Music
Beth McCarthy: “I feel like I was never that clean-cut pop star girl”
Our New Music artist of the month and rising bi icon on her rule-breaking new EP Hot and Stupid and the era of being unhinged
Fresh off career-boosting US conference SXSW, Beth McCarthy gushes about the thrill of a place where she got to feel part of the live circuit again alongside a vast pool of global talent. Back home in the UK, she misses the sharing and creativity that used to be an integral part of the scene. “I think that SXSW still has that in a really big way. Cause, you know, there’s a million people!” Our conversation inevitably shifts towards the real and present danger to UK grassroots venues, where she started honing her craft as early as 13. “With social media it’s so easy to build what you are through a screen. Which is amazing, but it shouldn’t be in replacement of doing it for real. Because that’s what taught me how to perform and engage with an audience.”
She should know. In her young and winding career so far, she’s explored different facets: the trilby-wearing, acoustic guitar-wielding 16-year-old from York on the third season of The Voice – “a good learning curve” as she strove to stand out among a bevy of blonde female singer-songwriters and pick her battles against producers more geared towards Saturday night entertainment. The breathy voice hitting home with a soul-baring foray into electronic pop, courtesy of viral 2021 confessional ‘She Gets the Flowers’ – an airtight excuse for a good cry amidst the COVID pandemic. And, finally, the rocking bi icon Beth McCarthy, swapping the trilby for pink hair and unleashing dynamite records like IDK How to Talk to Girls (2024), an EP tapping into the heady, air-punching hooks of the likes of Avril Lavigne –with a fresh synth-pop edge.
Her upcoming third EP Hot and Stupid goes a step further, liberating McCarthy from the shackles of expectation to give voice to her most defiant, “unhinged” self.
The viral ‘She Gets the Flowers’ was a real moment of vulnerability. How did you deal with the attention?
It was all a bit weird! It was quite a nice first experience because I didn’t really try too hard to get that. It’s a nice lesson that authenticity can still win, and being vulnerable can win as opposed to having to do these really contrived selling tactics – which we all still have to do as artists. But it was quite nice that my first taste of something really taking off was just me being me and being very real with my emotions. It kind of became bigger than myself cause so many people related to it all over the world and then the music video that I made was to highlight real people stories from everywhere that they would send to me. I was getting random people message me, “This is my experience with this exact thing!” and I was like oh my goodness, everybody’s got all of these things that are so different! Ιt kinda just felt like a reminder of humanity, and that we’re all the same really in the end.
Regarding your new EP, Hot and Stupid, you wrote that “the era of being unhinged has begun”. Tell me all about it! Did you try to build on the momentum of IDK How to Talk to Girls?
It’s sort of been a transition. The IDK How to Talk to Girls era was quite a funny one to move out of because it was so specifically queer and about my experiences figuring out my sexuality and what that looked like for me. Growing up, I’d not had music that accurately represented my experience. Ιt kind of felt like it was the one end of a spectrum or another. Either I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry or someone like Hayley Kiyoko, who’s just so confidently a lesbian in every way, and is amazing and unapologetic. And I loved that, and I love both of them but the middle bit, where you’re kind of figuring it out and you don’t really know what to call it, or you do know what to call it but you don’t really know how to do it. That hadn’t been represented in music for me and I felt like it was important that I did that –for me and, you know, there’s so many people in that bracket.
So it’s very deliberately queer and oriented around my experiences with women specifically. For five songs I could leave men out of it – just for five songs! Then obviously with it translating so much and being related to so much, it was hard to know how to break out of that. Because, when you become known for singing about girls and only girls, even though it was only for five songs, that’s what’s expected. And you go, well, how do I tell all the other stories, or how do I continue representing the audience and the community that I find so important and that have been amazing for me and I’ve loved being a part of? How do I continue representing them with my music without for evermore singing songs about girls –particularly being bisexual and not only dating girls! How do I do that and not make it feel like I’m leaving that community behind?
