Betty Donelly: Alone & No Title

Bella donna of cracked porcelain

As is the case with many fortunate events in life, my discovery of Betty Donelly and her universe was exclusively due to chance. While running a search for songs with the word "belladonna" in the title (for some reason that is of no importance at the moment), I came across one entitled The Belladonna Saucer Eyes. The melody and accompaniment brought memories of Marc Almond back in his glorious Mother Fist & Her Five Daughters days, while the vocals and singing style were reminiscent of The Cure - but still, the originality of the result as a total could account for a really unique musical identity. The voice had something tormented yet powerful in its "texture", the lyrics told a strange, melancholy story, an unexpected melodic twist in the last phrases of the refrain took me completely by surprise. I was hooked.

For days afterwards I returned to Betty's songs, letting her personal world build itself in my mind like a puzzle completed little by little. Her very particular way of singing, soulful and passionate, somewhat disturbing but appealing, drew me back to it like a magnet. I caught myself humming The Belladonna Saucer Eyes at any odd moment of the day - its "difficult" and at the same time, majorly addictive melody (a remarkable combination in itself) kept haunting me; and at a certain point I also realised that eerily enough, the name Betty Donelly sounded like a rough echo/anagram of the word "belladonna" - which, although most probably unintended by the artist, lent an almost metaphysical aspect to my fascination with this song.

Betty Donelly is a Belgian songwriter whose first band, The Fear, was formed while she was still in high school. It was followed by another band, The Elephants, in 1990. In 2004 she recorded her first two solo songs - a little pearl by the title of My Untouchable Friend and The Void, an angry existential plaint. Prodigious and effusive, her musical temperament effloresced with each new composition, producing pure gems like My Angel and I, Porcelain Baby, The Godly Machine, Epiphytes (original and alternate versions). A special mention should be made for Skye Boat Song, a beautiful Celtic ballad with lyrics by Robert Louis Stevenson, an epic element in its melody and a captivating story (based on a historical event) behind it.

Betty writes songs like those that are barely made any more, in a world where machines have ended up altering people's perspectives and perceptions so much that nothing is what it used to be just a few years ago; now computers give the illusion of omnipotence to anyone who can put a couple of prefabricated loops together and add some effects, thus appropriating the arbitrary title of a "composer" (or more often, a "DJ-something"). Artists like her are the living proof that creativity can be expressed in the most spectacular ways even with minimum material backup, when it stems from the driven and driving forces of raw, genuine talent and inspiration.

Betty is currently continuing her musical voyage as a solo artist. Most tracks of two song compilations (one of her solo songs and one of older tracks by The Fear and The Elephants, entitled Alone and No Title respectively - the style of the album covers reminds of a child's drawings, with bright colours and a subtle, "bitter" philosophical touch, a mix of innocence and protest against the world), are freely streamable on ReverbNation.