Kim Petras for The FADER by Ethan Holland
“There was a building there / And it was Brutalist.”
Kim Petras’s standout song “Brutalist” from her new album Detour has captured the ears and hearts of the music community. The nightfeelings and Porches-produced track tells the story of Petras and her architect father mourning a demolished brutalist building that they used to pass while driving to Petras’s appointments for her gender-affirming care.
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A sharp-eyed commenter under The FADER's YouTube interview with Petras identified the building. “Holy shit, I actually know which brutalist building she was talking about in Hamburg. I lived right next to it,” @alphajuliet135 commented on May 30. Another commenter, @marvelous4352, chimed in, noting it as the “‘"post-pyramide hamburg.’” A representative from Petras’s team confirmed to The FADER that the Post-Pyramide in Hamburg is the building that inspired the song.
On “Brutalist,” the building, which was demolished to make way for apartment buildings, became a complex and potent lyrical metaphor for loss and transformation, an idea that Petras ties to her own trans identity. Petras spoke about the song and her journey with gender affirming care in a wide-ranging interview with The FADER.
According to sosbrutalism.org, the “Post-Pyramide” was built in the 1970s in the “City Nord” of Hamburg, between the city’s airport and center. It was designed by architects Gerhard Weber and Georg Küttinger and was made to be the city’s post office facility. According to the Hamburg Monument Association, the building was one of the few examples of brutalist architecture in Hamburg. It was demolished in 2018 and turned into apartment buildings.
Hamburg's Post-Pyramide in 2018, mid-demolishment.
Wikipedia Commons
Post-Pyramide in 2022, replaced by apartment buildings.
Screenshot from Google Maps
“I have people saying I ruined my body and I ruined my life. They don’t know me at all. They don’t know my history,” she told The FADER of the song. “I felt like my dad and I were guilty [of that with the apartment]."
Watch the music video for "Brutalist" below and revisit our full interview with Petras.
