interviews
Page: 4
Betty Who is an undeniably big presence. As a woman standing at 6’2”, the 29-year-old Sydney, Australia native has spent a lifetime knowing she’ll inevitably draw attention any time she enters a room. And this phenomenon holds true as she walks into New York social club Ludlow House on a rainy Wednesday on the Lower East Side.
Over the last decade, Betty’s height has also become an elemental characteristic to her brand — that of an Amazonian pop force she describes as “sixty percent lesbian singer-songwriter, forty percent Britney Spears superfan.” On stage, she entrances as a statuesque blonde who’s become a regular on the Pride circuit and a must-see performer for pop obsessives known for her energetic, dance-heavy show, replete with muscled backup dancers, costume changes and unabashed celebrations of queer joy.
However, as she curls up on one of the exclusive social club’s lush, velveteen couches, Betty isn’t dressed to put on a show. Instead, she’s decidedly casual for the day, layering a cozy red sweater on top of a loose, white button-down and black slacks. Pairing a single strand of pearls with a blue trucker hat emblazoned with an oil and gas company’s logo, the whole look projects effortless, gender-neutral cool.
Betty, who was born Jessica Newham, is in New York for just one day to discuss her new album – the appropriately exclamatory BIG!, which arrives Friday (Oct. 14) via BMG – as well as her newly discovered mission as an artist. “Why am I here?” she asks rhetorically. “I think it’s to provide community and try to wipe out the feeling of aloneness and otherness that so many people have when they’re not seeing themselves reflected back.”
When it comes to feeling uniquely isolated, her height and gender naturally play into the equation. “I have had that experience so singularly and specifically being a very tall woman,” she says. “But also, like, so many people feel exactly the same way about themselves that I do. Mine happens to be my height. Other people’s is about their hair. Or their weight. Or their feet… So now if I’m put in a power position to be like, ‘Look! I’m queer, I’m different and I made it here because I embraced it as opposed to ran away from it for a decade,’ I guess that’s what I’m trying to manifest.”
A key part of bringing that newfound goal to fruition meant reaching another level of vulnerability in her music. Take BIG’s title track: a tender, diaristic centerpiece on which she boldly proclaims, “If legends are loud and built to stand out, guess that’s who I’m meant to be/ Ten feet tall and I’m proud of it/ You can’t make me smaller, you’ll never make me fit/ ‘Cause baby I was born to be big” over smoldering synths, blazing guitars and the crash of gargantuan drums.
From the beginning of her career, Betty’s music has always been rooted firmly in the sounds and styles of modern pop. As a student at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, she obsessively studied Billboard 200 chart-toppers like Spears’ Femme Fatale and Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream alongside erstwhile producer Peter Thomas as a kind of blueprint to follow on her 2014 debut Take Me When You Go. But after creatively parting ways with Thomas after three albums and enduring the COVID-19 pandemic, it was an entirely different sort of artist who made her stop and reevaluate her musical vision in late 2020.
“I had a moment driving back from Michigan to L.A., my mom and I did a road trip. Driving. Cooked. Long, long three days,” she reflects. “And we were listening to [Kacey Musgraves’] Golden Hour. It was before Star-Crossed came out…listening to the song “Mother” with my mom. And so she starts crying and I, like, almost had to pull over ’cause [then] I’m crying.
“And I was like, ‘I think this is the thing I wanna do: have feelings and share them and impact people,” Betty continues. “I don’t think it’s about the wig that I’m wearing on stage.’ Whoa. Who knew? Not me…I had my priorities really mixed up for a long time.” That emotional revelation courtesy of Musgraves led to Who holing up in a cabin in Park City, Utah for two solid weeks with her three co-producers, including Boys Like Girls frontman Martin Johnson, to create the album that would eventually become BIG. And instead of taking sonic cues from pop princesses of the 2000s and 2010s, Who found inspiration from a completely different set of references, like ‘80s rockers Kenny Loggins and Journey.
