Peaches Wants You to Enjoy the Revolution

Everyone is afraid to use the word icon these days, but there’s no better title for Peaches, a performer who’s been delivering gender-destroying hits to the masses since the dawn of electro-clash. So what’s left in the teaches of Peaches? This winter, the Berliner by way of Canada is back with her first album in over a decade. No Lube So Rude is a raunchy blueprint for taking up space. As she tells Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O over lunch, life doesn’t end at 50, as long as you’re turning the volume up, letting your tits out, and staying hairy, hung, and full of pride.

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FRIDAY 2:24 PM JAN. 1 , 2026 LA

PEACHES: Thank you for doing this.

KAREN O: Well, my crunchy potatoes are your crunchy potatoes. [Laughs] So just a nod to the witches out there, you’re a Scorpio Fire Horse?

PEACHES: Yeah, I’m a Fire Horse.

KAREN O: And you’re turning 60 this year. The last time there was a Fire Horse was around 60 years ago. Apparently, it’s a big deal. [Laughs] I’m a Scorpio Horse, too.

PEACHES: What horse are you?

KAREN O: The good Earth Horse. Marty Scorsese is a Scorpio Horse as well. Also, your birthday’s 11/11.

PEACHES: My birthday is 11/11. I’m born in ‘66. My fucking life changed when I was 33.

KAREN O: Dude, I’d say that’s a blueprint for a disruptor. Someone who’s going to make a big impact. You’re the Phoenix rider. You leave trailblazers in the dust.

PEACHES: It’s in the numbers.

KAREN O: You can’t ignore them. You’re here with a mission and a purpose.

PEACHES: It’s pretty wild. Everything happened organically. It wasn’t like, “I need to do this.”

KAREN O: I’m curious about the moment you were aware that you had this thing in you, the seed of the peach?

PEACHES: I don’t know if this is superficial, but in 1973, when I was six or seven, I memorized every fucking song on the radio. And I’m not a savant that way. I was just into it.

KAREN O: Not every kid does that, by the way.

PEACHES: I’d spend New Year’s at my grandma’s and listen to the Canadian AM radio and write down the top 100 of the year.

KAREN O: [Laughs] Oh my god.

PEACHES: The top song was “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain & Tennille. I’m a terror if you play a ‘70s and ‘80s song quiz with me.

KAREN O: [Laughs] Okay, so there’s that, but what about the performance aspect of it?

PEACHES: It’s the embarrassing moments.

KAREN O: Hell yeah.

PEACHES: I went to see Fiddler on the Roof with my family and my mom said I just stood up and started dancing.

KAREN O: Oh my god. You were—

PEACHES: Moved. And then when I was seven, I was at my cousin’s bar mitzvah. I’m watching this band and I turn to my mom and say, “I want to sing with them.”

KAREN O: Whoa.

PEACHES: And she’s like, “Can you sing?” I said, “Yeah, I think I can.” And of course, the only song I knew how to sing was Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were.” A song about a fucking divorcee.

KAREN O: I find it really awesome that kids are so drawn to melodrama. It’s an emotional language that they get immediately. And you singing this—

PEACHES: Divorcee song, like I have any life experience at all. So the band was taking a break and eating dinner, and I distinctly remember singing to them, like an audition, and them being like, “Okay, you can sing.” So I did the song and I remember my Uncle Morris crying, and then I had to sing that song at every wedding and bar mitzvah for the next eight years.

KAREN O: Holy shit.

PEACHES: And that defined me. But I found out this year that my dad actually bullied the band. He was like, “Listen, you’re going to let my daughter sing because this is our family function.”

KAREN O: [Laughs] Mafia style. That’s a beautiful conception of Peaches.

PEACHES: Yeah. The years to follow were not so smooth. I would be part of music programs at school, but there was never any openness. It was like, “Sing that note. Okay, you did that wrong. Next.”

KAREN O: It’s like trying to be creative in the system.

PEACHES: They don’t let you. Either you’ve got it or you don’t. I knew I loved freaky musicals, but I never got a lead role or a chance at anything.

KAREN O: Me too.

