Betty Boo started songwriting 'in a supermarket car park'
Betty Boo returned to songwriting in a "supermarket car park".
The 52-year-old pop star - who shot to prominence in the late 80s - returned to writing amid the first COVID-19 lockdown, when her husband was busy shopping.
Betty - whose real name is Alison Clarkson - said: "It suddenly dawned on me a few years ago that I was going to be 50 and deep down I always wanted to make another Betty Boo record.
"Getting into middle age, you also start to feel invisible and I didn’t want that to happen. If it’s OK for Mick Jagger or Rick Astley to keep going, why not me?"
The 'Doin' the Do' hitmaker believes she's now "made the record [she] should have made when [she] was 25".
Asked if she started writing music again, she told the Observer newspaper: "Yes, in the supermarket car park in the first lockdown.
"My husband would do the shopping and I’d park facing a wall, playing tracks, so no one could see me singing along! It was great to enjoy it again because I’ve had times when I didn’t even listen to music through the years. It made me too sad.
"Now I think I’ve made the record I should have made when I was 25."
Betty walked away from her pop career at the end of the 90s.
The singer admitted she didn't have the energy and enthusiasm she needed at the time, following the death of her parents.
She said: "My mother got very ill, then she died, then my aunt died ten months after my mum. My dad had died before that.
"To be a pop star, you have to be full-whack all the time and I just melted. I didn’t want to be that other person any more. I went into survival mode looking after my granny and family.
"But I didn’t feel like I’d missed out, because when I launched my solo career, I’d taken control of everything - written my music, produced it, had the freedom to look the way I wanted to look."