“There’s a lot of testosterone in the music,” she says. “Which is what I wanted. Some of the music that I care the most about is that, like, kind of intense, super coked-out ’80s sound, so overtly heterosexual that it is inherently the gayest thing ever. That’s one of my favorite sub-sects of culture.”
Instructing her co-producers to “think of me as a gay man instead of a queer woman,” the unique approach harnessed a completely new, masculine kind of queer energy in Betty’s songwriting, and even challenged the singer’s perception of her own gender expression by the time the record was complete. While she insists she feels entirely comfortable and authentic using she/her pronouns, songs like album highlight “I Can Be Your Man” — a slinky kiss-off which finds her helping a friend through a breakup by coyly taking the place of her now-ex-boyfriend — helped move her along a path to reject traditional precepts of femininity, ones she so often felt both bound to and stifled by as a female pop star.
“I was just like, ‘Oh, I actually just have to stop subscribing to a bunch of the stuff that I thought I had to be as a woman, and figure out what that means for me,’” she says. “And a lot of it is pulling away from femininity and exploring my masculine side. And then that’s allowing me to come full circle back to my divine feminine sensuality – sexuality stuff that has made me a lot more clear about what that is and what’s really powerful in me about that. But I definitely live outside of the binary of gender, that’s for sure.”
As a body of work, no pun intended, BIG! is also a particularly marked departure from Who’s last album, 2019’s Betty. And though that LP bears the singer’s name, she says it now represents something like a time capsule — one of a particularly difficult chapter in her life after being dropped by RCA Records in 2017. “I was in so much pain when I made that record,” Who says of Betty. “I was pretty in survival mode. And also very in a desperate attempt to prove myself to everybody else. All I probably did was prove myself to myself, that I could make a record without the help of a label.”
However, when she looks back at Betty with the benefit of hindsight, the singer admits the project’s 13-song tracklist, which includes fan favorite tracks like “Ignore Me,” “Do With It” and “The One, feels varied to the point of incohesion. “I think when I listen to it now, I hear all the different wigs I’m trying on, you know what I mean?” she offers. “Of course they’re all different aspects of my personality…But to then try and tie them all together with a short little skirt and a microphone on stage, I look back at her and I literally do not recognize her from where I’m sitting now.”
It’s by design — albeit also somewhat ironic — that BIG! feels, in many ways, more intimate and personal than its independently released, self-titled predecessor. This summer, the album roll-out for the record began with lead single “Blow Out My Candle,” a triumphant anthem that finds Betty fearlessly confronting her critics and non-believers. She insisted the track be the starting point of the album’s overall narrative, and had a particular statement to make in the accompanying music video – choosing a utilitarian leotard and bright track jacket as her only wardrobe pieces, as she belts out, “I won’t stop runnin’ down that road/ I’ll keep dancin’ till I die/ You can blow out my candle/ But you’ll never put out my fire.”
“I’m really trying to get very realistic and self-aware,” she says months after the visual dropped. “And the ‘Blow Out My Candle’ video was a really big part of that, where I was like, ‘I’m gonna be in a leotard, but it’s not because I’m giving sexy kitten. I’m giving, like, ‘Here’s my body. Here’s my face. Here’s all of it in 360. I’m not hiding behind stuff or at an angle that makes me look thinner than I am. This is me.’”
The wistful “She Can Dance” — a kind of autobiographical elder sister to the LP’s title track — soon followed, though Who describes her feelings about the song as “tumultuous,” despite it being the label’s favorite track on the album altogether.
“I wanted to write a brand statement [for the album],” Betty says of “She Can Dance” – though in the process she inadvertently ended up essentially putting her life story to music. And with lyrics like, “Couple records come and gone/ Never thought it’d take this long/ Sometimes I wonder who the hell I’m foolin’/ Got no trophies on the shelf/ Record deal went straight to hell/ I swear to God, I don’t know what I’m doin’,” it’s easy to see why the song would leave her feeling exposed.
Yet Betty’s commitment to radical authenticity — in both her music and her personal identity — remains immutable and bigger than ever, no matter how many growing pains or as yet unforeseen obstacles remain in front of her.
