got the light. In Shredder, in his demonic inspirations, I found a platform for my pop perspiration. It started out as an act, but then it became a lifestyle.

You both moved here from the US West Coast, but your drag seems very Berlin.

AD: I felt Berlin’s rich history of drag very spiritually and instinctually. You cannot do anything without looking into the past and studying it a bit. I have to give credit to this city, because that’s what brought it out of me.

TS: The city does make it a lot freer. The actual history of allowing us to do this. I mean LA has a good cross scene, but it’s very glamorous. Berlin is a place where you can be a little more sleazy.

What do you say when other drag queens claim to have the authority on what drag should be?

AD: I don’t think it matters a damn, drag-y, mascara lint. There are always going to be cliques of people saying, “Oh, she’s raggedy drag; there go the metal drags; here come the femme drags!” I think that’s healthy, because I don’t want to be like everybody else, and I don’t want everyone else to like me necessarily. I don’t need to fit into some scene. What makes it vital and rich is when these different scenes compete. We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves, but if it means we can be a symbol of the most positive and most dangerously sexy aspects of the word “drag”, then Eat Lipstick is that, and we are the future.

Your new song “Dog Nose Summer” suggests a new album is on the horizon?

AD: It’s a brand-new fucking Lipstick. The first record is a collection of all the work that we’ve done, all the homage to Berlin and the people that made Eat Lipstick happen. And the second album is all the things that have happened since then. [The Shredder] and I have started working together on acoustic sets. Naturally, it made us more melodic and more introspective. That’s changed and developed our sound and enriched the tonality of it.

What about your song “Murder by Madonna”? Any beef with the Queen of Pop?

AD: No. God. I’m the Queen of Pop, honey. She can’t do what I do, and I can’t do what she does. In fact, she’s right now probably thinking about me, because I’m thinking about her. We have a connection for life.

TS: She might even know who we are because she has our t-shirt.

AD: Yeah, she bought one of our t-shirts. The guy that does our merchandise made some stuff for a shop on Torstraße called École. In the window was the Eat Lipstick shirt for “Murder by Madonna”, and [her people] stopped and went into the shop. The owner called a friend of mine, they called my office, and I was like, “My who, my what? Madonna, what? I can’t take this call right now.” So, I hung up and didn’t believe them. But in the end, she herself went down there and bought it. So somewhere there’s a photo of her with that damn shirt on.

Eat Lipstick, Fri, Dec 29, 20:00 | Wild at Heart, Kreuzberg