Songfacts®:

• "New York Transit Queen" is a punk rock track that celebrates Audrey Smaltz, the first African American woman to win the Miss New York Transit Queen pageant in 1957. These pageants were competitions for women who worked in the public transportation system, and winning was a significant achievement.
• Carly Rae Bailey Rae found her muse in an old-school photo of Smaltz, but she also got to interview her in 2019, when Smaltz was in her early 80s.
• The photo shows Smaltz hanging off the back of a fire truck, rocking rolled-down firefighter's boots with a glint of mischief in her eyes. It's a snapshot of rebellion and playfulness rolled into one fierce package.
  
  "When I saw an old Ebony magazine with that photograph of Audrey Smaltz, the beauty queen, it's really reminded me of '90s riot grrrl posters," Bailey Rae told Uncut magazine. "That was why it ended up like a guitar punk song."
• Bailey Rae wrote the song herself and co-produced it with her husband/producer/jazz musician Steve Brown.
• "New York Transit Queen" appears on Bailey Rae's fourth album, Black Rainbows. Inspired by a Black history exhibition at Chicago's Stony Island Arts Bank, the album is the culmination of several years of creative exploration.