Frankie Grande - Hotel Rock Bottom

Frankie Grande’s major-label debut arrives under a blitz of rainbow-colored strobe lights, echoing with dusty, forgotten 2000s club beats — and most importantly, it reeks. Not metaphorically — this thing sweats. Profusely.

It's hard to ignore Frankie Grande's TikTok or Twitter presence — especially when you're immersed in modern pop culture. Ariana’s ever-present hype man, social media meme relic, and nightlife enthusiast has officially decided to go full-throttle: Hotel Rock Bottom is a 15-track assault that tries to turn camp into catharsis. Spoiler: it doesn’t.

What you get instead is a garish collection of budget euro-pop, dressed up in the drag of “classic club bangers.” Grande’s voice throughout is an uncanny, animated-villain snarl — imagine if a Disney antagonist tied you to a disco ball and threatened to dunk you in a vat of boiling glitter. Occasionally, that vocal morphs into an Auto-Tuned Siri on ketamine. The effect? Full uncanny valley.

Take “Messy”, for example — a hilariously cheap homage to ballroom anthems of yore. It plays like a canned demo for a B-tier queer drama with a 2/10 rating on IMDb. And yet, somehow, “Messy” still made the cut for Hotel Rock Bottom — presumably because no show would ever actually license it. Immediately after comes “Sex Shop”, an easy front-runner for worst song of the year. It’s the evil twin of Kim Petras’s already nauseating Slut Pop track “XXX” — the kind of tasteless, sticky pop that feels like someone else's chewed-up gum stuck to the bottom of your boot.

That’s hardly the only time Hotel Rock Bottom leaves you wanting a shower. From odes to poppers to love songs about sex toys, Grande glorifies a caricature of queer culture that most of the community is trying to move past. And with Frankie as its ringmaster, it’s hard to argue for any form of validation. Despite the nonstop references to sex, this record might be the least sexy thing. Grande boasts with the bravado of someone convinced the entire world wants to sleep with him — in reality, it seems the only person who does is Frankie Grande.

There’s also the theory that this album is Grande’s attempt to shed the meme label and be taken seriously as an artist. If so, Hotel Rock Bottom only cements him further in stereotype quicksand. “Boys”, his try-hard take on Troye Sivan’s now-iconic “Rush”, is yet another track that’s basically one long ode to threesomes. Anyone remotely familiar with Frankie’s infamous “throuple era” and Madonna’s commentary on it won’t be surprised — but you’ll still probably cringe.

And then there’s “Glitter Jesus”, where Grande inexplicably attempts techno. On paper, it might’ve seemed like a good idea. In practice, it’s another example of an execution failing concept. Somehow, the ballads (or whatever’s trying to be ballads) are even worse than the club tracks. The title track “Hotel Rock Bottom” wants to be a moment of raw vulnerability — instead, it sounds like someone trying to cry through a dozen layers of vocal filters. It would be funny, if it weren’t so exhausting. To be fair, it’s not just his voice: the entire album is horribly mixed.

There are glimmers, though. “Let Me Live” is one of the only semi-passable songs here — decent production, tolerable songwriting, and a sense that someone involved in its creation actually listens to music. Still, even at just 40 minutes, the album feels bloated. Halfway through this glowstick-drenched ego trip, you’re praying for the lights to come on.

To be clear: the reason this isn’t a flat zero is because, for all its flaws, Hotel Rock Bottom does feel earnest. As grotesque and misguided as it is, there’s a real attempt to showcase Grande not just as an artist, but as a person. Unfortunately, there’s one question this record never manages to answer: in 2025 — or, honestly, any year — who is a Frankie Grande album actually for, besides Frankie Grande?

In the end, Hotel Rock Bottom is the musical equivalent of that sweaty guy in a crop top who tries to grind on you at the club — in the worst case, he grabs your ass. It’s that dingy motel off the freeway that no one wants to stay in, the kind you’d rather pay double to avoid. It’s vulgar, sticky, and deeply unappealing. But, credit where it’s due: Frankie Grande never pretends to be anyone but himself. And at least you get exactly what you expect.

1.5/10