“I’m allowing myself to be seen,” she says. “It feels like the journey to BIG has been gruesome. It’s like that shedding of snake skin. It’s not, like, painless in the middle of the night for me. It’s like the Hulk ripping off clothes, like, fully screaming as I’m becoming my final form.”
Stream Betty Who’s BIG in full below.
Kerri Chandler is an innovator. The legendary DJ and producer, who is looking at 30 years of house music in his rearview, is an out-of-the-box thinker who doesn’t see limitations, just new frontiers.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Case in point, his latest album, the 24-song Spaces and Places — his first since 2008’s Computer Games. Space and Places was not created in Chandler’s elaborate home studio in New Jersey — which is on par with any commercial studio, and leaves quite a few of those marquee locations in its dust. Instead, over the course of two years, Chandler traveled around the globe, recording the songs for Space and Places at clubs in various cities.
Printworks and Ministry of Sound in London, The Warehouse Project in Manchester, Rex in Paris, Plano B in Porto, Sub Club in Glasgow, Halcyon in San Francisco, Output in Brooklyn — it’s all just a smattering of the clubs that Chandler took over for Spaces and Places. The producer, 53, set up a mobile studio in the middle of each of these clubs when they were empty, tuning each song to the actual venue. The result is a wholly unique collection of house music that gives an aural snapshot of the iconic clubs.
Zooming in with Billboard from a hotel room in Paris on one of his endless DJ dates, the always affable Chandler delves deep into his past to uncover his present.
1. Where are you at the moment?
Where I am mentally or where I am actually today? Both? I’m in Paris. I play Badaboum tomorrow, one of my favorite places. It’s sold out, so I’m happy. I just left Lisbon. Same thing, sold out. I guess people want to get out after the pandemic, and I’m happy they want to see me. That’s a blessing.
Where I am mentally is I have this album out and it’s all been zooming by so fast. The vinyl is coming October 14, but the digital releases is out. It came out on my birthday, September 28. I gave that to myself as a birthday present.
2. What’s the first album or piece of music you bought for yourself and what was the medium?
I have to really think about this. It was probably when my dad first took me to a record store. I don’t remember what it was, but there were a lot of 45s, a couple of dollars here, a couple of dollars there — run home and put the little spindle on.
I think one of my first ones — and this is probably why I love this record so much, is John Coltrane My Favorite Things. That’s my benchmark. And when I could get another record, my Bob James one. That has got to be my first record that I really fell in love with and I had to have it, and I still have it. I had Bob James’ Sign of the Times, so that was a blessing.
3. What did your parents do for a living when you were a kid and what do they think of what you do for a living now? With your father being a DJ, your situation is a little different from most DJs.
My dad was a DJ. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. My mom wanted me to stay far away from DJing. She didn’t like the whole lifestyle, the party scene, any of that stuff. My dad was like the Ibiza DJ before there was an Ibiza DJ. If my mother could have it her way, she wanted me to be a conductor. She got the next best thing, I’m a producer. But she’s proud.
My father passed away. He got hit by a truck back in 2017. He went to the grocery store to grab a few things, some milk and some popsicles. He just wanted to have a little walk, and that’s what happened. He crossed the street, and a truck came running around the corner and hit him. It literally ran him over. He was alive for a couple of days, but he would have never been the same after that. His quality of life wouldn’t have been great.
4. Did you have a job before you started doing music in a professional capacity? When were you able to leave the job and focus on music full time?
I don’t tell too many people this, but I used to be a welder. I was way underage to get hired, but they hired me and taught me, and I had a wonderful time. I had friends and the boss just took me in like family. My friends who were doing the pressing machines had no fingers. I thought I had to look the part, so I had a lumberjack shirt on and my welding glasses. My friend runs up to me and starts slapping my shirt. I pulled my goggles up and my shirt was actually on fire. I didn’t realize my lumberjack shirt was mixed in with polyester. I love welding. I still weld every once in a while as a hobby.
