EVE KUCHARSKI | QSyndicate
It’s natural for creative sensibilities to shift as we get older. We get wiser, gain more experience and even more perspective. Over time, while we continue to love the music we consumed in the past, it’s expected that our boundaries expand and our tastes change and broaden.
But what about from the artist’s viewpoint? For Betty Who, who has consistently delivered bops over the last 10 years, a question has been front of mind recently: “Oh fuck! What do I write about?”
“Sometimes I’ll be on stage and put on an outfit and think, ‘Did I just come out here and sing some songs I made up so you guys can clap for me?’ But I don’t think that ‘I need you to clap for me’ is my reason,” admits the 33-year-old singer. “Now I am looking at my approach to my projects and my approach to making music as, ‘What do I want to say?’ but also, ‘What do other people need to hear?’”
One thing that is clear on this journey of creative self-reflection, though, is Betty Who’s love for the pop genre.
“There’s something about pop. I’m a pop girl stan. I grew up watching Britney Spears and thinking it doesn’t have to mean something; she’s just incredibly beautiful, and she’s shaking her abs for me and I’m 4 years old, and I’m gagging, and I don’t even know why. It speaks to me,” she says. “But the ‘why’ is a big question for me right now.”
That question was one of the primary drivers behind Betty’s song, “Run!,” released in April. The artist, who is queer and has a massive LGBTQ+ following, will bring her latest songs — including her latest single, “Sweat” — on her Out of the Darkness summer tour.
Recently, Betty shared her inspiration for the tour, insights about her songwriting process and why creative sustainability is her new focus.
Eve Kucharski: Your single “Run!” is high-energy and very positive, and it focuses on your own story and on rekindling the excitement and exuberance you had when you first started your career. Could you walk me through what inspired you to write this track? Betty Who: I am the number one person who is the hardest on myself. I just wrote a different song about this entire same experience. I think that something I’m really working through in my creativity is trying to figure out [why] I have so much kindness for the waiter that I ask what their name is and I try to make their life easier but then up here? I have moments sometimes where I come up and out of my body and say, “What if I was nicer? What if I didn’t spend all of my mental and emotional energy doing this to myself?”
A huge part of putting yourself out there is audacity. That person still lives within me, but now I’m a lot less motivated to make her dreams come true because we’ve seen some things. You get older, you stumble a few too many times on the path to the life that you want and you’re like, “This is hard, and I’m tired.” And how do I continue to find a new way to approach building the life that I always wanted with that same kind of intensity and focus? It’s really an attempt to lock into that person and now, I have to do it for her. It’s looking back at that little girl watching Britney Spears and going, “She wanted to be on stage, and now you have the chance to be on stage and you better use it, girlfriend!”
How has your creative approach changed since the start of your career? I was in Hadestown on Broadway, which sort of changed my life but also eight shows a week for six months was a totally new experience for me, and, coming off of that, the last thing I wanted to do was anything. So the last year-and-a-half I really have taken this time to be like, “What does it feel like to be a person in this moment in my life that is not chasing a dream every single second of every day that I am alive?” And I think in this stage of my life where I am very happily married, with my dog, and in this tiny little house that we love, there are so many things about my life that are exactly as I would want them to be.
I feel so lucky for that, but then I go to the studio to write a song and go, “Oh fuck, what do I write about?” I’m so happy, but it doesn’t really move the needle for me creatively in the same way that the ever-flowing sort of drama of my early 20s did.
I also think that knowing what I know about my community and how small and mighty we are, a huge part of what I love to do is make people feel seen and held and loved and creating a space where you can go, “Nobody in my life makes me feel this way, but I listened to this song and it makes me feel like I can go on another day.” That’s the power of music to me and what we do. So I am trying to lock into that place.
Yes, there are some songs where I’m just trying to have fun, and I’m not trying to say anything crazy or motivational. Like, I put out a song for Pride called “Sweat,” and it’s not that difficult; we don’t have to think that hard. But there are moments moving forward that are less self-serving but more exciting at this stage in my life.
Queer joy feels so necessary in the current political climate, so sometimes even a song just about having fun can be so subversive. Fittingly, your tour is called Out of the Darkness. Can you share more about how you arrived at the name? We went back and forth a little bit about what to call the tour because I had a couple of different ideas. But for me, Out of the Darkness definitely symbolized something I had been going through, which was reemerging from my cave and literally from this room playing notes on a piano. But I think that I’m trying to think of my show in that same sort of community service way. My entire approach and my goal for the tour is to create an environment where I go, “Hey, I know things are really crazy.” And everybody has their own version, whether you’re really engaged politically and [are aware of how] they’re trying to take our rights away or if you’re like, “I can’t pay for my groceries.” I’m like, totally diva, bad vibes only.
There’s a lot of stuff going on and [we can] acknowledge that it’s a difficult time and choose joy regardless and create an environment to dip in for a second and talk about pain. And let’s explore that through song, and let’s move together through these emotions where we could leave some of that behind. Let’s try to let go of a little bit of our dread, because there is so much dread, and there are days where I’m like, “How am I supposed to not feel horrible all the time?” Live music has always been something that, for me, brings me up and out of myself, and I’m trying to create an environment where we can celebrate in spite of what is going on in the world.