‘I’m not sexy for men, I’m sexy for me’: Becky Hill reveals all about her brush with infamous Killing Kittens all-female sex parties as she prepares to take Glastonbury by storm tomorrow
- Becky Hill, 29, is the performer, writer or co-writer behind a cache of Top 40 hits
- READ MORE: Becky Hill wows in a silver tassel bodysuit at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend
I’ve really struggled with spreading the word about what I do and who I am,’ says Becky Hill, winner for the past two years of the Brit Awards’ Best Dance Act.
‘There will still be people reading this and going, “I dunno who the f**k she is!?” And that’s OK, but it’s my mission to make sure that you do.’
If you’re one of those wondering who Hill is, watch the Glastonbury coverage on Sunday night.
At 6pm she’ll perform to a crowd made up from Glasto’s 210,000 festivalgoers plus the millions watching BBC live streams (last year these broke records at around 23 million), bringing her 90s-tinged, electro-pop bangers ever further into mainstream view.
Hill, 29, from the picture-book village of Bewdley, Worcestershire, is a mass of contradictions.
Becky Hill, 29, who got herself noticed by reaching the semi-finals of The Voice in 2012, is the performer, writer or co-writer behind a cache of Top 40 singles. (Leather dress, michaelkors.co.uk. Sunglasses, lindafarrow.com. Necklace, annoushka.com)
Prone to fearless mission statements about ‘world domination’, she’s also disarmingly candid over her lifelong struggles with mental health.
She’s both enthusiastically sweary and curiously formal, both instantly warm (big on bear hugs) and coolly aloof.
Having arrived a diva-worthy hour late to the YOU photo shoot, she had sent the team an apologetic bunch of flowers before the day had even finished.
Formidably ambitious and constantly anxious, Hill is currently undergoing a lengthy diagnosis process for ‘some sort of neuro-diverse-y, autism/ADHD thing’.
It meant that she found being shot for a magazine cover ‘really hard’. At one point she asked the entire YOU team to leave the set while the photographer worked.
Immediately afterwards, she sparked a cigarette, the relief visible on her face.
‘I’m scared of new people. I struggle to speak to people who I don’t feel connect with me straight away,’ she explains.
‘Photo shoots make me feel vulnerable and fragile. I feel apologetic. I feel as though everyone thinks I look like a d**khead.’
Hill will perform to a crowd made up from Glasto’s 210,000 festivalgoers plus the millions watching BBC live streams at 6pm today. (Cardigan, skirt and boots, michaelkors.co.uk. Necklace, annoushka.com)
She has been prone to negative thoughts since adolescence, convinced that girls at school were bitching about her.
Even today she struggles to believe she’s ‘valuable and worthy and loved’.
It’s problematic for a pop star whose burgeoning fame has meant ‘a lot of insecurities have come to light’. She’s learnt to control them through therapy.
‘Ninety-nine per cent of people are just excited to see you,’ she says. ‘But when new people come over to talk, I have to scream in my head, “It’s all OK! You’re just… getting bigger now!” And all I ever wanted was for people to listen to my music.’
This year, more people than ever will be doing just that.
Having got herself noticed by reaching the semi-finals of The Voice aged 17 in 2012, she is the performer, writer or co-writer behind a cache of Top 40 singles, with almost 20 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone.
She’s now so ubiquitous that she released a greatest-hits compilation before her debut album.
Hill has been the kind of pop presence whose music is more known than her name, unless you’re a Gen Z/millennial clubgoer, for whom she’s already a superstar, soundtracking both the euphoria and heartbreak of what it means to be young.
Hill’s now so ubiquitous that she released a greatest-hits compilation before her debut album. (Coat and trousers, michaelkors.co.uk)
When she performed on Love Island last year, 24-year-old contestant Paige announced, in disbelief, ‘Becky Hill is going to be here tonight – what the actual f**k!’
Hill is also known for her distinctive facial moles (on her upper lip and chin) which, today, are barely there.
‘I had them shaved down earlier this year,’ she explains, startled at being asked where they are.
‘I’ve always loved them; my mother has similar ones. They’d grown, I was catching them on things, getting shadows in pictures and you worry about any mole that grows.
‘This is the first time I’ve ever spoken about it publicly. I’ll have to go away and think about how I feel about you asking that.’
Hill is millennial in every way. In 2021 she announced she identified as ‘queer’ despite being in a long-term on/off relationship with her DJ/events manager boyfriend Charlie Gardner (now together seven years, the couple got engaged in January last year).
For Hill, who’s slept with women in the past, queer no longer means gay, it means sexually undefinable, a freedom reinforced on her recent video for the single ‘Side Effects’, which sees her frolic in bed with both a man and a woman, separately.
Hill with DJ/events manager fiancé Charlie Gardner. The pair have been together for seven years and got engaged in January of last year
‘Everybody wants to be more sexually free now,’ she says. ‘And it’s made me have more confidence in my sexuality – on stage, I’m not sexy for men, I’m sexy for me.’
She has always been open, too, about her turbulent relationship with Gardner, especially the early years, and has written ‘many songs about him treating me bad’.
In 2021, during a brief split, she decided the best way to get over it was to attend an all-female sex party.
‘To work out how gay I was!’ She roars with laughter. ‘And I left still not knowing!’
The party was run by Killing Kittens, the company that’s made headlines for being owned by the Princess of Wales’s former schoolfriend Emma Sayle.
It was hosted in a house, was strictly regulated (guests are vetted, wear Venetian-style masks, sign NDAs, no phones allowed) and everyone there was female, including bar staff and security.
