BETTY BOO
BOO TWO
30 YEARS AFTER HER LAST LP, IT’S THE SECOND COMING OF BETTY BOO. BACK WITH AN ALBUM OF BANGERS AS GLORIOUSLY FLOOR-FILLING AS ANYTHING IN HER HIP-HOP HEYDAY, SHE TELLS CLASSIC POP ABOUT WHY NOW WAS THE RIGHT TIME TO RETURN AND TAKES US INSIDE HER STAR-LADEN NEW RECORD, BOOMERANG.
STEVE O’BRIEN
Betty Boo: Bouncing back after three decades on hiatus – and all with a little help from Classic Pop!
Thirty years is a long time in pop culture. In 1992, Liz Truss was an anti-monarchist teenager, Donald Trump was just a businessman with a funny haircut and Harry Styles hadn’t even been born. Few of us had heard of the internet, while Napster, Spotify and iTunes had yet to be invented. It was, in every sense, a different world when Alison Clarkson, aka Betty Boo, released her last record, GRRR! It’s Betty Boo.
The last time we spoke to Bet… – oh, let’s just call her Alison – was back in the summer of 2019 when, in answer to our question about new material, she told us: “I feel like it’s the right time, because even people that were before me, like Bananarama, they keep making records and I’m thinking, I’ve gotta do it! What’s stopping me?
“I was approaching the big Five-O and was like, ‘I don’t know where that time has gone!’” Alison tells us three years on from her home in Wiltshire. “I knew one day I’d make a record, I just didn’t know when it was going to be.”
What spurred this comeback was actually a feature in the magazine you’re currently reading. Alison’s last hook-up with Classic Pop was in Issue 54 and there, on page 68, was an interview with producer Andy Wright (Simply Red, Simple Minds). “I was reading about his creative process and how he works with artists and just thought he’d be perfect!” she beams. “So it was all down to Classic Pop!”