After that, I was a travel agent and I did odd jobs on the weekend. I was an engineer really early and DJed on the weekends as well. 15, 16 is when everything started getting serious, and I stopped the other stuff and I started just doing music.
5. What’s the first non-gear thing you bought for yourself when you started making money as an artist?
I’ve always been fascinated with Porsches. That’s the first thing I did when I got my hands on some money. I bought a Porsche. I just turned 18. I just got my license. I always thought that car was like Batman or something. The first week I got this thing. I was driving, wasn’t going fast or anything, I was turning this corner and I flipped the car over. I got out the car and everything was fine. I’m looking at this thing, black with red interior and thinking, “This is a sign I shouldn’t have this car.” I gave it to my uncle. It was the dumbest thing I’ve ever bought.
6. If you had to recommend one album for someone looking to get into dance music, what would you give them?
The one for me is Larry Heard’s Fingers Inc., Another Side. That, to me, has just had so much incredible stuff on it. Classics, the whole album.
7. What was the last song you listened to?
Can I include my own? The last song I listened to was the one I did with my cousin Aaron Braxton Jr., “Back to Earth (Find Your Peace) [The Knockdown Center].” It’s on my album. I was watching the video, Dolby just put up a feature of it. It was just really heartfelt for me, because my uncle passed away not too long ago, and I told my cousin to write about it.
8. What’s the first electronic show that really blew your mind?
Kraftwerk in 2009 at Flow Festival Helsinki. When I saw that, that blew my mind. The robots and the way they did the things they did, I was just sitting there with my mouth open half the time. I was so happy to be a part of any of it.
9. What is the best setting to listen to and experience dance music?
Definitely in the club on the right system. That’s my favorite thing.
10. What was the scene like in New Jersey and New York when you first got started making music and DJing?
It was everywhere. You could hear it on the radio. You could hear it on the streets. You could hear it in cars going by. You woke up to it. You went to sleep to it. You could turn on a radio station, and you’d have a wonderful friend and mentor of mine, Merlin Bobb, and his cousin, Tony Humphries, was on the other station. D Train was on mainstream radio. Everything from [the record label] Prelude was being played. We had Chic. That’s what we were hearing all day on the radio, Black radio. You’d go to the record store and pick it up. There were DJs everywhere playing house music or house parties and roller-skating rinks. It was so commonplace that it was the soundtrack to everyone’s life.
11. How did the idea for Spaces and Places come about?
I’ve always been a proponent of: If you’re making house music, you should hear it on a dance system. It all started for me back when we were doing Shelter [in New York.] [Producer] Merlin Bobb asked me to do a theme song for the club. I wanted to make sure that this song was tailored to the system so it sounds better than anything you could play in here — especially if it’s going to be the theme song for the club.
I went in with some gear, and I EQed the room the way it would be if you were DJing. I listened really carefully and I tuned everything on that song to the sound system in the room. It just sounded incredible. Everything matched. Everything made sense. I had so much fun doing it, I made up my mind that anywhere I go, I need to make sure that the system is right, and I do soundchecks.
12. So it’s fair to say that you’re pretty obsessive with this stuff?
It got to the point where I’m so spoiled with sound, because my dad and my cousins and uncles do sound systems and lighting. It’s a family business, and I want it as best as I can get it. To this day, I’ll either repair the sound systems or I’ll re-EQ a room. I’ll bring more gear in and leave it at the clubs. I take sound very, very seriously. Even in my house and the studios I’ve had, have always had club systems. When I went to Ministry of Sound, I fell in love with the place so much that I built that system in my studio.
13. How did that turn into you making the entirety of Space and Places in clubs?
Since I was on the road so long and touring, by the time I got home, I was exhausted. I’m in these clubs all the time. I have relationships with these clubs. I had so much fun doing songs in the clubs. The first one I asked was Plano B in Porto, Portugal. I took a bench seat, right in the middle of a room, sat there, and I made this track called “Sun of Sound.” I called my friend up, said, “I need some lyrics with it, can you send me some stuff?” He did lyrics really quick. Now I’m putting them to the song in the club. I’m having fun, and it’s our own little party this place. I’m playing on the weekend, but there’s nobody there. It’s just us going for it. I was like, “This is so much fun, I wonder how many other clubs I could do this with?”
