Bimbocore, Next Level: Scene Queen On Battling Elitism in Metal
Wednesday, 23 July 2025
Written by Jack Butler-Terry
Photo credit: Nikki Haney
If you’ve existed anywhere near the worlds of rock and metal over the past few years, you’ve most likely come across the name Scene Queen. The pink-clad provocateur has been loudly making a name for herself with a raucous, sexually-charged hybrid of rap-metal and bubblegum pop that she affectionately calls ‘bimbocore’.
Behind the glitter-coated veneer is New York songwriter Hannah Collins, who has found a way to discuss serious issues such as sexual abuse, substance addiction and misogyny in the most tongue in cheek way imaginable. Her debut album ‘Hot Singles In Your Area’, released last summer by Hopeless Records, gleefully dialled up Scene Queen’s gatekeeper-baiting MySpace/The Simple Life aesthetic, with Metal Hammer calling it “the best vulgar display of power you’ll hear all year.”
“Initially, I made the whole bimbocore thing to be the antithesis of anything that an elitist in metal wants of me,” Collins says. “The fact that they get madder and madder every single time that I do something goofier makes you wanna do it more.”
“I genuinely laugh at the comments that are like, “This isn’t real metal!” she continues. “I’m calling things metal because they have metal riffs, and to say that my music is straight up pop would be an outright lie. Actually, the last single I dropped before the album [Stuck, featuring 6arelyhuman] was the first time that I'd ever gotten onto pop playlists. But the reaction from fans has been great and, honestly, I was really excited to see that people finally understood what I was going for with everything leading up to this point.”
But, that said, being Scene Queen can be gruelling. “This weird narrative has been spun about me where I apparently think that anyone that doesn't like my music is a misogynist,” Collins explains. “That’s never been the case. My main issue is that when people dislike my music, they go on an entire college thesis rampage. Every time, I get some sort of comment like, ‘Why are we taking this girl seriously when we should take these other women seriously?’
“But I’ve never seen anyone say, ‘Bring Me The Horizon is making it, and therefore Bad Omens can’t make it’. It’s not just me — every girl I know who’s a pop punk vocalist gets that comparison of Hayley Williams. I just think a lot of hate that gets directed towards me is deeply rooted in misogyny, whether people realise it or not.”
It’s a fascinating experience to speak with Collins, because it very quickly becomes clear just how much of a character Scene Queen is. On stage and in her music, she’s always on the move and in your face, but as Hannah, that couldn’t be further from the truth. “Becoming Scene Queen and diving into this super exaggerated aesthetic has given me the ability to turn it on in the most insane way,” she says.
“Once my intro music comes on, I’m like, ‘Okay, it’s Scene Queen time.’ But, pre-show, I have to play the most feral early 2000s party music to pick myself up. We’re playing Sean Paul, we’re playing Ying Yang Twins, that's all I bump before I go on. I also have to do practice twerks before I go on stage because I’ve been in a situation where I can’t move my hips, and I look like that meme of Tina from Bob’s Burgers.”
Just three years on from her debut EP, Collins has cultivated a dedicated and loyal fanbase, using platforms like TikTok to spread her music as far as possible. Last year she accompanied her album with a UK and Europe tour with alt-pop stalwarts PVRIS and was a rotating headliner on the Summer School tour of the USA, also playing the fabled Download Festival while donating her fees to help the people of Palestine. But all of that work comes at a personal cost.
Collins lives with Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (or PoTS) and ADHD. “In 2023, I was sick for the entirety of my headline tour,” she recalls. “I came to the UK in October and got sick the day I landed and then you don’t really sleep on tours so for the last five shows I was sick. Then I came back to the US for two weeks, went to LA and caught some sort of virus, and then was sick until three weeks after the tour had ended and into Christmas. It was just never ending.”
“The sad adjustment is that people will go the entire tour thinking I don’t like them, because I will not leave my bus,” she continues. “I am in there the entire time trying to sleep. I just have to prioritise rest. I don’t drink at all on tour, I eat very specific things to maintain my health, I have a very specific workout regimen. Everything I do is based on prioritising my health, because with PoTS I’m more prone to exhaustion, which then makes my immune system terrible. All day, every day, I’m worrying about my health, which is not the most ideal situation when you’re in the most beautiful places on Earth, and I’m just stuck sleeping.”
But Collins keeps finding a way. The next chapter in her story arrived with the disco-inflected L-Shaped Couch back in June, while her current US shows will segue into a European run that kicks off in September with massive dates at Glasgow’s Barrowland, Manchester’s O2 Ritz and the O2 Forum in London’s Kentish Town. There will be plenty of opportunities to join a “twerkle pit”. “I just want my shows to feel like parties,” Collins says, and there’s little chance of them being anything else.
Scene Queen Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Thu September 04 2025 - GLASGOW Barrowland
Fri September 05 2025 - MANCHESTER O2 Ritz
Sat September 06 2025 - LONDON O2 Forum Kentish Town
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