MUSIC: Jessica Newham rises to fame as Betty Who.
By Jonathan Whang, Staff Writer
Betty Who might be P!nk’s long lost cousin. The striking blonde hair, the raw, honest lyrics, the pop and the feminist flare—they’re all there. However, what sets these two artists apart is not just their distinct musical styles or P!nk’s contract with CoverGirl but their interesting backgrounds.
Jessica Newham, the woman behind Betty Who, was born on October 5, 1991 in Sydney, Australia. Newham began playing the cello when she was four, while teaching herself guitar and piano and picking up songwriting. She eventually moved to the U.S. to continue her studies at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, but it took one summer program at the Berklee College of Music to change her mind. At Berklee, Newham fell in love with pop music. “That was the first time that I had been anywhere for voice, and I was like, ‘This is incredible. This is something that I love,’” Newham professed in an interview with the Boston Globe.
Newham began attending Berklee, where she met producer Peter Thomas. Thomas envisioned Newham’s songs as fit for a dreamy, anthemic sort of style. Over the next couple of years, the two paired up and developed Newham’s sound.
Newham, performing as Who, found success with her debut single, “Somebody to Love,” which Tomas co-wrote and produced. This was made possible thanks to the collaborative support of a variety of sources on the Internet. In 2012, Arjan Writes, the Grammy’s official blogger at the time, premiered Who’s song, garnering Who critical acclaim and popularity. Features on well-known online magazines, such as Socialite Life and Popservations, also helped promote her career, but a viral video on Youtube was arguably instrumental in sending Who to the charts.
The video documented Spencer Reeser-Stout (then just Spencer Stout) proposing to his boyfriend by way of flash mob at a Home Depot with “Somebody to Love” playing as the soundtrack; so far it has amassed over 11 million views. “I honestly think [Who] is responsible for her own success [but] I think it’s been awesome to be kind of involved in helping in [some way],” Reeser-Stout commented.
Thanks to the Internet, Who was able to rise to number one on Billboard’s Dance/Club Play Songs chart. Some time afterwards, her independently released EP, The Movement, became an online success, and four days after Reeser-Stout uploaded his video, Who signed a contract with RCA Records. On April 8 of this year, Who released her second EP, Slow Dancing, which reached number one on the iTunes pop charts.
Who’s rise to a pop phenomenon is definitely a unique one. There appear to be fair winds for Betty Who’s career—let’s see how far she sails.
Photo courtesy of www.elle.com