A couple of my other friends have clubs that I have relationships with. And they were all like, “Hell yeah! What do you want us to do?” I came a couple days early, and every single club bent over backwards to let me have the space to do the album. It took me a couple of years to have it all together. Every single club had their own personality. Even going back to Ministry of Sound, the first club I played abroad. I saw all these emotions come back to me for each place.
14. What are some specific characteristics from the clubs that ended up in the songs?
Some of these places had singers that come from the area that I’ve known for a long time. They all have their unique thing. I’ve taken tones from each of these places to build the music around.
One of my favorites was Sub Club. There are two things that are integral to that place. One is, there’s a bingo hall outside of the club. When you’re waiting in line, you can hear them calling the numbers. If you go downstairs, there’s a train terminal behind the building. So sometimes, in the middle of the night, you feel the train rumbling through and it just shakes the whole damn building. I took all of these elements and I put them into the song.
15. Were the songs completed in the club, or did you work on them more in your home studio?
Most of these things didn’t take me more than a day and a half to do. I had all this inspiration and the tones from the club. When I went into each of these clubs, I did a convolution, which is a recording of the sonic character of a room. I run a filter sweep, a white noise and a pink noise signal, and it gives me pretty much the data program of the room. I usually do that for every club. I do it at soundcheck, even the ones that aren’t on the album, just so I have a reference of what I just did. I can go home and my system at home will mimic each one of the clubs if I ask it to. I can put Ministry of Sound on my computer at home, and it’ll turn my sound system into it sounding just like Ministry of Sound. If I want DC10, it’ll go on DC10.
16. You are one of the first people to represent Dolby Atmos in a club setting, and Spaces and Places was mixed in Dolby Atmos. What are your thoughts about the broad adoption of immersive audio?
It’s kind of an easy game changer because you don’t have to get anything. You already have it. You have an iPhone. You have Tidal. You have Apple Music. You pull it up on your phone, you put your earbuds in, it’s done. That’s what sold me on it in the end. I don’t know anybody who even has a 5.1 system, the simple surround sound. Maybe they have one of these sound bars. When they told me you can now do it with headphones, I was like, “Okay, that’ll work.” It is so simple now. And this is where it’s all going.
But if you hear the album on an actual Atmos system, it’ll blow your mind. It really is incredible.
17. What is one thing about dance music now that is far better than it was at the start of your music career and what is one thing that is far worse?
They’re both the same answer. The convenience of bringing music to a club is way better. I can have my whole collection on a memory stick if I wanted to. But at the same time, it made everyone a DJ. It made it much better, and it made it much worse.
18. What’s the best business decision you ever made?
The best business decision I’ve ever made was to make sure to learn business. Learn how taxes work, learn how to set up your business properly, not to put anything under your own name, make sure that you know how to keep the money that you make. Taxes are very important, even international taxes. Get a good accountant, that’s the best thing I can tell you. Don’t count the money before it’s there. That’s another thing: Don’t live beyond your means. I’ve never done any of those things, but I’ve seen people thinking it’s never going to be a rainy day, and they end up crashing, burning and destitute.
19. Who was your greatest mentor and what was the best advice they gave you?
My grandfather, more so than my dad. But also my dad, even though he’s given terrible advice at times. One thing in particular, and we would always joke about it: “The squeaky wheel gets the oil.” If you’re not going to say anything, no one’s going to notice you. That’s one thing I live by. You have to speak up. Because if you don’t try something, if you don’t do something, you’ll get passed by. It’s not just going to come to you. You have to be a little aggressive in what you do with yourself. What I got from my grandfather was: “Become the best person you can be, and stay humble.”
20. What is the best piece of advice you’d give your younger self?
Be careful who you trust.