Betty Boo: 'I remember asking my dad when I was about four, when can I be on Top of The Pops?'

“Back in the day in the ’90s, you were over the hill if you were a pop star at 25 – it was ridiculous. I’m so glad the rules have changed,” she says of her pop-tastic second wind.

Those rules themselves were invented by record labels, she feels. “It was really unfair, and some people didn’t really survive it. For me, I just left the industry and I had to do other things. But it’s great to be back,” she says. “I’m loving making new music, reconnecting with people that bought my music in the first place, and newbies as well. It’s fantastic, it’s really good fun.”

At 55, Clarkson seems to be thoroughly enjoying “that freedom just to make music and put it out there for people to hear” without being beholden to anyone else. “I came back in 2022 with an album called Boomerang and people loved it,” she says. “I had some great collabs on there – I asked Sophie Ellis-Bextor to perform on one of the songs, David Gray as well, and Chuck D from Public Enemy, who’s an old friend. Then my current album’s called Rip Up The Rule Book and that went into the Official Charts, which is not too bad for an oldie.”

Even Clarkson admits that it’s “surprising” that she hasn’t toured before – back in the 1990s she’d only done PAs “in America, Europe, up and down the country” to promote her records – but she wanted to celebrate 35 years of Boomania. “Pop acts didn’t really go on tour as such (in the 90s), it was very different in those days,” she reflects. “If I was a new artist today I’d be straight into being micro-managed, going out on tour and things like that, but I was actually signed to an independent label (Rhythm King) and I was the biggest artist on there, everyone was making it up as they went along and no one had the handbook for knowing what to do with me because what I was doing was very different. Being half Scottish and half Malaysian from west London, on paper I shouldn’t be a rapper making pop music, and a little brown girl turning up on Top of the Pops. I did have a lot of fun, but looking back, I can’t remember a lot about it because it was such a whirlwind.”

Clarkson began her musical career while still at school. Her first bands, Hit ’N’ Run and She Rockers were, she says, “my hip-hoppy groups”, recalling that they made the single Give It A Rest with Public Enemy. “It was very credible to have PE endorsing us, and we went on tour with them a little bit in New York – at 17 that was amazing, these titans of rap just saying that we were great,” she says.

After that, she began a sound engineering course which would stand her in good stead when it came to producing her own material. “In the end, I learnt all the bits that were essential for what I wanted to do, which was leaning to use a sampler and a sequencer and record properly – I took the best bits and I left the course because during that time I was asked to be a featured artist on The Beatmasters’ record Hey DJ. That was my launchpad, really.”

When that became a top ten hit in 1989, Clarkson was offered a deal with the trendy dance label Rhythm King, for whom she made the album Boomania, which featured two more smashes Doin’ The Do and Where Are You Baby? With a stage name partially inspired by her grandmother Betty Clarkson, a left-wing activist who was a well-known member of the Fabian Society, and the cartoon character Betty Boop – “That was my nickname as a teenager because I had this hair that looked like hers and quite big eyes” – she cut a striking figure on Top of the Pops, a TV show that she’d idolised as a child. “I do remember asking my dad once walking down the street with him when I was about four, when can I be on Top of the Pops...but I never thought I’d ever be on it. It was a dream come true doing all those shows,” she says.

In 1991 she won a Brit Award for Best Breakthrough Act, beating The Charlatans, The Stones Roses and The La’s – about which says says “I did feel like oh my gosh, I’ve arrived”. However, the bubble burst when she made her second album, GRRR!, for Warners, whose commercial expectations proved too great.

Nevertheless, Clarkson’s currency was such that she was courted by Madonna’s label Maverick. She turned them down, she explains, because “at the time my mum was very ill with cancer”, adding: “When she fell ill I put everything on hold and then when she died, I just said, I don’t want to do it because I was grieving. It took me a long time to get back on my saddle because I had to look after my family as well, so my priorities changed completely, but Madonna understood, she sent me loads of flowers and said, ‘I know what it’s like to lose your mum’. I’ve seen her a few times since then.

“I used to take it with a pinch of salt, but I used to hear from Seymour Stein, who signed her and signed me as well to Sire, saying ‘She’s a massive fan’ and I used to think, jokingly, these Americans all say that, but she was in New York staying at this hotel and I got a phone call from her saying, ‘I heard you were in town, so you want to come over? Let’s go to dinner.’ Then I went to her apartment and she opened the door, which is crazy, I thought there would be butlers or security. It was so cute, we had a lovely time.”

Betty Boo plays at Hebden Bridge Trades Club on June 20 and Hull Social on June 21. https://www.officialbettyboo.com/