I kind of broke out of that with Good Bi and went unapologetically bisexual. Then I just thought, what was the bit around that? Maybe it’s just owning the messy and the chaos. Because that’s really what came with it. Being imperfect and unhinged and making the bad decisions and all of that. That’s relatable regardless of what gender you date –and everyone’s got friends as well. Everyone has a friend group that they’re a bit daft with sometimes and everybody has crushes on people regardless of gender.
And I was like, that feels like the right movement for me, regardless of the gender, regardless of the people it’s about. It feels a lot more encompassing of an energy and a feeling that was had. So I wanted to focus it a lot more on friendship and just being unapologetically a bit messy. Ιt also lent itself better with my sound. I wanna be a rock star wrapped in a little bit of pop packaging! Let’s be unhinged with the sound, with the concept, with everything. Sο Hot and Stupid was born.
Much like Good Bi, the EP looks like a party record, and it sounds like a party record butyou dig deeper, you won’t be put in a box. That’s a strong message.
I think it’s just being a bit more vulnerable as well. IDK How to Talk to Girls was almost like a story of my literal experiences, step by step. Whereas, with this record, I want it all to feel and sound really good and not be too sad. But if you actually dig deeper it has got meaning, it has got some more feelings-y experiences –and hopefully really relatable. There’s a song called Hurting My Own Feelings, which is the lead track of the EP and… I think everybody’s been through it where you know you’re doing something that is gonna hurt you but you do it anyway!
Whether you’re stalking someone a little bit too deeply or you go and text the person that you know is definitely not gonna text. But you’re like, I know this is a bad decision and I know I’m doing it and it’s gonna hurt my own feelings but I’m gonna do it anyway! Because that’s kinda part of life.
On top of going viral with ‘Flowers’ you’re often referred to as a “bi icon”. Have you had any memorable interactions with fans that made you think “my music’s out there, it touches people”?
To be honest I think Good Bi was the one that felt like it hit the hardest. I guess you always look at numbers as an artist, what’s streaming on Spotify and all that rubbish. I think Good Bi didn’t have the immediate pop of the streaming numbers that ‘She Gets the Flowers’ did, which did have such a wide impact but it was at the back end of lockdown when things were starting to get a little bit freer. Which is probably why it did so well, everyone was feeling really vulnerable so it just went hand in hand with a load of sad people.
Whereas Good Bi has made a deeper impact than that in the sense that, if you get it, and if you are bisexual and you’ve been through any of what is in that track it really resonates. And I think there isn’t a song about being bi. There’s songs that maybe can allude to it but they’re kind of a nod to it, or an artist who’s singing about an experience and is not that gendered. As opposed to Good Bi which is very much my experience of being bisexual and a lot of people’s experience and the difficulties that come with, but also celebrating it.
So when it gradually reached the people that it was supposed to reach, that’s the one that feels like it’s made the most difference. And it’s really nice because I think, being bi, you can feel quite like an outsider because the community itself doesn’t always embrace you. And obviously the not-the-community doesn’t embrace you as well and you have people basically saying you don’t belong in either. So you can be stuck in this grey area and I think that is an overall reflection of the music that I make.
I feel like a person who’s in the grey area in always and everything. I feel not the one or the other. Representing those people and those stories just felt really special. If I’m out and about and somebody knows me or they come to shows and I speak to fans, it’s always Good Bi that’s like, “Thank you for writing that because I don’t think I’m allowed to be queer because I have a boyfriend. But you’ve made me feel like I can be”. That’s the stuff that matters for me cause I felt like that and I felt like I couldn’t completely be me. Being able to represent them in a way that makes them feel safer, to be themselves and not shameful whichever side they fall on, or the middle they fall on!…
It’s true that there hasn’t been much representation. And now Chappell Rowan has pushed LGBTQ+ causes right into the mainstream, at a time when politicians are throwing constant threats. Do you feel these are good or bad times for the community, from your point of view?
