In conversation with Beth McCarthy

Words by Martyna Rozenbajgier

Beth McCarthy has officially entered her villain era. After performing on the main stage at the Reading Festival, McCarthy was still trying to process what had just happened.

“It feels pretty cool. I have to say, I don’t really know what happened,” she says. “I’ve been telling everyone; everyone’s like, how was it? And I’m like, nah, I think it was good. I blacked out.”

Over at The Grid, McCarthy brought an immediate change of pace to the festival. Her set was charged with rockstar energy, with a cover of Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe! proving an early crowd-pleaser. But the biggest moment came when she introduced Pretty Villain, giving the audience its first real glimpse at what comes next.

It wasn’t just the music that had changed. After an outfit change, McCarthy returned to the stage entirely in black: a sheer corset, leather shorts, long leather boots, a long leather coat and gloves, finished with silver accessories on her teeth. Suddenly, the new material had its own world.

And according to McCarthy, that transformation is very intentional.

“It’s been a long time coming,” she says. “Beth McCarthy has been fading away into her death. It’s pretty dark. She’s no longer here. She can’t come to the phone right now, in the wise words of Taylor Swift.”

There’s a sense of humour behind the darkness, but McCarthy is serious about leaving her old era behind. Pretty Villain is something different for an artist who has often been open about her emotions.

“I’m very much someone who wears a heart on her sleeve, and the Pretty Villain doesn’t do that,” she says.

Instead, the new song introduces a character who is less interested in being the victim and more interested in becoming the person you probably shouldn’t have messed with.

“I guess it’s kind of the beginning of a big story that I’m really excited to tell,” McCarthy says. “I’m excited for this kind of character to find her feet in the world.”

For McCarthy, part of the appeal is being able to have a little more fun with the storytelling. “I just wanted to move into something that was a little bit more fun and a little bit more creative,” she explains.

But there’s also something personal behind the character. McCarthy has always been interested in writing songs for people who might not normally get one, and this time she’s turning her attention to the other side of the heartbreak story.

“I love it when everybody has a song, and I always try to write the songs for the people who don’t have the songs,” she says. “So this is me writing the songs for the villains, for the bad guys.”

It’s a familiar pop narrative flipped on its head. There are endless songs about being heartbroken, being left and having your heart broken by someone else. McCarthy wants to ask what happens when you’re the person on the other side of that story.

“We get so many songs like ‘I was heartbroken’ and ‘You broke my heart’, and I’m like, ‘Ah, there was someone else on the other side of that.’ And that was me. It was me. I’m on the other side of all of them.”

So what exactly makes a good villain?

“Power, owning it, confidence,” McCarthy says. “You need to be confident in your chaos and your messiness and your difference.”

That idea sits at the centre of Pretty Villain. This isn’t simply about becoming a bad person. It’s about taking the things that hurt you and turning them into something else.

“I think taking your sadness or heartbreak or whatever’s happened to you and turning it into something is always a good moment,” she says.

That transformation was already visible at Reading Festival. The change in sound, the new character and the all-black look made Pretty Villain feel less like another song being added to an existing set and more like the first chapter of something entirely new.

Beth McCarthy might have joked that she blacked out on stage, but the message was clear: the Beth McCarthy audiences knew is fading away.

The Pretty Villain has arrived.

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