PEACHES: I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was nine, in a movie theater. I snuck into Phantom of the Paradise with my friend in Gravenhurst, Ontario.

KAREN O: That’s insane.

PEACHES: I also used to watch Tommy, the musical.

KAREN O: I loved it. A good part of why we do what we do is because of experiencing stuff like that. It sets you free.

PEACHES: That was my goal, to be a theater director.

KAREN O: And you are, in a way.

PEACHES: I got to be one because we had this incredible high school program with a black box theater and we’d do a lot of experimental stuff. In grade 13 I wrote plays instead of essays. And then I got into a director’s program at York University and I was laughed at. People were like, “You want to do musicals? We’re doing Chekhov.” I was like, “I don’t give a fuck.” I remember doing acid one Monday night with a friend, half a hit. I woke up the next day and was like, “What am I doing in this program? I’m going to quit.”

KAREN O: You had the truth trip.

PEACHES: Yeah. And then I went into fine arts, doing all different kinds of stuff and fighting with teachers because of their perception of who should do what.

KAREN O: I totally relate. I don’t think everybody has that compulsion to be like, “This is my vision, and I don’t necessarily know where it’s coming from, but this is what needs to happen.”

PEACHES: Yeah. Even the theater is so institutionalized. It’s like, I realized I can be the director and the actor and the producer.

KAREN O: That’s the disruption thing. You go, “Fuck that.” And you become a rockstar. [Laughs]

PEACHES: It’s so freeing to realize there’s another way. I was so fucking excited when I saw you and heard about you, because there weren’t a lot of female-identified fucking powerhouses at the time. I was so happy to see you rolling around.

KAREN O: In broken glass. I don’t know what forces I was compelled by, but it needed to happen. The more I learn about neurodivergence—I credit a little bit to that, and also to being a woman in the sense that you’re always making up the playbook in real time. It always feels like you’re a fucking pioneer. We’ve never danced together. Are you a big fan of dancing?

PEACHES: We have danced. We were probably both drunk, but I remember we both played at this festival and we danced it out.

KAREN O: Okay, shit. Because I was thinking about how I found myself on the dance floor, and that the genre of music that you’ve really stayed loyal to is club music and dance music. You live in Berlin, which is—

PEACHES: I was doing more no wave-y kind of music at one point with [Chilly] Gonzales, Mocky, and Sticky [Henderson]. We were very improvisational with instruments and yelling shit, getting really high and saying sex shit, whatever. I carried that on when everybody moved on to other things. I got a machine so I could have a drummer, a bass player, and a guitarist. I wasn’t thinking, “Now I’m going to make music like Kraftwerk.” I loved Iggy Pop, I loved Riot Grrrl. I loved Missy Elliot and I loved Lil’ Kim lyrics. And so it was just like, “How can I bring that all together?” Things were so purist then. That’s something I appreciate about Gen Zs.

KAREN O: They’re music fluid.

PEACHES: They could be playing new metal and then a ballad and then no wave all in the same song. But I was never a club kid. I was a punk kid. I thought, “Punk music is only, like, one guitar, one bass, and drums. So why can’t I do that with electronic music?

KAREN O: ESG is the reason why I started the Yeah Yeah Yeahs with Nick [Zinner].

PEACHES: I didn’t know ESG and then I made “Lovertits” and everyone was like, “Oh, you made an ESG song.” I didn’t know Suicide or ESG, but they seem to have been the main influences of my work. [Laughs]

KAREN O: Retrospectively.

PEACHES: And Vanity Six, Prince’s all-girl band.

KAREN O: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I love them.

PEACHES: “Nasty Girl” and all that. People were giving me those albums like, “This is what you’re doing.” I was like, “Oh, great.”

KAREN O: So if you were to distill what it is about the sound of the music you make, with the lyrics, with the persona, how did it get there?

PEACHES: I think performance wise it got there because of the way people reacted to what I was doing. They’d be like, “Whoa, I’ve never heard this.” Or, “This is fucking horrible.” And it made me want to push it. It made me understand the immediacy of performance.

KAREN O: And there’s so much sexuality in what you do, in the feeling and the energy. It’s a flex. I just want to get into the lyrics of “Hanging Titties,” is that the first song on your new record?

