“What the Hell” is Russian-convicted felon Anna Sorokin’s new single, a debut made straight from the confines of her house arrest.
According to NBC News, the song — born from a collaboration with TikTok songwriter Brooke Butler and the band Audio Chauteu — sees Sorokin try on the country music genre for size. Sorokin gained public notoriety after she posed as a German heiress Anna Delvey and defrauded banks, hotels and friends out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Her crimes inspired the 2022 Netflix limited series “Inventing Anna” and led to her serving three years in prison. Sorokin was released from prison in October after posting a bond. Currently, she lives in New York City and faces deportation proceedings.
Sorokin’s song will serve as the theme song for her new podcast series “The Anna Delvey Show,” which launched in June, is produced by Sean Glass and distributed on AudioUp.
The song kicks off with Sorokin saying, “My name is Anna Delvey.”
NBC News’s request for comment was not immediately replied to by representatives for Sorokin.
Adam Golub, an associate professor at California State University, Fullerton, says the podcast inspires questions of ethics.
“This is of a piece of this larger multimedia environment in which we live which affords criminals the opportunity to potentially (operate) their own PR campaign and get their story out there in a way that we’ve never seen before,” Golub told NBC News of Sorokin’s podcast.
“This was impossible years ago,” Golub said. “We have to ask ourselves, what are the ethics involved when we (allow) criminals to have a voice outside of the criminal justice system? We have to ask ourselves, what do we want to hear? Why are we interested in the first place?”
Sorokin’s song was co-written by Butler, country songwriter Scarlett Burke and AudioUP CEO Jared Gutstadt. Gutstadt described Sorokin as being the song’s “curator” and attributes Sorokin’s ill repute to her song being set to receive airtime on radios.
“Typically, you have to work really, really hard at radio to get on there,” Gutstadt explained. “I think her name captures some people’s imagination and attention.”
This article was originally published on TODAY.com