BETSY has confirmed details of a European headline in support of her much-anticipated, self-titled debut album which will be released on September 29th on Warner Brothers.
Following her appearance on ITV Weekend this Sunday (and two breakout performances on Germany’s prestigious Inas Nacht and ARD in recent weeks), new single ‘Little White Lies’ has picked up additional support across Radio 2, 6Music, Virgin Radio and seen BETSY surpass 10 million early streams. Her debut album is available to pre-order now.
With her powerhouse vocal range, direct ear for hooks, no-nonsense attitude and unerring ability to locate the sharpest grid references of heartache in music, BETSY is a once-seen, never-forgotten pop proposition. Crossing elements of churchy soul, euphoric dance and soaring power ballads, her self-titled debut album is shot through with unflinching lyrical honesty, and draws from an unlikely musical background.
BETSY was born on a goose farm in rural Wales, finding her voice from campfire sing-alongs and the local eisteddfod (where she boldly covered Rage Against The Machine) to the powerhouse vocalists within her parents’ vintage record collection. Keen to pursue a career in music – but knowing nobody in the industry – she was encouraged by her hard-working family to find a fall-back, and moved to London to study fashion design at Central St Martins.
One distraction led to another when BETSY was invited to design catwalk for the esteemed Balenciaga in Paris: an intense, exhilarating experience filled with fascinating characters, but one that ultimately ate into her songwriting. And so BETSY returned to Wales, swapping what many of her peers deemed the job of a lifetime for making music in a grotty caravan in her brother’s garden (which you can glimpse across much of her artwork).
Over the run of her acclaimed early singles – ‘Fair’, ‘Lost and Found’, ‘Wanted More’ and ‘Waiting’ – BETSY has emerged one of the year’s stand-out voices. Yet it is everything else she absorbs into her debut album – influences across film, art, fashion, travel and relationships – which have cemented her diva credentials. ‘It’s important to have your look, your thing, to be so recognisable that a child could draw you and you’d still know who it is,’ she says. Someone once told BETSY that to become iconic, you should be identifiable by silhouette alone: come September, her debut album suggests that BETSY is well on the way to making this picture a reality.
Beginning at Swansea’s National Waterfront Museum on November 23rd – and including Manchester’s Gorilla on the 29th November and BETSY’s biggest headline show to date at London’s Scala on November 30 – tickets go on general sale this Friday at 9AM via http://betsymusic.co.uk/.
