Catey Shaw’s New Music Is For Bad Bitches Only

While Hurricane Joaquin did his best to brew a hellish rainstorm on the first Friday of October, Catey Shaw raised her own kind of hell inside Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory—the crowded turnout unaffected by the weather. Two days before she took the stage, the pop singer released her latest video for “Walks All Over You,” in which she plays a (real) man-eater with a taste for broken hearts. “The idea of this woman is that she doesn’t actually care about the person at all,” Catey told Inked. “It doesn’t matter if it is a man or woman, if they’re attractive or unattractive. She wants to suck the life out of them and leave them for dead.” Ouch!

The tattooed artist may murder ex-lovers and bake their precious jewels into a cake on film, but on stage she is nothing but a sweet thing. Dressed in a white disco-esque suit (and her band in baby blue blazers), her piercing eyes and innocent charm had the crowd in the palm of her left hand—the right held a glass of whiskey. On her feet were cowgirl booties similar to the boot tattooed on her right wrist (1:58).

“I was really surprised by the reaction to ‘Walks All Over You.’ I didn’t expect so many people to know the words,” she said. The hyper fans, many shouting flirtations like “Why are you so hot?!” and “Catey, I love you!,” set the perfect scene for her next video “Tell Everyone,” which was being shot that night. Catey said, “We recorded [‘Tell Everyone’] with the band members in the studio, so [the video] really called for that live energy.” Fans can expect the single to drop November 13, 2015.

Catey’s new music seems to follow the pattern of breaking hearts and taking names, complete with an ’80s beat. “When I was first starting to get into my own music, I was really into disco.” Now, she and her longtime manager/co-writer Jay Levine are capitalizing on their differences in age and gender to produce music that “really gets people going.” “Tell Everyone” plays on her habit of ending relationships before they get started, “If I want to break up with someone, I know it way before and it takes me forever to get up the guts to do it. By the time I do it, they’re heartbroken and it seems like I’m not.”

Since getting to know Catey over the last several months (remember our Q&A with her back in March?), our latest conversation proved she feels more sure of herself and her music than ever before. “It’s amazing that I’ve only been making music for a little over three years,” she said. “I feel like I finally have found what I want to sound like and who I am.” The platinum in her hair (as opposed to her former pastel locks) plays a role in her confidence, too, “I feel like I don’t need that [hair dye] as much as a safety blanket to make me seem cool or relevant.” She went on to admit though it may seem superficial, “my hair being long and blonde makes me feel like an ’80s rock star.”

Find Catey on stage during CMJ’s Music Marathon this week, kicking off at Pianos on October 13 before playing The Hall on October 14 and then Rockwood Music Hall on October 15.

So she’s a pop singer? Yes. But a pop performer? Not so much. “When you say pop star you think a girl in the middle of the stage with arms spread and one of those wireless microphones and back up dancers and shit,” she said. “I imagine more of a rock star running around stage like Robert Plant and whipping my hair around.” Should you attend one of her shows (a must), expect the latter.