Doin’ the do with Betty Boo, the original spice girl

02.10.2016
12:22 pm
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Music
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Betty Boo

If you are say, 35 years of age and up, hearing the opening bars of “Doin’ the Do,” the 1990 smash hit single by Betty Boo will probably bring an instant smile of recognition to your face. I could easily “name that tune” with just the very first note, and so can many of you reading this very sentence, I’m pretty sure. If you are younger than 35, however then you probably only know it as that catchy song they always play at LA Fitness during your spinning class.

Betty Boo was the original Spice Girl—it’s fairly well documented that Chris Herbert, one of the music biz managers who originally “manufactured” the Spice Girls was looking for “five Betty Boos”—but this is not to imply that Boo—real name Alison Clarkson—was a pre-fab pop star because she was anything but, not only writing, but producing much of her debut album, the platinum-selling Boomania. She was the real deal, even if this was not widely recognized during her brief fame.

When she was 16 and still in school, Clarkson joined a Salt-n-Pepa influenced rap trio called She Rockers. In a chance encounter in 1988 with Public Enemy’s “Minister of Information” Professor Griff in a McDonald’s in Shepherd’s Bush—incredibly caught on video—the cheeky young Clarkson performed an impromptu rap with Griff’s “beatbox” accompaniment. This led to She Rockers going to New York where Griff produced their debut single “Give it a Rest.” She Rockers also opened for PE during some American tour dates, but Clarkson soon left the group.

Back in London, she attended a course at the Holloway School of Audio Engineering and sang as a guest vocalist on a hit single by the Beatmasters, “Hey DJ / I Can’t Dance (To That Music You’re Playing)” in 1989, which led to her getting signed as a solo artist. With the financial windfall from the Beatmasters collaboration, Clarkson loaded up on audio equipment—samplers, sequencers, keyboards—so Betty Boo could do her own do. Boomania, which spawned three hit singles, was largely self-produced on her own equipment in her own bedroom, and written by Clarkson herself.

When Boomania came out, I played the shit out of that record. Pure pop perfection in a glossy pop art package. What’s not to love? The album’s first single was “Doin’ the Do.” The way she spits out her brassy, sassy rap out here is razor-sharp. Monie Love-level good!

“Doin’ the Do”

If you don’t think that song is absolutely amazing, please stop reading this blog. I hate you.

Annoyingly, she was seldom given full credit for her accomplishments, not even for her own highly original fashion sense!

Clarkson lamented to The Independent in 1992:

‘When you’re a girl and you make pop music, it’s assumed you haven’t got a mind of your own. But it was me who wanted the Emma Peel look.’

And she chose her musical style, too, that blend of rap and frothy pop. ‘I like the Beatles, the Monkees. I like dinky sounds. I’d like to sound like the young Michael Jackson - sweet.’ She did a course at the Holloway School of Audio Engineering and co-produces her recordings. She says it sometimes irks her how little credit she gets for that, but she offsets her frustration with the thought that ‘the people who buy my records like the sound of my voice and the tune; they’re not interested in credits’

I met Betty Boo in New York in the summer of 1990. It was in a nightclub where I was working at the time called Mars on the Westside Highway just below 14th street. I think it was her publicist from Sire Records who introduced us. I told her that I really loved Boomania and congratulated her on the clever use of the “morse code” Reparata and the Delrons interpolation (it’s not really a sample) from “Captain of Your Ship” in “Doin’ the Do,” which she seemed quite pleased someone had noticed. Obviously, she was a complete knockout and although she would have only been 20 at the time, she was reserved and serious, giving the impression of being someone who was very much in control of her own destiny. She didn’t in any way act all full of herself, either, as you would expect a young person thrust suddenly into that kind of rockstar fame might behave. I thought she’d go on to become a big star, but her second album, Grrr! It’s Betty Boo—which is excellent, too—sold disappointingly. She was on the verge of signing with Madonna’s newly formed Maverick Records—Madonna has praised Betty Boo several times in interviews—when her mother became terminally ill and she took time off to care for her, and later her grandmother, effectively abandoning her performing career.

“Where Are You Baby?”

“I’m On My Way”—dig the wunderbar “Lady Madonna” break! Those are the original horn players from the Beatles song, too.

“Hangover”

“24 Hours”

Since disappearing from the public eye, Clarkson has worked behind the scenes of various prominent pop singles as a jobbing songwriter. One of her compositions—“Pure and Simple,” originally written for Girl Thing, but relegated to an extra track on the Japanese issue of their CD—was recorded without her knowledge in 2001 by Hear’Say, winners of the audition-based UK reality TV show Popstars, and became the best-selling single of that year, receiving an Ivor Novello Award. She’s also had her songs performed by Girls Aloud, Louise, Dannii Minogue, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Ambivalent about the state of the music industry, in 2001 Clarkson told The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis:

This audition-based pop star thing just didn’t exist when I was around, or at least I wasn’t aware of it. I came from a hip-hop background, did very credible underground music. As a pop artist, I had my own image. I had got to help the directors with the videos, I worked very closely with an art designer on the sleeves and stuff. It’s completely different now… Popstars was the whole thing I completely loathe in pop music. I don’t like the idea of people being auditioned to be in a pop band. They may as well be working on a cruise liner. Pop music will not evolve if it carries on like this. I think Popstars exposed how a pop group is made. It should put an end to it completely. Even if “Pure and Simple” was a successful record, I’m not that passionate about it. I’m more passionate that the programme itself might have changed people’s view about pop.

In 2006, she returned with a briefly-formed alliance with Blur’s Alex James in a band called WigWam. I think this song, titled “WigWam,” is one of the catchiest things I’ve ever heard. Play it twice. Even if you don’t like it the first time, by the second play it will be forever stuck on repeat in your head. (I wish the video quality was better, but that’s not under my control…)