Kristine W talks judging the Drag Race musical and her smooth new single

27 Min Read
Kristine W
Photo by Korby Banner

A galaxy of iconic performers has graced the judges’ panel on RuPaul’s Drag Race, including Christina Aguliera, Lady Gaga, Lizzo and Ariana Grande. The tradition of a star-studded season continued on All Stars season 9 when legendary performer Kristine W joined Mama Ru, Michelle Visage and TS Madison to judge the “Rosemarie’s Baby Shower” Rusical last week.

Kristine W, named the 8th Greatest Dance Artist of All Time by Billboard Magazine, began her musical journey singing in jazz choirs and talent shows in her home state of Washington. She won numerous beauty pageant titles, including Miss Tri-Cities and Miss Washington and placed first in the talent competition at the Miss America pageant. She followed her dreams and moved to Las Vegas, where she found success headlining her own show at the Las Vegas Hilton, winning several Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year awards and being officially sanctioned as the entertainer who performed more live shows at the Las Vegas Hilton than any other performer in its history, including Elvis. The award led to June 28th being officially sanctioned Kristine W Day in the state of Nevada.

Kristine began recording pop, R&B and dance tracks in the nineties.  “Feel What You Want” was her first single to reach #1 on Billboard in 1994.  Since then, she has had a steady flow of chart toppers. “Stars,” from her 2019 album, Issues Episode 1: Love and Lies was her 17th Billboard #1.  She now ties Mariah Carey for the sixth-most number ones since the chart’s August 28, 1976, inception. Her song “Lovin’ You” was featured in the TV series Queer as Folk, her song “Do You Really Want Me” was featured in Roadhouse and “EZ Come EZ Go” was featured in the Demi Moore movie Indecent Proposal.

In addition to lighting up dance floors all over the world with her electric music and sultry voice, Kristine is also an outspoken supporter of LGBT rights, frequently performing at pride rallies and charity events for pro-LGBT organizations throughout the U.S.  She is currently lighting up dance floors once again with her latest single, a reimagining of the Sade classic, “Smooth Operator”. The soulful pop groove is the third release from Kristine’s soon-to-be-released album and pays homage to one of her favorite artists. “I have been performing Sade since I put my first band together in college,” she explains. The song was a staple in her Vegas show, where she would perform medleys of her favorite artists like Donna Summer, Prince, and Sade.

We had the chance to chat with Kristine W about her experience on Drag Race, her career and her new music in our exclusive interview.

Kristine W Smooth Operator

It was great to see you on Drag Race as one of the judges, and especially for the Rusical episode. What was that experience like for you?

It was really wonderful because I’ve been friends with everybody there, you know, Randy and Fenton and Ru. I used to be signed to World of Wonder back in the day when they did more musical artists and they kind of transitioned into doing television, so it’s kind of like a family reunion, really it was.

You don’t know who’s going to be on the show. They don’t tell you anything. That’s the whole thing. You just go in there, the lights go on, the Rusical starts happening and you’re just like, whoa. And you know, you can’t really identify who anybody is because there’s so much makeup and the costuming.

I did shows at gay clubs all the time with tons of drag queen performers. And I’ve been doing it for a long time, 25, 30 years, really. So, I’m used to them reinventing their looks. I was trying to figure out who is who, do I know these queens? Boy, they look awfully familiar. So, it was just super fun. And we finally found out via these little computer things, who the people were and it was just really cool. It was great. Before they started filming, I was hearing from the makeup artists and different people that were in my trailer just how hard they were working, how hard they’d been working on this Rusical and they’d never seen that kind of commitment. That cast wanted to make it the best Rusical that had ever been so far and I think they accomplished that as a team, it’s so impressive.

Honestly, I was speechless. And I was like, how do you even judge this? I would pay to see this on Broadway for sure. I mean, Michelle and I were talking about that. I would pay to see this. I would bring my friends. I’d buy tickets for my friends. It was so fun, uplifting and unique and creative. The writers were just so good and everybody brought their A game and I was just thinking, boy, for me to see this episode and be a part of this…what an honor. 

I know you’ve seen drag queens perform your songs before, but what was it like seeing that lip sync for your life to one of your songs?

That was incredible. We had talked about possibly different songs of mine being used and I thought, oh, if they use my song, it’s going to be “Lovin’ You” because a fellow, David, had contacted me from Paramount Plus and had said, “If we use one of your songs for the lip sync for your life, it’ll probably be “Lovin’ You” – are you okay to sign off on this?” And I said, yeah, and you can use my master, you know, I own the masters to that, so feel free to use the master of the because I rerecorded the song, so I was just kind of ready. There’s no guarantee, but when they came blasting through the curtains to “Love Come Home”, you could have knocked me over with a feather. To be honest, it was just incredible.

I was so excited it was that particular version by Subgroover who’s a producer I worked with in Holland and he’s such a neat guy. It was just quite a moment there. It just made my heart so happy.  It’s like a full circle moment. It was like I was coming home to hang and to be on the show.

