Betsy, Britain’s Next Musical Smash, is a Welsh Goose Girl Taking Flight.

By Elizabeth MacLeod | Music | May 16, 2017 |

By Elizabeth MacLeod | Music | May 16, 2017 |

I have no idea how we lived without Shazam. Never have I been so grateful for the ingenuous app when I was stopped dead in my tracks in my gym locker room in London after hearing what I thought was a new Cher single. However, I learned it wasn’t the Goddess of Pop but the Welsh, Elizabeth Debicki-an powerhouse Betsy.

Born in rural Pembrokeshire, Wales and having grown up on a goose farm, the twenty-four year old statuesque chanteuse’s road to music had its ups and downs. She attended the prestigious London art school, Central Saint Martins, which has produced many fashion designers such as Zac Posen, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen, and had secured a job designing for Balenciaga in Paris. However, Betsy decided to double down on her passion for singing and decamped back to Wales where she stayed, in her words, in a “grotty caravan” in her brother’s backyard. The caravan in question (featured in her promotional photographs) is where she wrote her songs, including one of her first singles “Lost & Found,” which started getting some serious airplay in early 2016:

I’m no music junkie, but after devouring Betsy’s EP Fair and her singles, to my untrained Millennial ears she sounded like an intoxicating mix of Cher, Annie Lennox and Florence Welsh. When your vocals immediately call to mind the Goddess of Pop, you are entering the lions’ den of the music industry with one helluva trump card in your hand. Not only does Betsy have the skill to craft club bangers to rival Sia, but she can also flip the switch and gut your heart with desperate end-of love ballads like “Fair”:

Topped off with her height, platinum hair, red lips and talons, and mostly minimalist yet colorful style, (in her own words been described as “trashy opulence”), Betsy has an established look and cuts a dashing figure. Full disclosure: I saw her live at the Moth Club in Hackney, London as the final stop of her May 2017 tour and I can confirm she was ASTOUNDING live. Her voice is the real deal and she had a great rapport and charisma with her band and the audience; Betsy is basically the worldly Big Sis you could trade stories with down at the pub and one who makes sure everyone has a fun night out drinking and dancing.

As Samantha Jones astutely observed about fame and notoriety in Sex and the City, “first come the gays, then the girls and then the industry.” From what I observed at the Moth Club, Betsy has the first two down pat so it is only going to be a matter of time before the industry and international audiences fall in love with her as well.