It’s a really funny time! I think overall it’s a good time, we’ve got some really strong people representing now. Chappell Roan is one who has really moved the needle. She’s amazing because she’s not only moving the needle for being queer or for being a lesbian but is moving the needle for trans rights, for being outwardly spoken politically, which artists don’t do. Not that that’s wrong, because at the end of the day you choose what you want to put out into the world but I think she particularly is making such a a stance which can only be a positive thing.
But it is a funny time because the minute things get brought into the mainstream people get a bit protective of it. This phrase “queerbaiting” has come up and that’s the whole thing now, right? I’m not on board with it as a term… People can’t really queerbait at the end of the day, because they’re people and who is anyone to say what their experiences are or what they’re feeling? You could literally feel like, for one single day, that you were attracted to X-Y-Z people and then you’re not. But then you could write a whole song or a whole album about it and who are you to say that that’s not real?
The word queerbating is quite a dangerous term because it becomes quite gatekeep-y around stuff that you just can’t be gatekeepy around. But I think it can be a difficult time because people are looking at being queer and being like, “Oh well, now that’s profitable and so are they being real about it”? You know, Chappell Roan has made such a huge career now and a big part of that is her being queer and a big part of her audience is the queer community and they are so incredibly loyal and so willing to accept you because they’re like “We need more representation. Please, another one!” But then, that can run into the fact that people go, “But you’re not fitting in this exact thing that we want you to be and therefore that means that you could be taking advantage of the queer community,” which is a dangerous place to be because at the end of the day artists are still people and what they write about is their own experiences. To be like, “Well, you can’t sing about that because this is what I think you should do,” is a dangerous place to be. That’s maybe where being queer and outward about it is the most on-the-surface difficult thing to talk about. Aside from being vulnerable to people and politicians and that side of things that don’t get it, it’s also the community being a little bit scared of it. But we’ll get there!
You’ve got to go completely to one side to then bring it all back again. Unfortunately, for queer people, it’s a bit like women embracing their sexuality. Not in terms of who they date but being sexual and able to talk about that in music. Like Sabrina Carpenter. She’s being so unapologetically feminine, like, “I love sex and I love being a woman”, right? Sex has been used as a way to sell music for as long as any of us can remember. It’s just now artists are actually choosing to do that and it’s not the label’s way of putting it forward. Whereas now artists go, “Oh no, actually I’m gonna write the music about this and put myself forward in this way”.
I think the same thing comes into being queer. At some point, being queer is going to be something that people utilise to sell their music when they are queer, cause that’s a part of it. Like women using their sexuality, queer people using their queerness. And as long as it’s representing someone, as long as people are getting something out of the music, as long as you’re enjoying the music, then at some point you have to be like okay, in order for us to fit into normal society and be normal, we’re gonna need to fit into the bad stuff a little bit.
Where it’s like “Oh, people are profiting off being queer” – yeah, people profit off of everything! As long as you’re utilising it to spread a positive message, queer people should be able to profit from what they’re doing. So, allow it as long as it’s being positive and not being done in a destructive way or in a way that’s undermining queer people. Αnd utilising it for the voices that need to be heard. Trans voices need to be elevated right now. As long as people are trying to do that, let them do it!
Tell me about your UK tour – your biggest one yet! Feelings, goals, expectations… What’s going through your head?
It’s going to be so fun, honestly! Yeah, biggest tour yet, 19 dates across UK and Europe, doing a London show at O2 Forum Kentish Town, which is insane to me! I’ve seen so many of my favourite artists there and you kinda go, “One day this might happen”. Well now, it’s happening! I feel like it’s gonna be a real level up from anything I’ve ever done before. Both obviously in the size of it but also in the music and what I’m planning for the show.
It just feels like now is the time where I’m really starting to come into my own. I’ve got a new band, which is so exciting. I’m getting styling and I’m really thinking about all of the elements. Now it feels like something that I’m actually putting a load of work into crafting and that’s always been the dream. Because, as I’ve rambled on about so many times already, live music is literally what sets my soul on fire and the reason why I do this. So, touring for me and being able to achieve that dream is so exciting. I’m terrified!
