Pop and hardcore rarely occupy the same space without feeling like an intentional novelty, yet Slayyyter has spent recent months treating the boundary between heavy rock and electronic pop as nonexistent. On Monday, September 21, she took that concept directly to the stage at The Eastern in Atlanta, giving her studio rework of Turnstile's track Birds its live debut.
The placement within the setlist revealed how much weight she places on the arrangement. Slayyyter positioned the cover at the very end of her main set on the current Wor$t Girl In The World tour. She played the track immediately after Brittany Murphy, turning the outside material into the closing anchor of the set before leaving the stage. When she returned for the encore, she finished the night with Brand New Chanel$ and Beat Up Chanel$. Putting a cover right before the encore was a deliberate choice, letting another band's composition handle the emotional crescendo usually reserved for an artist's own familiar singles.
The original recording appeared on Turnstile's fourth studio album, the 2025 release Never Enough. That record went on to win Best Rock Album at the 2026 Grammy Awards, while Birds picked up the trophy for Best Metal Performance. Turnstile built the track around a direct hardcore attack, but Slayyyter stripped away that guitar foundation in favor of glossy synths and maximalist electronic rhythms, pulling the song straight into the club focused sound of her recent catalog. Bringing that studio experiment into a concert setting allowed her to demonstrate how fully she has absorbed the track into her regular live repertoire.
Her recorded version arrived on August 28 as part of Never Enough: Versions, a 22 track companion project released by the Baltimore band. Turnstile gathered an expansive group of contributors to reinterpret the album, including Elton John, Hayley Williams, Blood Orange, A. G. Cook, Faye Webster, Four Tet, Oklou, Floating Points, Nourished By Time, Alex G, Julien Baker, and Mustafa. The group even commissioned two completely opposite treatments of Birds, placing Slayyyter's electronic take alongside a death metal version from Dying Fetus, while Panda Bear contributed a distinct take on Magic Man.
Bringing the song to the stage aligns with an active year of performance and stylistic expansion for Slayyyter. Her third studio record, Wor$t Girl In America, came out in March, relying on brash pop melodies and late 2000s indie sleaze textures. In the months since, she has tested her voice against heavier material. Last month, she performed Hole's grunge standard Violet for the Like A Version program, earning public praise from Courtney Love, who described the rendition as a delight and encouraged her to keep wiping the floors with everyone. Weeks later, she carried a raspy, rock inflected vocal delivery to the stage at Reading Festival, tying that abrasive tone to her club production.
The Atlanta show will not be her only chance to present Turnstile material in a live setting this season. Slayyyter and Turnstile are scheduled to share a bill on October 6 at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, where Slayyyter and Die Spitz will open on the Never Enough Tour Pt. 2. Playing the arrangement at The Eastern gave her a chance to refine the song in front of her own audience before finding out how an electronic pop interpretation of Birds translates in front of Turnstile's core fanbase.