People had been asking me for years, “Why aren’t you a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race?” And I said, well, that’s not really my choice. That’s their show. They choose they choose them for the different reasons that they have and I totally understand that. I respect that you know, it’s their show – but this was just like a wonderful family reunion and “Love Come Home” just completed it, this was the icing on the cake. It’s wonderful.

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I saw some clips online of you at the viewing party with Shannel at Gipsy. Now, I know we’re not supposed to play favorites or anything, but who would you want to see win? because I’m kind of rooting for Shannel myself.

You know, I really do love Bryan. Bryan is such a great person and Shangela was there too, which was wonderful. I mean, it’s tough for me because I know so many of [the queens]. I love Nina West. I love so many of them. It’s really tough because they’re all so good. I mean, they already are stars, but I can see them just doing so many things in the future too, you know, really big things and I just, I believe in that, that whole crew that there’s just been so many talented people come out of Drag Race.  It’s wonderful.

Now you have a new single out that I’m borderline obsessed with – your cover of “Smooth Operator” by Sade. How did you select that song to do a cover of?

Well, when my son graduated from high school we had a big party at my place. We invited the whole senior class and the junior class and whoever they wanted to drag in there. There were easily probably 150 people there. I hired a DJ, a friend of mine that was here in Las Vegas, and a lot of the kids came over to help us set up tables and chairs, there was a lot to do. The DJ was sound checking the system and he was playing “Smooth Operator” because he wanted it nice and calm, you know, because it was in the afternoon and he didn’t want to upset the neighbors.

So, he was playing it and I was singing along to it and I was just watching everybody there, you know, the kids, and they didn’t seem to know what was happening. And I said, don’t you guys love Sade, isn’t Sade great? And their reply was, “Oh, is this your song, ‘Sade’?” They didn’t have a clue. I said, you know who Sade is? And I just kept going through the crew because I couldn’t believe that none of them knew who Sade was. You know, I was like. Do you know who Sade is? Do you know this artist?  It’s taboo. I mean they were completely clueless. And then I thought, wow, this is how the artist’s art gets lost, the generations don’t get exposed to it. And they have no idea who these great artists are.

I always try to celebrate the artists that I love so much. I’m obsessed with Donna Summer. She changed my life, you know…and just different artists, like Patti LaBelle.  She’s sang “Land of the Living”. I got to sing on her Classic Moments album. We did actually a duet of that song of mine. I’m just trying to pay homage if I can. And so, I thought, you I’m definitely going to redo “Smooth Operator” as a dance song, because it’ll be hilarious that, in a couple of years, they’re going to be in Hakkasan and all these dance clubs all over the planet, all these young people, the same ones that said they’d had no idea who she was, will be dancing to house remixes, because all those kids love house music.

It’s fun and now it came to fruition. I see my son, he’s out there telling me, “Oh, I was at this club and we requested “Smooth Operator” and then they played the Block & Crown UK version.” To them, it’s all brand new.  So, it’s kind of funny, you know, it’s great, but it makes my heart happy.

I mean, you made it your own – and the video’s great as well. What was the inspiration behind it? 

Well, you know, my son is a hoot. He is the kick in the pants. I had a bunch of different people that I was going to use for the part of the Smooth Operator – and I really don’t do story videos. I just don’t because they’re so time consuming. You have to set so much stuff up, you have to go to different locations, you have to get actors involved. So, I try to do videos where I have my dancers or dancers or more performance videos instead of story videos. This was wild, but I thought about it and I was like, oh my gosh, my son fits it perfectly.

He’s been taking acting classes in Los Angeles and I just thought, you know, he can totally nail it. And then VIP, the actress that plays opposite to him, we call her Diamond because Sade’s album was Diamond Life, she’s my godchild and her mom is Julie Michaels. She’s the actress that was in Fight Club. She was in the original Roadhouse. We’ve been friends for 35 years and she’s a great director. And I told her, I said, you know, I’m in over my head.

I just did the initial Vegas shoot at this mansion hanging over the mountains. It’s gorgeous, but to finish this story, I did a bite off more than I could chew. And then she said, you know, I’ll help you. I’ll direct it and I said, I really want to use Victoria, you know, VIP, because she’s done all the Marvel movies, she knows how to act. It was funny for them because they’ve kind of grown up together so, for [my son] JR, it was just like acting with his sister, you know what I mean? I was like, well, you’ve been taking all these acting classes. Now you’re going to have to use them. But for VIP, it’s just old hat because she’s been in so many movies. She played the Young Medusa in a few of the Marvel movies and she’s been in a lot of TV series and stuff. She’s kind of grown up doing it, but.  He’s been doing acting classes for about a year now, and he lives in Newport Beach. Julie lives in Burbank and my daughter assisted.

My daughter is amazing. Elizabeth, she’s in Huntington Beach. She works in Huntington Beach, so it was just cool. We were all together. And then my friend William from Firefly. He had that big house, that triple story one in Manhattan Beach that was being used to house FX people for the new Ryan Murphy series Grotesquerie. So, they flipped the crew from New York and then we had that house to ourselves, that really cool, big, ginormous house and we filmed the rest of it there. But I’ll tell you what a challenge it was. I had no idea but it ended up being a little mini movie and there’s a lot of work, but it’s really rewarding. It’s cool to bring all my friends and my family together to create a project like this. It was really, really neat.