PEACHES: Yeah.

KAREN O: Dude, this is a fucking flex: Older than you/ Looking so cunt/ Oh, look at you all in my cunt/ Thirsty much, my hanging titties hit like a punch/ Older than you/ Oh, look at you all in my cunt/ Thirsty much, my hanging titties hit like a punch. [Laughs] The patriarchy thinks women past childbearing age should just fucking disappear, but you’re not doing that, are you?

PEACHES: No. People are talking about menopause, finally, with books like Miranda July’s [All Fours] or Small Achievable Goals, this Canadian show that I was on that’s all about roles for older women. We can’t just be like, “Your life is over at 50 or 60.” People are living ‘til 100 now. I’ve been into this Julia Louis-Dreyfus podcast. It’s called Wiser Than Me. The guests are all women who are older than her and the first question she asks is, “Do you mind saying your real age?” And they’re like, “Not at all. I’m 90.” They’re totally lucid and cool and they don’t give a fuck. It’s Glenn Close being like, “Let me give it to you real.”

KAREN O: I think not giving a fuck is the Holy Grail and you’re one of the saints who allow us to—

PEACHES: Not give a fuck. Or you actually do give a fuck because you want to say, “I matter.” Or, “I’m still here.” I did a play in Stuttgart five years ago, and they were worried because it turned into a Peaches show at the end. They were like, “All the older patrons are going to run out.” They fucking loved it. It was 70, 80-year-old women being like, “Oh my god, I’ve never seen shit like this.” I was climbing on their seats and they were trying to hold me up. I’m like, “I do not want to break your wrist.”

KAREN O: [Laughs]

PEACHES: “I don’t know what your osteoporosis is.” Not in a mean way—

KAREN O: No, it’s true.

PEACHES: And they would come to me after the show and go like, “I never got a chance to be my true self.” That was such a big revelation for me.

KAREN O: Yeah. Five years ago I was looking at you and Shirley [Manson] and being like, “Whoa. That’s what happens at 50? You just all of a sudden get to be unapologetically—”

PEACHES: Oh my god. Shirley.

KAREN O: Thank you, you crazy bitches, for showing me the fucking way. There’s a part of me that feels permanently shy, but I think that has a chance to change.

PEACHES: People used to always think, “Oh, Peaches is naked on stage.” I never was.

KAREN O: [Laughs]

PEACHES: But now I’m just wearing a little pair of underwear and nipple covers. I’m just like, This is me. Take it or take it.”

KAREN O: Okay, I’m going to get one more glass of wine. Do you want anything?

PEACHES: I’m good. I’m going to eat some of your crunchy potatoes.

KAREN O: Alright. So I want to know what it feels like for you when you perform onstage.

PEACHES: It’s my happy place, my purpose. It’s where I feel my power the most.

KAREN O: Can you remember your shows?

PEACHES: Oh, yeah. I remember everything that happened at every show. If someone says, “I saw you in San Francisco,” I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, I had blood on my white patent leather jacket because somebody tried to stick their hand up my woo-woo and I broke their finger.”

KAREN O: [Laughs] So you’re lucid up there?

PEACHES: I’m very lucid. I can’t drink a lot before shows. I can probably have one shot, because I get really out of breath.

KAREN O: And you have like 20 costume changes. The shit you wear looks so uncomfortable, hot, hairy. Do you have a high threshold for pain or do you just have that old show business grit where you’re like, “I’ll get through it?”

PEACHES: It is heavy. But I just forget about it.

KAREN O: You’ve got the adrenaline flowing through you.

PEACHES: Adrenaline is a very, very powerful drug for me.

KAREN O: You’ve evolved a lot. It’s like the she beast: a hellhound, hairy-tittied pussy creature.

PEACHES: It’s funny that you say hairy titty because I’m revealing my first-ever hairy titties soon. I’m sick of us shaming ourselves. It’s patriarchy and it’s capitalism and it’s control and it’s trying to not let you be who you need to be. This is what we have. We need to feel comfortable in our own fucking bodies. If you take that away from people, where is their center?

