Meet the ACL Artist: Becky Hill
When I met Becky Hill at Weekend One of Austin City Limits, the first thing I noticed was her outfit. Wearing a denim mini skirt, bedazzled corset and white cowgirl boots, Hill looked right at home in Texas. Hailing from Worcestershire, England, though, Hill was a long way from her hometown.
A singer-songwriter mainly creating dance music, Hill rose to prominence after appearing on The Voice UK when she was 17 years old. Hill said she’s been playing music for much longer though, as she first started learning to play the guitar when she was 10.
“I started singing when I was 11, and then I started writing music when I was roughly 15 or 16 [and] got into a little band that toured locally,” Hill said. “Somebody that I used to do open mics with suggested I apply for The Voice. I got to the semifinals and then I joined the industry.”
Shortly after moving to London alone to start her music career, Hill said she got her first record deal. At 19, she went on to make her first number one track titled “Overdrive,” but was unexpectedly dropped from her label. So, she took matters into her own hands.
“Six months later, I went independent. I started my own label called Echo Records [and] put all the money I got from my first record deal into this label and released an EP,” Hill said. “That got me my second record deal with Polydor Universal, and they’ve been my record label ever since — we have a very happy relationship.”
Hill’s career hasn’t been without other struggles, though, and she said it’s been difficult to break out in a genre of music typically dominated by men.
“I love what I do, I think dance music has always been a passion of mine. [But] it’s been very male-heavy,” Hill said. “I’ve enjoyed being a woman in dance music. Obviously you have to work 10 times harder, but I’ve enjoyed proving myself and seeing people go, ‘Oh, she can sing and she can write music.’”
Hill took over T-Mobile stage on Oct. 8 in a different, but equally fun and flashy, outfit, ready to dance with her fans under the Austin sun. As an artist from the U.K. who had never been to Texas, Hill said she feared she would have few people to perform in front of.
“I was worried that nobody would turn up … I was so stressed and nervous. But I got out onstage, and I felt like I had something to prove,” she said. “I had a nice crowd and over the next five minutes of my set it doubled in size. You could tell there were people who didn’t quite know who I was … [and] I wanted to make sure I sang really well and put on a great show.”
A fear of failure, though, is one of the things that Hill said continues to ignite her fervor for creating music and performing — despite having 16.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify, she still feels like she has something to prove.
“It feels like I have a personal vendetta against the world and that I need to show them who I am and what I do,” Hill said. “People ask me, ‘What do you want out of your career?’ and it’s always world domination … I want to be a global artist, and I want to sell records.”
At the end of the day, though, Hill said she continues making music simply because of her passion for it and the ability to make connections with thousands of fans while on stage.
“I think it’s such a beautiful thing to do. I love my job. I feel very grateful [and] very lucky,” Hill said. “ I would love to have this for the rest of my life.”
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