She’s won two Brits and rivalled Dua Lipa and Adele for streams, but the public is still getting to know the ex-reality TV singer. She explains why snobbery has held her back, but trauma won’t
Becky Hill Hill glides up on an ebike in full pop star clobber: leather flares, black strap top with enormous silver buckles, immaculately tousled hair, light green contacts that bestow a feline air. We were supposed to be meeting at her tour manager’s flat in London, so she seems slightly alarmed when I approach her on the street. It’s a feeling that quickly becomes mutual: as we wait to be buzzed inside, Hill directs most of her chat towards her phone screen or the wall. I wonder, perhaps, if she is all interviewed out; she is now knee-deep in promo for her second album, Believe Me Now?. “Well, the job is 80% press,” she says, matter-of-factly, once we are safely on a sofa inside. “But I wouldn’t want it any other way,” she adds, unconvincingly.
Hill is one of the UK’s most successful musicians. She has two Brit awards and 12 Top 20 singles to her name, an almost sold-out arena tour in the pipeline and some incredible listening stats (in 2021, she was the third-most streamed British female solo artist after Adele and Dua Lipa). Yet while her instantly memorable dance anthems have soundtracked the big nights out of millions of Britons, the 30-year-old is keenly aware that she doesn’t have the public profile to match her vocal ubiquity.