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You cited Donna Summer, who I am also an enormous fan of as an influence but who are some of your other musical influences?

Patti LaBelle for sure, getting to work with her was a dream come true. Luther Vandross is a big influence on me. Chaka Khan…I think I’ve done every one of her songs in my Vegas show. I had a Chaka Khan medley.  I had a Whitney Houston medley, a Donna Summer medley. Natalie Cole, I loved her. I got to meet her through Patti LaBelle. “Mr. Melody” was one of the first songs that I got to sing in my junior high choir. And then, in high school, I started branching out and doing more of the old classics like Ella Fitzgerald when we would tour with the jazz choir. Jazz is really big in the Northwest, so there are all these jazz choirs in junior high and high school up there. 

How did you make that transition from like doing covers and doing, you know, like Donna Summer and Patti LaBelle into getting into house music?

I had always been into house music and because I was playing the casinos, I could drop a few of my songs into the show list, but I had to be careful because they want mostly covers. I mean, it worked out for me in Indecent Proposal because I was doing a dance song that I wrote called “Easy Come Easy Go” and Adrian Lyne was shooting Indecent Proposal and he heard the song and he was like, “I want that song in my movie,” but that was basically a dance song. He wanted it a little bit more fun, R&B flavored and not so fast.

But I was taking a lot of songs and just making them house, you know, just hits because I had to play popular songs, so I would take them and make them a higher BPM and produce them more like I would if they had dance remixes. We only performed the dance remixes because the show is called “Come See the Music.” We were like a live music video with dancers and props and all this kind of stuff and higher BPM was more energy and that, which was great for the casino. It just kept everybody bumping. 

Kristine W Love Come Home

One thing I wanted to really talk about is your allyship with the LGBTQ community. How did you get involved with the community?

Well, I started a long time ago when it wasn’t very popular to do so. I was always inviting, I was friends with all the drag performers. We had a lot of drag shows in Vegas – more drag shows in the nineties. And now we have RuPaul’s show, but we had way more drag shows here, in the early nineties, boy, oh boy, there were a bunch. And so, all of the performers would come to my show because they could just come and hang out. And we were wearing lots of makeup and we were totally glamorous and they loved watching the show and then we’d all hang out afterwards and talk about wigs and makeup and fishnets. It was just a fun thing to do. And they just they became really close friends of mine and I was really supportive of them and I’d tell the crowd to go see the shows and would promote their shows and we would just promote each other. And some of those, some of those fellows are still my, my friends.

And so, when I had a hit record, “Feel What You Want”, it was exciting because I had test driven all those songs in the gay clubs of London. I wrote and recorded the whole album in London. I left Vegas and was coming back and forth doing my show at the Hilton and then going back to London. I test drove all of those songs from Land of the Living at a gay club called Heaven and I became real close with the drag performers there too. And I don’t know, it just seems like I just have just been really tight with the community for a lifetime.

I think it started with my mom. Her best friend was a gay schoolteacher and he was also the choir director at our Lutheran church. He was never openly gay. I mean, everybody knew he was gay, but nobody ever really talked about it. My grandpa would say, “Oh, you know, he’s light in the loafers” and nobody cared, but then when I started going to grade school, I remember kids would say things like, “your mom’s boyfriend’s a f*g” or something like that. I would start hearing little rumblings like that. And my mom would say, “just tell everybody that he’s my boyfriend because they don’t understand. It’s too small of a town and they don’t understand and we don’t need anything bad to happen to Jim. He needs to keep his job. I learned it from a really early age to serve and protect from my mom, Donna Lee.

My mom was a nightclub singer and a lot of gays went to hear her sing because it was a safe place. It was the Owl’s Nest. It was at the top of the Clover Island Inn and you know, kind of hidden out. People could just be free up there, you know, nobody cared about who was what and what was who, you know, it was just all being there, enjoying the music.

How did you celebrate Pride?

The month was crazy. We kind of had to focus on the single, getting it out and getting the video finished. And I was like the best thing I can do for Pride is just to make sure that we promote the Rusical and the show and then also get the song out, all the mixes, get the video shot, all that kind of stuff.

I kind of wanted to dedicate June into just having some great music out there and just lifting the community up through the music and we actually got it all accomplished. I’m in shock right now. 

What is next for you? With the single, are you planning on touring or anything like that?

Oh yeah, we’ll, we’ll definitely be doing, we’ll be doing that. Right now, I’ve got a few other projects that I’m doing. I’m actually a farmer up in Washington state, up in eastern Washington. So, I’m going up there to check on our crops, and also I’ve got a place up there, a single-family home that I rent.

So, I’ve got other little projects that I do and I try to get those cracking during the summer. We’ve got a new single coming out in September, so that’s going on. I’m trying to utilize summer because the fall is when it’s we’re probably going to do Prides and that kind of stuff and also start doing more club shows and all that. So it’s a lot of other side hustles that I got to get cracking here for the month of July and part of August – and a family reunion too as well.

“Smooth Operator” is available now on all streaming platforms. Keep up with Kristine W on Spotify, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and on her website.


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