We Can Do Better Than This by Beth Ditto

Q: Fake Sugar is an evolution of the sound you created in your solo EP, some of which is straight-up house music.

In an interview with Maclean’s, Ditto opens up on becoming an unorthodox style icon, sexism in pop music and living in a backlash-laden country. The project, as well as Ditto’s politics, are thoroughly informed by her past experience recording songs with prized electronic, dance and new-wave acts like Blondie, Simian Mobile Disco and Marc Almond. Her first full-length solo disc, Fake Sugar-produced mainly by R&B producer Jennifer Decilveo (Boyz II Men, Andra Day and Rebecca Ferguson)-will be released on June 16. A proud feminist and a staunch LGBTQ rights advocate-she legally married her partner Kristin Ogata in 2015-Ditto has spent years speaking out against issues such as body shaming (she has her own plus-size clothing line), as well as anti-gay and anti-choice legislation. Ditto’s arrival on the music scene in 2001 as the frontwoman for Gossip, her former punk rock band, was just as powerful as the group’s politically charged choruses.

The Arkansas-born singer-songwriter’s multi-octave voice and thunderous delivery is reliably resilient she’s been bringing an operatic sensibility to pop music for nearly two decades.

(Tobias Schwarz/Reuters)īeth Ditto does not need autotune to kick her notes into high gear-or any prompting, really, to speak her mind. US singer Beth Ditto performs during the 2017 Echo Music Award ceremony in Berlin, Germany April 6, 2017.

We Can Do Better Than This by Beth Ditto