I have to be honest and say that some artist and band names don’t do it for me. Two quick examples from the UK – Beans on Toast and The Lovely Eggs. Perhaps it’s the cheap café image they conjure up. To a lesser degree that was what happened with Danish artist BBYBITES (Martha Maj Hauptmann).
What does it mean? Baby bites? Does it have some arcane reference to the dreaded I.T. or ‘Big Tech’?
And on the first listening I thought ‘bby’ was a little too commercial for my taste. We don’t cover many overtly commercial releases at NMR, although we hope to cover more this year.
But when I read that she draws inspiration from a range of artists as diverse as Nancy Sinatra, Peggy Lee, M.I.A and Gwen Stefani I thought she deserved another hearing. It is a song about identity crisis and if I read it correctly she ‘suffers’ from it herself – having four different female identities called Daisy, Donna, Katie and Maggie; her alter egos. But whatever hat she’s wearing today, she’s always ‘baby’. And that’s what she likes.
I suppose that is also representative of her propensity to mix or switch between genres as she has done in her short career to date. This one is straight R&B. A simple melody that you’ll remember, an oft-repeated chorus line, and that distinctive R&B vocal, complete with a little Essex glottal stop on the word ‘little’ (say ick-le).
If R&B is your thing then you’ll love it. Simple as that.
Unfortunately, when this is published the video won’t yet have been released. That comes on 22nd January and we’ll add it in then (or check it out yourself). If you watch it you’ll get a better feel for what the song is about as she changes costume, persona and ‘image’ with the speed of a Drag Queen or a Folies Bergere dancer. And the green contact lenses she wears for one of her identities, together with blood red lipstick while her face is framed by what – a terrorist mask made out of stockings? – combine to be both astonishing and very alluring.