Bel: Good News

After years of being pushed around and emotionally mistreated, Melbourne-born experimental pop artist, Bel is finally saying what’s really on her mind.

Bel is not afraid to say what other people are thinking, even if it gets her into trouble:

“Life is too short to beat around the bush, especially at the risk of your own integrity, safety and mental health, and for the sake of the people that are trying to step on me,” says Bel. “So I figured, as long as I'm being respectful and truthful and never lie, how much trouble can I possibly get into telling the truth?”

So far, this approach has been working for Bel, whose willingness to push musical and visual boundaries has earnt her comparisons to BANKS, Lana Del Rey and FKA Twigs, and makes clear the link to her cited inspirations James Blake, Grimes, Sevdaliza and Caroline Polachek.

Bel kicked off 2020 with the release of Better Than Me – the track’s sleek production and syrupy charm made it a song not just to be listened to, but one to be consumed through all the senses. The song follows the narrative of a girl who is going through various metamorphoses: from passive to assertive, teenager to adult, quiet to loud. Bel hopes that the lyrics provide solace to those who are wanting to scream out the same message to whomever or whatever made them feel like they are second best:

“I kind of heard it as a nice, big ‘fuck you’ to the industry,” she admits.

“It’s so formulaic and so built off of money – and not actually any artistry. As I've grown in my career, I'm starting to see the ridiculousness of it more and more. I think that particularly there are a lot of men that think they have a right to step on women's toes in a business front – and also in an artist front. Something I've been dealing a lot with in Australia is raising awareness about sexual misconduct and harassment in the industry. So basically, I wrote this as a nice big ‘fuck you’ to the men in the industry.”

After years of keeping a lid on her feelings, Bel is now embracing speaking out about the hypocrisies in life:

“If no one else is going to do it, then how are we going to grow as an industry and make it a better place – particularly for females, non binary and trans folk? How are we going to achieve these goals if we don't speak up about various injustices? That's where I come from in regards to my songwriting as well – just trying to be really truthful – not only about things going on in the world, but also my experience and my own struggles.

"I think the whole point of being an artist is to be relatable, authentic and honest. Otherwise, what are you doing? If you're writing music, write truthfully. That's my view anyway.”

Marrying the avant-pop and experimental realms, Bel’s second single of 2020, Spectre saw her blend woozy synths with an RnB groove. Marrying dark pop and experimental realms, the song displays fearlessness and was written in order to metaphorically chronicle what it’s like to have an ominous presence circle and set foot in someone’s emotional, physical or spiritual safe space.

Bel says this could represent anything or anyone – from a previous partner, to someone’s own inner-bully, and the effect that these unrelenting, negative and often intrusive shadows can have in a person’s life.

“I wrote Spectre about whatever that presence is – whether it's about someone else or about your own inner demon circling you – and what it feels like to fight back,” she explains. “It’s the narrative of someone trying to fight back against that.”

A fashion-forward spoken word video titled T1 serves as an introduction to her upcoming Trilogy EP. The piece – written and co-produced by Bel – serves as an introduction to the EP, which includes Better Than Me, Spectre, and new single, Good News.

Describing T1 as her “purple cow”, Bel says that every word comes from the depth of her soul – and whilst admitting that that is terrifying, she is nonetheless excited to share her goals, incentives, plans and vulnerabilities:

“I have a quite an obsessive personality, and I really like the idea of doing things in threes. I also really liked the idea of introducing myself as an artist and introducing my ethos to the world. I wrote this spoken word piece as a way to help people who have never come across me at all, so they can understand exactly what I stand for in a five minute piece.”

T1 summarises and encapsulates Bel’s ethos, her view on the world, and her plans for the future:

“I don't think I've ever been as truthful in anything I’ve written,” she discloses. “I wrote it in about 15 minutes – it was a stream of consciousness. I like the idea of doing things at the start, middle and end. A lot of the lyrics come from the depths of my soul and they speak my truth really loudly and clearly. I want anyone who comes across me for the first time to understand that I understand you, and that you have a home within my world – within my art.”

Completing the trilogy of singles is the haunting and experimental new single, Good News, which explores Bel’s once overwhelming and almost obsessive desire to escape a sense of helplessness. Writing the song with “six emotions in mind”, Bel explains that the idea for the song came from a very toxic working relationship:

“All my self-belief was shattered by an emotionally manipulative man in the music industry,” she shares. “My goals felt impossible, and I drove myself insane fixating on all the things I wasn’t achieving. Being awake and being asleep were equally torturous.”

To dramatise and heighten her own narrative, Good News encompasses all things obsession, paranoia, yearning, tunnel vision and mania.

“I was in a really negative working relationship and this person was very emotionally manipulative and emotionally abusive towards me,” she explains. “He made me lose a lot of belief and faith in myself. I became so obsessed with momentum; I was resenting stagnation. I just felt so stuck, so I wrote this song as an utter cry and prayer for change and movement.

"The lyrics, ‘I need good news to continue’ were very literal to me. I heightened the narrative and made it more than just about feeling stuck: I made it paranoid, I made it obsessive. I really wanted to show that absolute paranoid obsession – when you want something more than anything in the world, and you can't have it, and how crazy that makes you.”

Bel says that what the EP means to her doesn’t have to translate exactly to what the listener interprets its message to be, but feels that the three tracks do fit together cohesively in an overarching theme of the importance of self worth, growth, resilience and pushing back:

“I suppose the only thing that I would really want is for people to feel confident and like someone understands them. In my life in general, I've been forced to compromise – and not just in my music,” she adds. “So if anything, I came into this industry from the get go being unwilling to compromise on my art, and sometimes that was to my downfall. I have been pushed around, mistreated and emotionally manipulated by so many people in so many different areas of my life, and I think I'm at a point now where I'm just sick to death of it.

“I've grown so much as a person. A couple of years ago, I wouldn't even be talking like this. I would be much more calculated, shy, and so concerned about what I was saying and what people think of me. Particularly within my career now, this is the one space where I get a say: it's my art. So I'm pretty firm on that.”

For Bel, there’s a freedom that comes with expressing her true self:

“It's so much easier to be truthful and to be yourself than to put on a show and put on a charade,” she agrees. “So even if I fuck up, even if I say the wrong thing, even if I make a mistake – it's still so much easier just being yourself and being human as opposed to trying to control everything all the time. There are people out there that appreciate the truth, and I suppose that I am the way I am for them. There's so much fuckery out there and so much fakery, and I just don't want to be a part of that. There's enough of that already.”