KAREN O: And so the question I have for you, because this is part of the mission, is, how do you drop the shame?

PEACHES: Through my performance, through working through these lyrics with humor and with entertainment as a guise. The deeper meaning underneath is we got to feel comfortable in our bodies and we have to be who we fucking are.

KAREN O: This is a message that’s so important.

PEACHES: And it’s the easiest thing to try and take away. And it’s also like, you can’t uphold a moral compass that doesn’t fit you. That’s why you see men of high power having these weird secret sex things. You have to deal with your own desire and who you really are.

KAREN O: There’s this real jealousy of people who are able to be who they are.

PEACHES: It’s just so easy to distill fear of other people. These binary roles are reinforced but they’re just roles that are being played, they’re not real. Now there’s a lot more vocabulary around it and a lot more openness. There’s also a lot of backlash.

KAREN O: I read this thing about you saying that you relate more to comedians sometimes than fellow artists.

PEACHES: It’s true. I’m really into Sarah Squirm right now. She just put out this new special and it’s so brilliant.

KAREN O: Do the youth need to just trust that revolution should be funny?

PEACHES: The revolution needs to have joy, or you’re not going to sustain it. You have to dance the revolution, you have to enjoy the revolution.

KAREN O: Revolution is a serious business, but there’s a Mark Twain quote that says, “The human race has only one effective weapon and that’s laughter.”

PEACHES: Disarming people is so important. I’ve seen that in my shows, when people are standing there with their arms crossed and they’re just a bit like, “What is this?” And then you say something and they lighten up and their arms go down and I’m like, “Oh shit, they’re in.”

KAREN O: People need to get shaken out of their self-consciousness more than ever. You’re fucking revolutionary, and you have a sense of humor, and I just want the kids to feel that way too. There’s also a significant amount of shedding in your shows where you’ll have layers of costumes on and then you’ll get down to the bare essentials, and there’s a message in that, too.

PEACHES: Yeah. Rocking in my underwear doesn’t really matter.

KAREN O: [Laughs] I haven’t gotten to that point yet. I’m a bit more prude.

PEACHES: You’re doing you and it’s awesome.

KAREN O: But when I saw you it blew my mind because it felt so fucking liberating, so free. Okay, maybe this is the one and a half glasses of wine talking, but I guess it’s odd that it’s still shocking to see female bodies fully empowered.

PEACHES: It’s still a thing. I get comments like, “Come on, you’re almost 60. What are you doing?” It’s like, “Yeah.”

KAREN O: Knowing you as a person outside of the fearless trans-aggressive, shocking aspect of what you do as an artist—you’re low-key, sensitive, and caring. Sometimes it rubs me to see all the press only showing the flashy parts, because at the core of the flex is care.

PEACHES: I care deeply, but I also want people to enjoy themselves in the revolution.

KAREN O: Hell yeah. So because we started with the seed of the peach, I want to ask you, do you have any idea what your gravestone might look like? Will it be a statue, a bust, or nothing at all?

PEACHES: Wow, I haven’t thought about that. I think it might just say, “Older than you, looking so cunt.”

KAREN O: That’s a fucking good inscription.

PEACHES: I don’t think I need a bust or a figure.

KAREN O: I would appreciate a Peaches bust.

PEACHES: A bust with six boobs.

KAREN O: [Laughs]

PEACHES: A bust, bust, bust, bust, bust, bust.

KAREN O: Yeah, a sextuple bust, man.

PEACHES: Have you thought about yours? I just see you with a mic and maybe a cape and your mouth is open.

KAREN O: Mic is in my mouth.

PEACHES: [Laughs] Alright. We did it. Take it to the grave

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Hair: Gregor Makris using Bumble and Bumble

Makeup: Janina Zais using Manasi 7 and Anastasia Beverly Hills

Nails: Camilla Inge Volbert

Fashion Assistant: Clara Dimanski

Production Director: Alexandra Weiss 

Photography Producer: Georgia Ford 

On-set Production: Jerome Glock

Production Assistant: Giuseppe Falcidia 

Production Interns: Ha Chu and Isaac James