Bellah Mae

Manifests dream collabs, and confesses dating disasters following the release of her brand new track ‘Date Your Dad’

TikTok, Taylor Swift, dating disasters, and writing extremely catchy songs, Bellah Mae embodies everything that us young women can’t get enough of. Her brand new song ‘Date your Dad’ comes with the disclaimer that no dads were actually dated in the process of songwriting, but these fun and controversial titles are the starting point for Bellah Mae’s music. The lyrics, “he’s fitter, he’s richer, he’s got his shit together” are unapologetically bold, and written to a melody that you just want to scream along to. Do you remember that era when teen girls were obsessed with Hannah Montana and Wild Child? Bellah Mae would be the product of combining this aesthetic circa 2010, with contemporary references to ‘icks’ and ‘I’m just Bait’ in her cleverly crafted songs.

Ick = things that people do to make them seem less appealing or attractive.

‘I’m Just Bait’ - a news/culture Instagram meme page.

She has just played her first ever festival, The Great Escape, which she described as an incredibly fun but also a weirdly intimidating experience. “Everyone around

BY AMY STANBOROUGH

you works in the music industry [at The Great Escape]” she laughs, referring to the incredibly talented and creative nature of people who visit or work in Brighton. Bellah Mae lives in London and jokes that she sometimes tells people she is an accountant, because it is easier than explaining that she is a singer and songwriter. However, Bellah Mae considers that we should never be embarrassed to admit what we do; to admit our talents and goals.

“When you’re talking to people, you just never know who anyone is,” she explains on the benefits of promoting yourself.

She tells me her performance at The Great Escape was a bit of a blur, “you don’t ever process what you’re doing until about ten minutes before.” For Bellah Mae, attending the event was a matter of being in the car, having a red wine, doing a quick five minute sound check, and then suddenly walking on stage. “There was just no time to process it” and instead, she got lost in the singing. “I just love performing, and when you see people singing the song back, that is the BEST thing ever.” Spotting her fans in the crowd put Bellah Mae at ease, though she knew that the people that didn’t yet know her music would quickly love it too.

It is this pure confidence and energetic passion which populated Bellah Mae on TikTok, when her debut track ‘Boyfriend of the Year’ went viral in summer 2022. Bellah Mae encourages “everybody who is up and coming to have a TikTok and social media in general. Reels [on Instagram] are doing better for me at the minute [for engagement] and it just fluctuates. Definitely being present on all platforms is important.” Once you have the account though, it is all about being brave enough to promote yourself. “You can’t go viral if you don’t post the video” Bellah Mae affirms. “It could be the third or thirtieth video, but just one could pick up traction” she continues, emphasising social media’s importance. “Anyone can do [TikTok] and it is so powerful. You just don’t know the reach it can have.” Like doing anything new which puts you in the spotlight, it can be scary or uncomfortable at first, but Bellah Mae proves that it can also lead to you fulfilling your dreams. She is at a point now where she has forgotten how she was once conscious of the fact that people in her home town may see her singing videos. When it comes to promoting yourself, “you just have to own it.”

‘Boyfriend of the Year’ then went on to feature on Mollie King’s Radio 1 show ‘Future Pop’ for its first ever radio spin. Bellah Mae says that Radio 1 are the best supporters ever, and Mollie King and Maia Beth (also hosts ‘Future Pop’) are two of the kindest women she has ever met. All three of Bellah Mae’s songs debuted on Radio 1, with ‘Drama King’ and ‘Date your Dad’ also receiving praise and support on the station. “It’s true that your own voice on the radio sounds so different,” she tells me, reflecting on how that experience felt for her. She continues, “you don’t realise how many people are listening in on that moment” instead, finding herself bopping to the song as if she is the only one tuned in.

Her newest single, ‘Date Your Dad’, communicates tongue-in-cheek lyrics about Bellah Mae feeling more mature than the guys she was dating. It is an empowerment anthem which flips the narrative to thinking about what the female wants in a relationship. The lyric, “just because you know one Arctic Monkeys song, doesn’t make you Indie, if anything it’s icky,” led to us having a more casual chat about other ‘icks’ or turn-offs Bellah Mae could list. She calls to her bestfriend and housemate, Lily (who is in the room with her), to support the discussion. “I don’t like when boys wear boat shoes and no socks,” Lily confesses, to which Bellah Mae replies, “no I don’t mind that.” The conversation quickly sucked me into a debate between two best friends, which is exactly how listening to Bellah Mae’s music feels. ‘Date Your Dad’ could easily be re-written as the script for a facetime conversation with your girlfriends. It’s friendly, confessional and playful.

