Singles

Betty Curse - God This Hurts

Tim Miller 24/07/2006

Rating: 2/5

A cross over from film to music is always inadvisable, even more so than a switch the other way. So often, a big movie star releases a single with the budget of Independence Day, the writing team of Justin Timberlake and Britney combined, the video set in Tahiti with a Claudia Schyffer cameo, and still it's terrible. With all due respect to 19-year old '28 Days Later' actress Betty Curse, although she does have a cool name - which I'm inclined to believe is a moniker anyway - the last thing the music industry needs right now is the emergence of yet another solo angry young woman. Allegedly, Goth chic is the 'look' this summer, and Betty Curse is the British Goth princess on which the fashion conscious amongst us will be styling ourselves.

However, few aspiring young solo females will be styling their music on Curse, and God This Hurts is a writer's dream of a song title. Like US counterpart Avril Lavigne, Betty Curse deals in inoffensively loud angsty rock, with trite, generic lyrics, “God this hurts/ It really couldn't get much worse”. She's right: I don't think, lyrically, it could. The guitars have their distortion cranked up into overdrive, yet the volume is at half-mast. A sing-a-long, anthemic chorus lifted straight out of Kelly Clarkson's songbook, God This Hurts is a call to arms for teen-somethings everywhere to take back their female freedom! The clichés come thick and fast, most notably in the cringe-making line, “All your friends think you're so tough / but guess what you're not, can't you see? / You're the loser 'cause you lost me”. He saw the light, more like.

God this grates. If you were to hear this on the radio, you'd shake your head and mutter something about Sk8r Boi being ok but she really should have quit while ahead. Betty Curse's single fits perfectly into the teeny-bopping angst rock market, without anything to distinguish it from her competitors. Curse even adds an American twinge to her vocals to play safe. God, THAT hurts. Other areas of the press seem to think there's a lot to come from Betty Curse, so I hope there's more than 'broken hearted girl vents anger at evil ex-boyfriend' songs to her debut album Hear Lies Betty Curse [sic], because otherwise it will be, quite honestly, RIP Betty.

Released 14th August.