Hatty Keane

It’s Friday lunchtime in Piccadilly Station, and Hatty Keane – Manc music’s hotly-tipped teen pop starlet – steps calmly off a train straight from her hometown of Macclesfield.

The commuter rush is reaching manic proportions yet 16-year-old Keane, dressed head-to-toe in sombre black, seems strangely at ease; a young woman almost rejoicing in the anonymity of bustling crowds.

This comfort in anonymity, CityLife soon discovers, is typical of Hatty Keane the off-stage personality, a girl who describes herself as “shy and lacking in confidence – I prefer to be in the background”.

Such frank admissions sit in bewildering contrast to Hatty Keane the on-stage performer.

Under-going a startling metamorphosis, where the hesitant speaking voice and self-conscious manner is replaced by eye-poppingly glamorous outfits and incredible vocal gymnastics, Hatty Keane’s school girl to songstress transformation has the desired effect of making collective jaws drop in amazement.

“I think it’s nice to have two sides of yourself,” she smiles, having now repaired to a quiet upstairs bar for our CityLife interview.

“People who know me see me as pretty quiet. I’m not a big attention-seeker or anything. But when I go on stage, this whole other part of me comes out.

“When I’m singing to big crowds, the nerves just seem to go and it feels dead natural.

“It’s a whole other me when I get up and sing.”

The fact that Keane has managed to engage that onstage persona at all in the past 12 months is nothing short of remarkable.

A whirlwind 2011 has seen the 16-year-old perform a most impressive juggling act: completing the final year of her GCSE studies (where she bagged top grades in maths and sciences), then enrolling at sixth form college, all the while fulfilling her duties as Manc music’s sparkling teen pop ingénue.

Indeed, at a precarious age when most teenagers would rather not have their futures mapped out for them, Keane can’t help but sense what’s coming up round the corner.

Since scooping the top prize in the under-18s category at the Open Mic UK competition at London’s Indigo2 last year, Keane’s career arc has enjoyed a fantastically upwards curve: support gigs with N-Dubz and Tinchy Stryder, thousands of hits on her YouTube channel and securing a huge record deal with Baby Girl Music.

After an exhaustive summer of recording sessions and festival appearances, Keane is finally poised to unleash her debut single, the double A-side Electricity/Best Kept Secret, two tracks which confirm her place in Manc music’s ever-growing invasion of female performers – the likes of Nikki Garnett, KT Forrester and A Me B – who have similarly pick-axed their way up the cultural cliff face in their own generational DIY way.

“There’s a lot of girls out there who want to do things their own way,” Keane stresses, “who don’t want to go down that X Factor route. Even though I love watching The X Factor, I also know that you lose a lot of artistic control when you go on a show like that.

“I’m enjoying learning about the music industry and making all my own decisions – the kind of album I want to make, who to work with, what to wear. I’d hate that big overnight success – I’m enjoying this little journey of my own, where I can appreciate all the good stuff that happens ’cos I’ve worked for it.”

Born Harriet Elizabeth Keane in Salford, she lived there until the age of five, when she relocated to Macclesfield with her mother following her parents’
divorce (she is still close to her father and sees him regularly).

Her talent for singing, she says, was discovered by accident, when she began humming along to her mother’s CD collection in the car to school each morning.

She recalls: “It was that Katie Melua song, The Closest Thing To Crazy. I’d just sing along in the car, and I thought, ‘I don’t sound too bad at this.’”

By the time Keane had plucked up the courage to perform at her school’s annual talent contest (“After I’d sung once on stage, I just got the bug to carry on performing”), her tastes had thankfully progressed from Melua’s yawnsome MOR, her music collection soon dominated by the strident R&B-pop of Rihanna, Pussycat Dolls and Nicki Minaj (“A big influence – I love the extremes she goes to”).

Of course, the impact of those artists upon Keane’s own music and image is hugely pronounced: from her flamboyant stage attire to her robo-pop-R&B and those vaulting vocal gymnastics.

For 16-year-old Keane and many of her teen generation, a pop Year Zero that began with The Spice Girls has since evolved into a decade-long
immersion in hyper-visual, uber-sexualised pop performers, the impact only intensified by 24 hour music video channels and YouTube.

Looking back on her decade long pop education, Keane gives short shrift to the often-cited suggestion that such visual bombardment could ever be truly harmful. “I do think people over-react to how damaging pop music can be,” she argues. “For girls my age, pop music is just a form of entertainment.
The way someone like Katy Perry dresses, I see how she presents herself as like a cartoon – her videos don’t represent real life.

“For me, it’s not really about how female singers look, but more what they represent.

“When Beyonce performed at Glastonbury, people commented on what she wore, but for me, I was more inspired by the overall show and what a strong, independent woman she came across as. As a singer, that’s something to work towards.”

And work she most certainly will do. With the starting pistol firmly sounded by the release of her debut single this week, Keane’s work marathon steps into overdrive in the next few months: she’s been approached to work with Taio Cruz (“He told me I had worldwide appeal”), she’s about to record her second single, a track written by John Scott who has penned hits for Beyonce and Chris Brown (“a great song – my first big hit hopefully”), and she’s one of the highlights of this weekend’s Salford Music Festival, performing at The Willows on Sunday.

Not that Keane is averse to indulging in the more glamorous perks of the pop star profession. Only a few days before our CityLife assignation, Keane had the honour of presenting an award at the WellChild Awards in London, sharing the podium with Pixie Lott. Sat in the front row and giving an appreciative nod was a certain member of the Royal Family.

“Prince Harry was sat right in front of me!” she exclaims. “I didn’t get a chance to speak to him, but I’ve been joking that he might have looked me up afterwards. Hopefully he was on Facebook checking out my music and sending me a friend request under some weird pseudonym.” - City Life

When Keane entered the Open Mic competition she wowed judges whom included Radio 1’s Ras Kwame, Mobo Award-winning Shola Ama and BGM’s Michael King. This was just the beginning for the teenage sensation. Hatty’s success in this competition led to her being offered a management and development contract by Future Music and BGM Music.

Since her signing to Future Music and BGM in February 2011, Hatty has been putting together material for her debut album, and has already had songs penned for her by the likes of veteran songwriters Bridget Kelly (Roc Nation), Deekay (JLS), Laurence Hobbs (Pixie Lott), and John Scott (Beyonce and Chris Brown).

12th September sees the release of double A side single Best Kept Secret/ Electricity. My first listen to Best Keep Secret is extremely positive. The song itself is a perfect combination of Pop and R & B music. She has incredible vocals considering she is only 16 years old. If one song sounds amazing the album must be a complete cracker.

Hatty Keane is signed to Baby Girl Music and I see herself having a really bright career within the music industry. - Planet Music