Phyoe Thaung
Sep 17, 2026
The Phoenix stop brought Slayyyter’s new era into a packed club setting, with a live band, multiple wardrobe changes, and a set that rarely slowed down.
Slayyyter brought the Worst Girl in the World Tour to The Van Buren in Phoenix on September 14, turning the downtown venue into a loud introduction to the next phase of her live show.
The tour arrives behind Worst Girl in America, a record that has pushed Slayyyter further into rock-influenced territory without completely leaving behind the electronic pop that has followed her throughout her career. In Phoenix, that shift was especially noticeable onstage. Backed by a live band, she built much of the night around heavier instrumentation and a performance that kept her moving across the stage from the opening stretch through the encore.
Photo courtesy of Kait Muro
There wasn't much downtime once the set started. Slayyyter moved between songs quickly, stopping primarily for wardrobe changes that divided the show into separate acts. Even those transitions kept the room moving, with the band and lighting carrying the show while she was briefly offstage.
That pace worked particularly well inside The Van Buren. The room kept Slayyyter close to the audience, and she spent much of the night working the front of the stage as fans jumped and sang back lyrics from both the new record and earlier releases.
The performance wasn't completely polished, and Slayyyter didn't pretend otherwise. When pieces of her wardrobe came loose, she stopped to fix them rather than ignoring the problem. She acknowledged occasional monitor and vocal issues, and at one point restarted a song after noticing an issue in the crowd. Those moments became part of the show rather than interruptions to it.
“brand new chanel$” brought plenty of phones into the air during the encore, but the reaction wasn't limited to the song that has become one of the most recognizable releases from this era. “Beat Up Chanel$” followed with an equally strong response, while “DANCE …,” the “Crank” songs and unreleased track “I think he’s got a girl” were already familiar enough to have much of the room singing along.
Photo courtesy of Kait Muro
That consistency defined the set. Rather than building toward one or two obvious peaks, Slayyyter kept nearly the entire performance moving at the same fast pace. There were few slower moments to separate the bigger songs, making the show feel closer to one continuous run than a traditional pop set built around dramatic rises and falls.
The live band played a major role in that approach. Songs that already carry sharp electronic production on record landed differently with live instrumentation underneath them, bringing more weight to the guitars and percussion and occasionally pushing the performance closer to a rock show than a conventional pop concert.
Slayyyter matched that sound physically. She rarely stayed in one place for long, moving across the stage, dancing between verses and leaning further into vocal runs that aren't as prominent on the recorded versions. The wardrobe changes and lighting gave each portion of the show a slightly different look, but her performance remained the center of the production.
What stood out most was how little Slayyyter tried to hide the mechanics of putting on the show. There were costume adjustments, technical moments and spontaneous exchanges with the audience throughout the night. Instead of breaking the momentum, they made the performance feel specific to that room and that night.
By the time “Beat Up Chanel$” arrived in the encore, there wasn't much separation between the response to Slayyyter's newest material and the songs longtime listeners came wanting to hear. At The Van Buren, the Worst Girl in the World Tour moved fast, got messy when it needed to and left very little of the room standing still.