On the topic of dating and relationships, which are evidently a key theme to Bellah Mae’s songs, she tells me the disaster story of this one guy she was seeing. The first red flag was that he would always invite her on “dates” to group dinners. He never wanted to spend a date as just the two of them. Eventually, when Bellah Mae did get to see him alone, they had planned to go to a bar in Harrods. Lovely setting, gorgeous atmosphere. Well, that is what Bellah Mae was thinking too. But instead of heading to the bar, he headed to the drone section, and started asking Bellah Mae which drone he should buy. “I know nothing about drones!” Bellah exclaims. But then it got worse, as they started to head towards his home in Knightsbridge, where he handed her some bedsheets and asked her to make his bed! He did in fact have a broken shoulder, and physically could not do it himself, but that is surely not what you want to be doing on a first date! “I did it though,” Bellah Mae says. The rest of the “date” consisted of him creepily filming her eating a digestive biscuit and criticising how bad Bellah Mae is at Connect 4. My response to this story is, please tell me you did not see him again. “No Amy, I did not,” she confirms. Good.

“I actually have a really tame life,” Bellah Mae then tries to convince me after that whirlwind of events, “it’s actually Lily who all of my songs are about. She has a wild life, not me.” Their friendship is clearly her muse, and the fact that they live together means that inspiration is always in the air. “I just couldn’t live my life without her, everyone needs a friend like Lily” Bellah Mae says, and her fans love Lily too. She laughs, “we may as well be a duo.”

Amongst Bellah Mae’s musical muses, she admires the likes of Avril Lavigne, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift. With this information, I posed that we play a game of ‘Write, Sing, Support’ (kind of like ‘snog, marry, avoid’). I ask the question, which of these three women would you most like to write a song with, which would you sing on a song with, and which artist would you most like to support on tour? It proved to be a difficult question for Bellah Mae, hand on chin, pondering it for some time. “Support Taylor” she blurts out before quickly retracting that. “Support Avril, sing with Miley, write with Taylor.” “I have to write with Taylor, she is the best song-writer of our generation!” is the final decision. Then, she declares “I will make this happen in the next 3-5 years,” and we take a second to affirm the manifestation.

I ask if Bellah Mae has a distinct writing style and she replies, “I am a title concept writer.” What this means is, “I come up with ideas on a walk or in the sauna, when it is just me and my thoughts,” coming up with a song a day. She continues, “I will take an emotion of how I am feeling, and then I will think it through in obscure ways.” For example, she tells me how the first line of ‘Drama King’: “You take as long as you like to send a reply” was a true experience which she then tried to label with a well known phrase. That phrase became ‘Drama Queen’ which flipped to be ‘Drama King.’ All her lyric ideas are fleshed out and then her song-writing team (the likes of Amy Wadge and Alex Stacey) help with the melody and to put it all together. “For me, songwriting is my biggest passion,” Bellah Mae says, so it is evident why the sense of planning and experimenting with ideas is crucial to her. “The songs are everything; I want them to be a representation of who I am.”

Songwriting proves to be something quite therapeutic for Bellah Mae. It is a way to figure out her emotions: “a lot of the time I don’t even know how I am feeling about something until I put it into a song.” One emotion she knows for sure though, is the excitement she has to be performing at Brighton Pride this summer where she is expecting “high energy and a lot of fun.” She first went to Pride when she was sixteen, after her older sister had just come out. However, this will be her first time at Brighton Pride. Her sister will be coming home from living in Dubai to see the performance. “I just love how it has gone full circle,” Bellah beams. “My music is fun, high energy, and not that serious, which I feel like is perfect for the Pride environment.”

To round up our conversation, I ask what else Bellah Mae is manifesting for 2023. “I will have a top 40 this year” and “I will be performing at Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball” she declares to the universe.

Book your ticket to Fabuloso at Brighton Pride to see Bellah Mae live this summer www.wearefabuloso.org