Betty Boo Boomania

• Betty Boo Boomania Discogs
• Betty Boo Boomania

Self-styled U.K. Pop-rap diva Betty Boo (born Alison Clarkson) began her music career as a teenager, singing in the rap trio the She-Rockers, the duo Hit 'N'. Betty Boo's original breakthrough came with the release of 'Hey DJ / I Can't Dance (To That Music You're Playing) as The Beatmasters featuring Betty Boo on Rhythm King in 1989. Her debut album 'Boomania' followed in 1990 peaking at # 4 in the UK album charts and achieved platinum status of 300,000 sales. Englishwoman Betty Boo (real name: Alison Clarkson) was an eighteen-year-old sound engineering student in London in 1988 when she hooked up with a band of female rappers called the She Rockers.

Boomania is the debut and most successful album by Betty Boo, released on 10 September 1990. King John (a duo comprising Rex Brough and John Coxon) produced most of the songs on the album; Coxon continued to collaborate with Betty Boo on her second album, GRRR! It's Betty Boo.

Track listings[edit]

Notes

• ^{^a} signifies an additional producer
• 'Hey DJ / I Can't Dance (To That Music You're Playing)' is a reworking of 'I Can't Dance to That Music You're Playing' by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.
• 'Boo Is Booming' samples 'Montego Bay' by Bobby Bloom.
• 'Doin' the Do' samples the 1968 song 'Captain of Your Ship' by Reparata and the Delrons.
• At least one CD release, as well as the vinyl, did not have the last two 'bonus' tracks from the original release of Boomania. The UK cassette includes the bonus tracks, but 'Doin' the Do (7' Radio Mix)' is moved to the end of side one, after 'Valentine's Day'.

Doin' the Do: The Best of Betty Boo[edit]

In 1999, an apparent Betty Boo greatest hits album was released but is effectively a slightly expanded version of Boomania as no material from Boo's second album, GRRR! It's Betty Boo, is included. Called Doin' the Do: The Best of Betty Boo, it consists of all the tracks from Boomania in a slightly different order, alongside extended versions of two of its singles, a remix, and a megamix. Its cover art is a mirrored version of the photo from the front of Boomania with the addition of Betty Boo's signature and minor digital alterations. These new tracks were all included on the 2016 deluxe reissue of Boomania.

1. 'Where Are You Baby? (7' Version)' (Alison Clarkson) – 4:05
2. 'Doin' the Do (7' Version)' (Alison Clarkson, Larry Young, Yardley) - 3:41
3. 'Hey DJ / I Can't Dance (To That Music You're Playing)' (Alison Clarkson, P. Carter, M. Glanfield, R. Walmsley, D. Richards, D. Dean) - 3:15
4. '24 Hours (Norman Cook Remix)' (Alison Clarkson, Myers, Dean Ross) - 5:35 †
5. 'Boo's Boogie' (Alison Clarkson, Rex Brough, John Coxon) - 3:19
6. 'Leave Me Alone' (Alison Clarkson) - 4:45
7. 'Shame' (Alison Clarkson, Rex Brough, John Coxon) - 5:01
8. 'Boo Is Booming' (Alison Clarkson, Barry, Bloom) - 3:27
9. 'Mumbo Jumbo' (Alison Clarkson, A. Lovegrove, Coldrick) - 3:39
10. '('Til My Last Breath) Doin' It to Def' (Alison Clarkson, K. Clark) - 4:45
11. 'Don't Know What to Do' (Alison Clarkson) - 3:50
12. 'Valentine's Day' (Alison Clarkson) - 4:44
13. '24 Hours' (Alison Clarkson, Myers, Dean Ross) - 3:28
14. 'Where Are You Baby (12' Peter Lorimer Version)' (Alison Clarkson) - 6:37 †
15. 'Doin' the Do (12' Version)' (Alison Clarkson, Young, Yardley) - 5:38 †
16. 'Boo's Megamix' (Alison Clarkson, John Coxon, Rex Brough, Myers, Dean Ross, Richards, Dean, Walmsley, Glanfield, Carter, Young, Yardley) - 7:16 †

† Denotes a new track that was not originally on Boomania

References[edit]

1. ^Amazon, deluxe edition listing
2. ^Cherry Red Records, Boomania (Deluxe Edition) listing.
3. ^Amazon, Doin' the Do: The Best of Betty Boo listing

External links[edit]

• Boomania at Discogs (list of releases)
• Official Charts CompanyBoomania entry at the OCC

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!

Photomatix pro 5.1 3 license key no survey. 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'

Being erica torrent. '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…)

WigWam only released two songs before the project was abandoned, here's the B-side, the loopy 'Robbie Rapman':

'Robbie Rapman'

Betty Boo deboos in 1989 in with 'Hey DJ / I Can't Dance (To That Music You're Playing)'

A deluxe, two CD expanded edition of Grrr! It's Betty Boo is being released by Cherry Red on March 27th

Betty Boo Boomania Discogs

Betty Boo Boomania