How Peach PRC Turned An ‘Anti-Worship’ Viral Hit Into A Coming Out Moment (2024)

When Shaylee Curnow — better known to her fans as Peach PRC — set out to record her latest single, the Australian TikTok star had a specific vision in mind: a sarcastic, flippant track making fun of God.

“It was really just this tongue-in-cheek thing I wanted to make, there wasn’t anything too serious about the actual track,” Curnow tellsBillboard of the song. “I didn’t tell my label or anything. I just called my producer [Liam Quinn] and was like, ‘When are you free? I’m coming in.'”

Weeks later, that song, aptly titled “God Is A Freak,” has officially been released via Republic Records. Throughout the seemingly sunny pop song, Curnow pokes and prods at the many inconsistencies she’s noticed in the way a divine being treats human sexual desire while tragedies take place around the world. When there is war, famine and people dying of deadly diseases, “why’s he watching me getting railed on the couch/ Staying pure for a wedding?” she ponders. “He’s got f—ed up priorities.”

For fans of Curnow’s TikTok, though, the song’s blunt chorus may already be stuck in their heads. Prior to the full track’s release, the singer shared a snippet of the song alongside a video of her lip-syncing along. “An anti-worship song for my religious trauma girlies,” she wrote in her cheeky caption.

As it turns out, the decision to release a portion of her song to the public wasn’t one that Curnow made with her label, Republic Records — in fact, up until her TikTok was released, Republic didn’t know that the song existed. “I just posted it straight to TikTok, because I thought there was no way that my label is going to be fine with this,'” she says, referring to the song’s controversial lyrics. “So, I figured it would just make a good TikTok song that I could post on my own.”

Once the snippet was out on her TikTok, Curnow texted Brett Alperowitz, executive vice president of A&R at Republic, asking him a simple question: “I said, ‘I have a song to show you, but I need to know if you’re religious first.'” Once she was given the all clear, Curnow sent “God Is A Freak” over, and was delighted at the response she got back from him. “As it turns out, I was wrong — they were really happy with it,” she says with a laugh. “He got back to me pretty quickly and said, ‘We want to put this out.’ After that, it just became about how quickly we could do it.”

This wasn’t Curnow’s first experience with surprising success thanks to TikTok — back in 2020, the singer posted a short clip of her singing an acoustic song about an ex-boyfriend on TikTok. He’d been ringing her phone off the hook, so she decided to write one final kiss-off to him, roasting his style, his career and his personality, before now-famously singing, “F— off, stop calling me, Josh.” The song, “Josh,” went on to catch the attention of Republic Records in the U.S. and Island Records in Australia — within six months of posting her TikTok, Curnow had signed a joint deal with the two labels and unveiled a full pop version of the song as her debut single.

“It’s still all very crazy to me,” she says, reflecting on the last two years. “The songs I had put out were literally done with an ex of mine who was a producer, and I got him to help me with putting together my music. I kind of started releasing everything on TikTok, and then s–t just went up from there.

Even with her experience in rapid success, Curnow says that the instant attention given to “God Is A Freak” still blows her away — in the month since she “leaked” her chorus, her original video has received over 2 million views and 400,000 likes, while the sound has been used over 7,000 times by other app users. Even pop mega-producer Finneas recognized the potential of her song, commenting on one of her videos, “This song is so so so good.”

“When he commented that I was over the moon,” Curnow says, grinning. “It definitely made me feel better about everything, especially when there’s some people being like ‘this sucks,’ it’s like, ‘Well, Finneas said he likes the song.'”

One part of the song’s viral success that Curnow did not expect was a series of extremely moving videos that would go on to be posted using her sound, in which LGBTQ individuals spoke candidly about how they had been made to feel unworthy or less-than by Christian churches around the world. Users quickly began taking the second part of the song’s chorus, in which she sings, “What’s the fixation/ On hating the way he creates/ So why would I spend my eternity/ With God when he’s a freak,” and using it as a means of translating their own trauma.

“It was meant to be this silly song making fun of the ridiculous concept that it is to me. But to see so many people share these vulnerable stories, talk about their religious trauma and the way they’ve overcome — that has been so moving,” she says. “There was one video that made me cry the other day … someone talked about being rejected for being trans, and how they sold their purity ring to pay for testosterone. It was so powerful.”

Curnow decided that she would give that vulnerability a try, too. In a TikTok of her own, the singer shared with her fans that she identifies as a lesbian, joking later on her Instagram that “the closet was made of glass.”

@peachprcthe people on my private account already know this but pls be nice 💖 any negative comments will be deleted

♬ god is a freak demo – Peach PRC

Curnow says that she spent the last few years identifying as bisexual, until she had a few tough conversations with herself about identity. When she saw the massive response her song was having with her LGBTQ fans, Curnow decided that there was no better time to tell the people about herself. “Eventually, it just got to a point where I said, ‘I need to stop trying to swerve around this and accept it for what it is,'” she says. “[‘God Is A Freak’] became a thing where it was like, ‘Okay, this seems like a good time for me to also drop a line.'”

In the weeks since her coming out, despite having to shut down some hom*ophobic and transphobic comments on her Instagram, Curnow says she’s experienced overwhelming positivity. “A huge amount of my audience is already queer, and they were like, ‘I thought you were already out?'” she says with a laugh. Now, she hopes that her coming out, along with the rebellious message of “God Is A Freak,” helps other queer folks looking for the same kind of validation she’s received.

“Take what you can from the song, take what you can from me sharing my truth,” she says with a smile. “I hope other people do the same if that’s something that they find healing and liberating.”