Booty Call

Victoria Hesketh – that’s Little Boots to you and I – is tired. This popstar malarkey isn’t all it’s cut out to be. Nobody tells you about the constant jetlag, the loneliness, the early mornings, the late nights, the missing luggage, the long soundchecks, the wardrobe malfunctions...

It’s no wonder the Blackpool lass yawns openly as she speaks down a crackly phone line from Toulouse. In fact, she seems distinctly disinterested, even as she nonchalantly describes bouncing from continent to continent – something she couldn’t have envisaged 12 months ago.
This time last year, Hesketh had yet to be crowned winner of BBC’s Sound of 2009 poll, had yet to release a top 5 debut album, and had yet to have fans and journalists from Sydney to Los Angeles foaming at the mouth in search of adjectives to describe her glam electro-tweaked manoeuvres. In any case, the 25-year-old doesn’t think of herself as a pop star.
“You feel like you have to be Madonna to be a pop star,” she reflects. “I’d just never call myself that. Yeah, it may be a compliment, but I’d rather be a musician.”
With a background in classical and jazz (she was formally trained in both), the diminutive blonde shirks attempt to pigeonhole her sound. The fact remains, though, whether she likes it or not, Little Boots is as pop as they come. She writes light, airy songs that burrow into your consciousness and fizz around until you know every beat and every word off by heart. She wears outfits that Roisin Murphy would impale herself on a hat pin for, and she’s already had everyone from Neil Tennant to Gary Numan singing her praises. Heck, she’s even managed to have the tabloids concoct a mini-feud with fellow electropopper La Roux (which she incidentally brushes over with a naïve “Really? I haven’t read any press about it…”). It’s been a big year. How has she dealt with her lightning-fast rise to fame?
“Around the time of the album release was obviously quite an intense period, but once it was out it was fine. You can feel like ‘I can get on with it now’, and just concentrate on doing what you do well and stay focused. I dunno, I felt quite a lot of pressure at the time, but I think I’m just growing into it a bit more now.”
On the other hand, though, Hesketh has been waiting for her moment for a long time. Having written her first song at 13, membership of an indietronica band (Dead Disco) and an unsuccessful Pop Idol audition have already been crossed off her Bucket List. So what’s next on the agenda? Can we expect a follow-up to Hands sometime in 2010, or will the promotional machine continue to roll on relentlessly?
“Yeah, it’d be nice to get started on it,” she says. “I just need to have some space to start writing again, really.”
She has, however, been dropping a new song into live sets that may be an indication of her future material.
“It’s called ‘Echo,’” she reveals. “It’s acoustic, so it’s always gonna sound more slow and epic on piano, but yeah, it’s good. It’s a bit more epic, maybe, but in a good way.”
As the decade is coming to a close, I ask her if she thinks that her album will be considered one of the noughties’ best pop records, but all I’m met with is a coy “I dunno”. Does she reckon that the meaning of the word ‘pop’ has changed over the past ten years, with the advent of AutoTune and reliance on studio wizardry and production?
“It depends on the artist, really. You can use things in a creative way – even things like AutoTune. It seems now that people put so much on the voice, and the vocal performance, the singing - you know, like with X Factor and things like that. It kind of feels weird to me, because I’ve never thought that great vocals is what pop music is about. I think it’s just about keeping it interesting from a pop kind of base.”