KIM DAVID SMITH new album “MOSTLY MARLENE” with guests CHARLES BUSCH, JOEY ARIAS and more

KIM DAVID SMITH, the provocative international singer and actor, will release the new album Mostly Marlene in digital and streaming platforms on Friday, March 21. The entrancing and wryly humorous entertainer – hailed as “slyly subversive” by The Wall Street Journal, “a male Marlene Dietrich” by The New York Times, and the “David Bowie of cabaret” by BroadwayWorld – was nominated for the Helpmann Award, Australia’s highest honor for the performing arts. 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 luminaryJoey 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 art form 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 show tune 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.”

Mostly Marlene debuted at Club Cumming in New York City’s East Village and toured to the 2021 Adelaide Cabaret Festival, and the Post Office Café in Provincetown, while frequently returning to New York at Club Cumming (2021-2023), Pangea, and Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie. 

KIM DAVID SMITH, hailing from Australia, is a Helpmann Award-nominated actor and cabaret artist. His debut live album Live at Joe’s Pub received a 2022 Bistro Award, and is available online and on CD.

Smith starred in the title role of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé at the Provincetown Theater in 2017 and he portrayed the Emcee in Hunter Foster’s production of Cabaret at the Cape Playhouse in 2016. Kim participated in Carnegie Hall’s 2024 season-long programme “Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Edge of a Precipice,” with a musical tour through Weimar-era works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and served as emcee and principal vocalist for Death of Classical’s “Tiergarten,” in a co-production with Carnegie Hall.

Kim’s 1930s-inspired holiday offering, “A Wery Weimar Christmas,” premiered at Club Cumming, streamed via Club Cumming Productions during the pandemic, and returns annually to Club Cumming for in-person Yuletide performances, with guest appearances by Bright Light Bright Light, Boy Radio, Sidney Myer, KT Sullivan, David LaMarr, Alexis Michelle, Boy Radio, and Natalie Joy Johnson, among many others.

“Kim Sings Kylie” – Smith’s evergreen, ever-transmogrifying musical salute to perennial pop goddess Kylie Minogue – serves as an intimately fabulous cabaret celebration of Kylie’s gargantuan hits and glittering deep-cuts alike. Since 2018, “Kim Sings Kylie” has been performed at the inaugural Sydney Cabaret Festival, The Bard Fischer Center’s Spiegeltent, and the Provincetown Post Office Cabaret. 

Smith’s “Morphium Kabarett,” conjuring the glitter, doom, and decadence of 1920s Berlin, toured Australia, earning a 2015 Helpmann Award nomination for Best Cabaret Performer, while also enjoying Stateside performances at Joe’s Pub, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Café Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie. The show enjoyed a six-month residency at Pangea, which boasted guest artists, including Joey Arias, Ali McGregor, Anthony Roth Costanzo, and Gay Marshall.

In 2009 Smith was presented with a Bistro Award (honored alongside Liza Minnelli and Charles Aznavour), and in 2023 received the Singnasium Trailblazer Award. His electro-pop albums Nova and Supernova are available online.

“KIM DAVID SMITH – MOSTLY MARLENE” TRACK LIST

1)Black Market — Friedrich Hollaender

2)Ich Bin die Fesche Lola — Friedrich Hollaender

3)Band Intro (patter)

4)In Your Eyes / Slow — Kylie Minogue, Richard Stannard, Julian Gallagher, and Ash Howes

5)Jonny, wenn du Geburtstag hast? — Friedrich Hollaender (with elements of Erotica — Madonna Ciccone, Shep Pettibone, Anthony Shimkin)

6)Padam Padam (French translation by Gay Marshall) — Ina Wroldsen with British producer Lostboy

7)You’re the Cream in My Coffee (Sidney Myer) — Ray Henderson, Buddy G. DeSylva, Lew Brown

8)Look Me Over Closely — Terry Gilkyson

9) Queer B(icon) (patter)

10)The Man’s in the Navy — Frank Loesser, Friedrich Hollaender

11) Judy Garland (patter)

12)The Boys in the Back Room — Frank Loesser, Friedrich Hollaender

13)Lili Marlene — Norbert Schultze

14)Cabaret —John Kander, Fred Ebb

15)All the Lovers (with Bright Light Bright Light)— James Eliot, Jemima Stilwell 

16)Falling in Love Again — Friedrich Hollaender

17)Just a Gigolo — adapted by Irving Caesar from composer Leonello Casucci’s 1928 tango “Schoner Gigoli”

18)Nature Boy (with Ali McGreggor) — Eden Ahbez

19)Illusions (with Charles Busch)— Friedrich Hollaender

20) A Little Yearning (with Linda Randall)— Friedrich Hollaender

21)Black Market (with Joey Arias)— Friedrich Hollaender