1 week Ago By ClashMusic
“Did I just really wish that my ex couldn’t go to see her favourite artist because I was the support act? Yes. Yes I did.” In the aftermath of an EP-inspiring breakup, rather than go to the gym (“I wish it was, but it could never be me”), London-via-Caernarfon singer CATTY focused on the only obvious alternative: becoming so successful her ex could never enjoy music again.
“The plan is that next year none of my exes can go to festivals,” she deadpans. “I’m joking, I’m actually on great terms with everyone — except for one!” Still, a woman of her word, Catty spent the past year supporting Dylan (the favourite artist in question) and Beth McCarthy ; releasing her second EP, ‘Healing Out of Spite’; opening for Stevie Nicks in Hyde Park and selling out two headline shows. She’s still buzzing from the second one, which filled London’s Lafayette a few nights ago.
She was afraid no one would come — or, as she confessed onstage, that her ex had somehow bought all the tickets to leave her standing in an empty room. “Now I’m scared I’ve given her ideas for next time!” she grins over Zoom, having escaped London for a quick recharge back in Wales. The path to cult stardom hasn’t been massively straightforward — not least because, despite sharing a lineup with Stevie, her stage fright shows no sign of cooling.
“It just gets scarier and scarier, especially now because the stages are getting bigger,” she says. “an hour before I go onstage it’s like all the air gets sucked out of my body.” She started out in music at eighteen as one half of a “cheesy pop” band.
Dropped during the pandemic (“humbling, humbling — God, I’ve been humbled in my life!”), it was time for the CATTY project to take shape. The next obstacle, though, was funding — or lack thereof. “I always think about how many artists have music they just can’t do anything with,” she says.
“It makes me so sad because I am that artist, I’ve been that artist, and as soon as I got the tiniest bit of funding we’ve been able to make this year happen.” She’s still mostly bankrolled by her job as a barista. The Hannah Montana lifestyle does require a fair bit of crying in the coffee shop cellar, but it’s the don’t-try-don’t-get approach that’s driven her career to date.
She only bagged the Stevie gig because she decided to voice-note BST’s booking agent — not her “best work”, according to her heckling housemates, but it worked. “That was the greatest experience of my life,” she beams. “She’s going on tour again in 2025, so I’m gathering my coven.
Light your candles; we’re going again. I have to make that happen!” Don’t try, don’t get. This drive hasn’t made her competitive, though.
In the bubble of artists she’s found herself in — the likes of McCarthy, Nxdia and Cat Burns — they’ve found that community works a lot better than competition, anyway. “It’s such a thing of ‘what do you need? How can I help? Let’s talk about all of our deals so none of us are getting shafted’,” Catty explains. “I ride for them, and I really feel like they ride for me.
It’s such a beautiful thing, and I would be so lost without them.” The importance of having those artists around her — a lot of whom also identify as lesbian or otherwise LGBTQ+ — isn’t lost on Catty either. Her own coming out song, 2022’s rock-flecked ‘Maybe All the Rumours Are True’, took pride of place in her Lafayette set, to huge reaction.
“I’m such a simple little lesbian,” she says. “If I see any female artist who also dates women do anything, I think, ‘yes diva’, because we need it so much. Growing up I had such a dire need for representation, and I know that every other queer woman in my life also had that need, so now that we have it I’m so excited by it and I love it so much.
It genuinely warms my heart.” On the subject of heartwarming: while ‘Healing Out of Spite’ was a cathartic pop rock EP born from heartbreak, she’s now dating someone “who’s really matching my energy”, and her writing is taking a brighter turn. At Lafayette she played new track ‘Joyride’, written partly to win a Twitter bet that she could never write a love song, partly to prove to herself that she could.
“I feel like it’s so me,” she says, discussing her new material. “It’s so CATTY-coded, but it’s also a little bit more theatrical, really pulling on my influences — and a little bit of–,” her voice drops to a camp whisper, “musical theatre”. Before the ‘Welsh Reneé Rapp ’ comparisons write themselves, she clarifies: “Am I a musical theatre kid, or do I just love ‘Chicago’ and ‘Burlesque’? Discuss.
” — — ‘Healing Out Of Spite’ is out now. Words: Caitlin Chatterton —.
