Kim David Smith New Album MOSTLY MARLENE to be Released in March

Kim David Smith will release the new album Mostly Marlene in digital and streaming platforms on Friday, March 21. The entrancing and wryly humorous entertainer was nominated for the Helpmann Award, Australia’s highest honor for the performing arts. Smith will celebrate the album’s release with a special New York concert at Joe’s Pubon Friday, March 21 at 9:30 PM.

Tickets are available HERE. Customers who pre-order the digital album will immediately receive a download of the first single, a powerful German-language version of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s “Cabaret.” Pre-order the album on Apple Music HERE. 

Mostly Marlene, recorded live at the New York hotspot Joe’s Pub, features guest vocalists: pop wunderkind Bright Light Bright Light and New York cabaret legend Sidney Myer. In addition to the concert, the 21-track album also features bonus studio duets with Tony-nominated playwright and performer Charles Busch, downtown luminary Joey Arias, Australian opera star Ali McGregor, and Smith’s own darling mother Linda Randall. The album and upcoming concert feature music director Tracy Stark on piano, in addition to Matt Podd on accordion, Skip Ward on bass, and David Silliman on drums.

The recording celebrates the music associated with Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992), the German/American actress, singer, fashion icon, and provocateur. With a focus on Marlene’s collaborations with Weimar-era composer Friedrich Hollaender, the program sees Smith’s queer mega-muses – Minnelli, Minogue, Madonna, and more – collide with Dietrich’s reimagined repertoire in luxurious musical rearrangements, traveling from Weimar Berlin, to Hollywood, through to the battlefields of Europe, and beyond. 

Smith says: “Mostly Marlene is a behemoth of joyous gay sensibilities; Minnelli, Minogue, and of course, Marlene, are manifested not only in the idolatry practice of queer worship (arguably an artform in and of itself), but also as a musical tableau against which I exist in my gayest form: as an internationally fame-ish cabaret nuisance. Releasing this record in 2025 feels akin to an act of protest, in fact, I declare it as such: wreathing myself in the music of one of the world’s most celebrated bisexuals, I pronounce myself QUEER with every whispered aside, and every belted showtune alike, and in the listening of Mostly Marlene, I invite my audience to celebrate queer existence as resistance.” 

The album features selections performed by Dietrich in her iconic film career such as “Falling in Love Again” (The Blue Angel, 1930), “The Boys in the Back Room” (Destry Rides Again, 1939), “Black Market” (A Foreign Affair, 1948), and “Just a Gigolo” (Just a Gigolo, 1978), in addition to songs she performed in concert and recorded in the studio. The album also includes Smith’s performance of Kylie Minogue’s “Padam Padam” – in an original French translation by cabarettist Gay Marshall – and his barn-storming all-German rendition of Kander & Ebb’s “Cabaret.”