‘I think everybody should do it,’ she declares. ‘I watched Carol Vorderman on This Morning talking about how women her age are scared to have more than one sexual partner and she’s now exploring, with people she feels safe with.
‘We need to shake off the old constructs of what a woman should be like – not give a f**k about anything else and be your most authentic self. Because life is way too short not to.’
Performing at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Dundee in May, Hill wowed in a silver tassel bodysuit and platform boots
Growing up through the 90s and noughties, Hill was a small-town girl with enormous dreams – the youngest of five children to a financial advisor father and a market researcher mum.
‘Jobs they hated,’ notes Hill. ‘They would argue so much about money and debt. It set a fire in me, to get a job that I loved.’
She discovered her gritty vocal powers aged 11, began writing songs on guitar at 13, loved drum ’n’ bass and gravitated towards the rave scene, ‘because it was less about pulling girls in pubs, more about “let’s all go back, smoke weed, listen to some tunes and chat”.’
By 15 she was a locally known singer on the open-mic scene, at 17 she had two barmaid jobs, fell into ‘a deep depression’ and auditioned for The Voice to avoid university, frightened of both meeting new people and the newly hiked £9,000 annual student loan, which would have to be repaid.
Ever since, she’s grafted; an old-school pop star who’s taken 11 years to get here: toiling in the dance-pop trenches and, since 2017, contracted to the major label Polydor.
Post-Voice, aged 19, she was signed to the (also) major Parlophone, was brutally dropped when a song didn’t chart and responded, undaunted, by creating her own independent label, Eko.
She’s the kind of person who, when she moved to London aged 18, still worked her Bewdley bar job at weekends.
‘People would come in,’ recalls Hill, ‘and be [faux-sympathetically] “Aww, it’s not going very well, then?” And I’d be like, “I’ll show you!”’ I definitely run on the underdog thing.’
While excited to be performing at Glastonbury, Hill won’t stop until she’s conquered the world (Jacket, skirt and boots michaelkors.co.uk)
A central influence has been Hill’s mum, whose world view was shaped by the death of her brother from a brain tumour in the 70s (she was 22, her brother – Becky’s uncle – 25).
‘My mum is the most “life is too short” positive force,’ says Hill, adding that her own big brother also knew tragedy young, having seen his best friend hit by a car and killed at 16 years of age.
‘I’m so lucky to have two major role models in my life who are so undefeated,’ says Hill, emphatically, of her mum and brother.
‘And who love intensely. They’ve taught me so much about how to be in life.’
As her parents came into their 60s, she noticed how unhappy her dad was at work.
‘My dad’s very anxious – he might be neuro-diverse as well,’ she says. Convinced that the stress might kill him, Hill stepped up, and is now able to offer both her parents the financial security to retire.
‘It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,’ says Hill, who regularly visits her happily retired folks, still living in Bewdley.
Today, Hill lives in Hackney, East London, with Gardner and her dog, Piggy, a french bulldog-pomeranian cross.
She has a diverse, community-minded circle of creative London friends, most of whom she works with (including her best friend, the artist/producer MNEK).
Next year she will turn 30, which feels ‘like a relief’, and is glad a chaotic decade is ending: ‘Why didn’t anybody tell me your 20s are awful?’
She loves being engaged. ‘We definitely went back into the honeymoon phase,’ she says, adding that Gardner was so determined to secure their relationship, they sought professional advice with couples counselling.
‘An incredibly healthy step. The therapist said to me, “Is this a serious thing for you?” I was like, “I’ve been with him since I was 22 and I’m never gonna leave him.”’
‘I said, “Even if I was really miserable, I will stay and fight for this. Until I’m dead.” I adore him. And I know he does me.’
What, I wonder, binds them together?
Hill’s Thrills
Red or white wine?
White wine in summer, red in winter
Shower or bath?
Shower. I take just as long in either
Netflix or night out?
Night out
Trainers or heels?
Trainers
Ibiza or London?
I love London, it’s my home. But Ibiza? It’s hotter! And there’s the sea
Night owl or early bird?
Night owl
Tea or coffee?
Tea
Cat or dog?
Dog. Love my Piggy to bits
‘Um,’ she ponders, and then laughs. ‘We’re both absolute d**kheads!’
She thinks again: ‘It’s our love for music. Our jobs are our lives and to bond through that is so powerful.
‘To go places, be side-of-stage, me watching him DJ, him watching me sing. I’ve said, “I’ll still write songs about you!” I find my emotions chaotic, and love writing about them.
‘Everybody’s emotions are chaotic. Which is probably why [the songs] resonate with people.’
So, what does she want, in the end, from all this?
‘To be a global success,’ she says. ‘I’m the most driven I’ve ever been in my life.’
Eleven years in, then, and the pop game hasn’t yet broken her.
‘There are rips at the seams!’ she says, ‘but I thrive on the feeling that there’s another territory I’ve got to get into. America, Japan – I wanna do a worldwide tour, play massive festivals. I might not get there, but I’ll die trying.’
The last time I heard a pop star talk like this was Ed Sheeran at 23.
‘And look at him! He’s still so down-to-earth. I’d love that to be my story.’
Our hour is up. Hall thanks me for making our interview ‘not boring – I get a lot that are bollocks’.
Her pale blue eyes are no longer fearful – they are fierce. She rises, gives me another rib-crusher hug and leaves with the words: ‘Thanks for helping with my grand plan of world domination!’
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