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A small introduction to the girl known as Betty Steeles...
By her own admission, it’s bludy difficult to sum up the personality that is Betty Steeles but simply to describe her as a singer that adores melody and mixing words up to paint playful but rich and often uplifting stories, would belie the complexities that linger within the day dream world that the 28 year old North Londoner occupies.
As Betty confesses, some of her favourite things in life are going in to my own mind and daydreaming up the most uplifting and imaginable things possible and, playing out films in my head that and big hot bubblebaths, lying in late afternoon sun and doing things with a cutie!
Her music is arguably easier to define and is in essence ‘friendly pop’ comprising of songs that approach without fear, prejudice or pretense. It is unashamedly melodic that is both fresh and catchy but also at times slightly odd and kooky. It simply wants to make your acquaintance and get to know you and as such possesses a childlike innocence, demonstrated perfectly by the opening lines to the track Mudslide; I’m sliding down mud slides so thick, finding another person to dip in. Ironically, it is this quality that also gives a naivety and vulnerability to the honey sweet productions, which the lyrics to Bus Boy beautifully surmise I trust you yet I don’t even know, my bus boy at the very last stop.
The lyrical element of her music is a very important aspect of the song writing process and it is something Betty consciously balances with her audience in mind I think if am quite honest in my lyrics and try not to use stock phrases by pushing things a little but I also want the listener to have an enjoyable experience too, I feel its my duty to do so.
Early comparisons have seen her likened to artists such as Jack Johnson, Sia, early Bjork and even the more random accessible moments of Coco Rosie. However, in truth Betty and her music would be more at home cycling in tandem through the cobbled Parisian streets of a Jean Phillip Jeunet film set as she is inspired by the idiosyncrasies of every day life in particularly people’s shy, awkward and quirky traits, having crushes, love, annoying people and being frightened. Therefore, it is no surprise that her main musical ambition harks back to the quality that is abundant throughout her music and that is simply for people to like Betty for Betty.
To assume she lacks drive and ambition would be incorrect though, as achieving the rest of wish list would be a task for anyone I’d like to get a song in a film, to work with Burt Bacharach, duet with Thom Yorke and murmur on a Sigur Ros album. On the contrary she has lofty aims, but it is her ability to hold the simple things in life in higher regard than the finer things of this world that keep her feet on her ground and make her main ambition in life to be able to laugh at and with oneself and others, financial and mental stability, the bestest love.
It is this simple philosophy that sets her music apart from her peers and allows it to draw listeners in to a world gloriously removed from the humdrum of every day living. A world inspired by eating hagen daz ice cream, the ukulele, the newly acquired skill of making wool fuzzballs, trying out roasts all over the world, and when a country doesn’t do roasts inventing them, pretending to be deep, yoga, finding new things to learn… the list is endless.
Asked if she could change one thing in this world, she simply replies nothing, cos it izz wat it izz...
Not in Betty Steeles’ world.