A local pop star is born: Becca Hatch’s club classics are so good

At 23, Becca Hatch has been making up for lost time. After all, she was 18 when the pandemic struck, severely interrupting that essential coming-of-age rite of passage: hitting the clubs.

“As soon as COVID finished, I was out!” laughs Hatch from a makeshift boardroom in Sony Music’s new Pyrmont offices, looking every inch the budding pop star. Originally from Western Sydney, she moved to Newtown three years ago and found herself partying nights away at The Imperial in Erskineville and at clubs along Oxford Street.

“Because I was 18 [when COVID hit], I kind of feel like I lost a bit of my youth, all those years I should have been going out. Maybe that’s why I started making dance music.” The slinky spirit of the clubs, with their skittering BPMs and escapist overtones, imbues her excellent debut EP Mayday, echoing an entire generation’s desire for the communal salvation that comes from sharing a sweaty, fevered dance floor.

“Dance music had a little re-up; it became more and more cool. And I think people wanted to go out more, especially people my age,” Hatch says of post-pandemic pop’s move towards club culture. “It became a positive thing in my eyes, this thing of we’re all going here to share this experience, the beat comes in and we’re all dancing. It had a real influence on me.”

Although her honey vocals and breezy attitude have made her a leading figure in Sydney’s R&B renaissance for years now, Mayday signals a turning point for Hatch; this is a young artist stamping a unique vision on her sound. “I feel like it’s been a long time coming,” she says. “I feel funny saying this ’cause I’m 23, but I feel wise! The last few years was me finding my lane, working on my craft and finding the right people to make music with. I feel ready to put out my first body of work.”

Raised in Campbelltown to working-class parents, her mother, a retired aged care worker, is Samoan; her father, who works for the taxation office, is Kamilaroi Aboriginal, Hatch says music always felt like a pipedream, even while she attended Campbelltown Performing Arts School, a place all but designed to nurture professional talent.

“Being from Western Sydney and being from a community where it’s mainly working-class people, music’s not really something you feel you can pursue,” says Hatch. “Even when I was starting my career at 16 and 17, my mum would take me to gigs but even then it was like, ‘well, you still have to go to uni and do something.’ It wasn’t something that was considered an actual kind of job.”

Having older siblings who’d already satisfied their professional potential – Hatch’s sister, 10 years older than her, is a lawyer; her brother, seven years older, is a doctor – offered some breathing room, she laughs. Supportive teachers highlighted possible pathways to industry success too, and in 2017, Hatch won Triple J’s Unearthed High Indigenous Initiative.

“It’s funny when I look back because at the time we weren’t even into the culture of Triple J,” Hatch giggles of her industry break. In Western Sydney, where hiphop, R&B and EDM have long reigned supreme, Triple J’s guitar-ish leanings lacked traction. “We just listened to The Edge,” Hatch says of the area’s 96.1 radio station (it was rebranded as CADA in 2022). “If you got played on The Edge, it was like, ‘I’ve made it!’”

Hatch’s Western Sydney upbringing has always played a key role in her music. Her first hit, the ridiculously smooth 2560, was named for Campbelltown’s postcode, while follow-up collaborations with Western Sydney rapper B Wise (B the One) and trio Planet Vegeta (Please U) further touted her local roots.

Although more sonically adventurous than her previous work, Mayday is in the same vein. With its R&B touching UK Garage, Jersey Club and amapiano (Afrobeats’ trending sub-genre), the club sounds popular with Western Sydney’s first and second-generation kids of predominantly Pasifika, African and Asian background, Mayday feels heavily indebted to the cultural melting pot it emerged from.

Fuelled as it was by her 20-something foray into clubbing, the EP, says Hatch, was especially inspired by Hotter Out West, the Boiler Room-style club nights held in places like Parramatta and Mount Druitt. “Hotter Out West really influenced my vibe, just listening to what people were actually DJing and stuff,” says Hatch. “They put the decks in the middle of the room and they play dance music. Jersey Club is massive there, and so is amapiano.”

For the project, Hatch linked up with songwriter Kian and prolific local electronic producers Tentendo and Lucy Blomkamp, who provide intricate backdrops for Hatch’s lovelorn vocals. The result is forward-thinking pop, blurring the lines between R&B and dance music. It sets Hatch up as Australia’s answer to PinkPantheress, the 23-year-old UK phenom whose bubbly, Y2K-skewering confections have found her labelled “the blueprint for the future of pop”.

“The idea was always to make something for the clubs,” says Hatch. “Tentendo plays guitar and keys so well but he’s very much in that house space, and then Lucy is more experimental like hyperpop, likes to try weird things and isn’t afraid to just go wild.

“When I was thinking about the project, I was like these two are a perfect match because they’ll just make some crazy shit. They’re not afraid to try different things. As people, they’re very humble and chill; they never shut things down, they’re always open to try anything.”

When I interviewed her three years ago about Sydney’s R&B boom, Hatch spoke about sending the wave internationally, of the possibility of local R&B having a global breakout the same way The Kid Laroi did for Australian hiphop. Her goals haven’t diminished.

“I still stand by the ‘Sydney R&B to the world’ thing, and I hope it has its moment and grows,” she says. “But personally, this project has marked a lot for me in terms of growth. I feel like if any of the songs resonate with people, that would be awesome.”

Earlier this year, her sound even captured the ears of R&B’s greatest avant-gardist: super producer Timbaland, who was spotted vibing to Mayday’s Bass Keeps Calling and Think About You on his infamous Instagram Live. “It was very surreal. He was saying that my songs should be in Rocket League, this video game where it’s like soccer but you play as cars,” laughs Hatch of the co-sign. “It was amazing. But I’m just glad he didn’t publicly roast me, to be honest.”

With songs this good, it was never a threat. The clubs already know it.

Becca Hatch’s Mayday is out on Friday.

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