When 26-year-old Welsh singer-songwriter Betsy – all platinum-blond hair, red nails and supermodel pout – needed some press shots done, she headed to Argos. There, she bought a family-sized paddling pool, took it back to her brother’s caravan in Pembrokeshire where she was living and filled it with water. The resulting pictures – Betsy reclining like she’s in Saint Tropez, heavy gold jewellery splashed with rain – encapsulate a look she refers to as “trashy opulence”.
It’s a dichotomy that has run through her life so far too. Born on a goose farm in rural Pembrokeshire, Betsy – surname withheld – moved to London to study fashion, eventually winding up in Paris designing for Balenciaga before quitting a year later to pursue music. Penniless, she found herself living in the caravan, pouring her emotions into her nascent songwriting. Most of those early songs make up her forthcoming self-titled debut, an album of bold, elegantly wasted love songs dripping in dramatic strings and 90s drum’n’bass flourishes, glued together by Betsy’s Cher-meets-Shirley Bassey powerhouse vocals.
Her striking, larger-than-life presence is a fairly recent discovery, it turns out. “I didn’t speak until I was eight,” she laughs. “I shaved off all my hair when I was 12 or 13 and spent all my time in the library just hiding away. I’m very dyslexic, so school was always difficult for me.” Once she turned 15, however, things changed. “I remember twigging that the bulk of my problems were the way I looked. I remember thinking, ‘Shit, life’s so much better when you look like a Barbie doll.’ Suddenly I had more confidence and my life changed.”
This teenage epiphany also coincided with the realisation that living in a quiet village had its perks. “It was brilliant because it was so remote; everybody’s shagging everyone, everybody’s getting wasted, you have the freedom to take all these drugs because there’s nothing else to do. There was a lot of camping on beaches and raves in valleys.”
Despite the freedom, she was itching to escape. A fashion course at Central Saint Martins took her to London, before the move to Paris, a dream opportunity she grabbed with both hands. “It was everything you can imagine – so opulent. There’d be parties in the Louvre filled with male models and champagne on tap.” In fact, she took a particular interest in the male model industry. “A few songs came out of that,” she says, letting out a throaty roar. “Wanted More [a recent single] is about an ex-boyfriend who at the time was male model of the year. He was Dolce & Gabbana-fit, which is totally my type. He dragged on for a while, then I found out he was married.”
Burnt out, perpetually hungover and keen to focus on a music career, which at that point involved the odd open-mic night, Betsy quit her Paris dream. “People thought I was absolutely fucking barmy,” she says. “But I felt free as a bird.” She returned to the UK and self-produced some demos, which landed her a manager who put her in touch with Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard, the pair creating two songs together.
Buoyed by this early success, she retreated to the caravan to work on songs for herself, eventually landing a major-label deal. In typical Betsy fashion she told her label she wanted a proper celebration. “So they got me wasted, bought me a fancy dinner, took me to a strip club and gave me money for lap dancers. It was fabulous.”
In a pop world drowning in a sea of beige, Betsy has absolutely no interest in blending in. “I’ve never, ever wanted to be that girl next door,” she states firmly. “Ever since I was little and dreamed of doing this, I wanted to be like my icons” – her icons being David Bowie, Annie Lennox and Grace Jones.
“Coming from the place I have, I want to live the dream. I want to go to the parties, have the flashy car, a handsome boyfriend, and I want champagne. I’m not shy about that.”
• Betsy’s self-titled debut album is out on Warner Brothers on 29 September. She tours the UK from 25 August
