Beth Ditto

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Beth Ditto performing with Gossip at the 2012 Roskilde Festival

Beth Ditto (* 19th February 1981 in Searcy , Arkansas as Mary Beth Patterson ) is an American singer , songwriter and since its foundation in 1999 until its dissolution in 2016 and the comeback in 2019 singer and front woman of the band Gossip .

Life

Childhood and youth

Mary Beth Ditto grew up in a trailer park on the outskirts of the small town of Searcy , Arkansas . Her mother was Velmyra Estel, who had different surnames through several marriages and was called Velmyra Patterson at the time of Mary Beth's birth. Shortly after her birth, her mother and father separated again and Mary Beth was adopted by her foster father Homer Edward Ditto and got his name. Homer Ditto was also the father of her three older siblings Benny, Robbie and Akasha, while her younger siblings Jacob and Kendra came from other fathers. Beth Ditto only met her biological father as a teenager, but was unable to develop a relationship with him. She spent part of her youth with her mother, her aunt "Jannie" and her foster father. As a child, Beth Ditto said she was regularly sexually abused and raped by her uncle.

Beth Ditto lived with her family in Judsonia , where she grew up as an outsider and turned more and more to the punk and grunge styles . She sang in a choir and together with her high school friend Anthony and drummer Joey Story she formed the band Little Miss Muffet when she was around 15 and performed locally with them. Already at this point in time her music was influenced by bands from the Riot Grrrl and especially by Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail from Bikini Kill . Little Miss Muffet performed with other local bands, including Room Fulloff Thirteen and Mrs. Garrett , Nathan Howdeshell's band, Nathan and Jeri Beard's Space Kadetts / Boy Pussy USA, and PooPoo Icee , in which Jeri Beard and Kathy Mendonca played.

Beth Ditto befriended Nathan Howdeshell, Kathy Mendonca and Jeri Beard and after high school she moved to Olympia in Washington a year after they shared an apartment.

Gossip

Beth Ditto in the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver, BC

At that time, Olympia was shaped by the punk culture and the musical development of the Riot Grrrl and grunge from Seattle . She and Nathan, Kathy, and she formed the band Gossip here on a whim in 1999 and played a few gigs. The band released an EP as a debut on the independent label K Records , and later switched to the Riot Grrrl label Kill Rock Stars , where they recorded their first album That's Not What I Heard in 2001 .

The band gained local fame as a punk band and toured with better-known bands of the label such as Sleater-Kinney , but failed to establish themselves musically in the United States even after their second album The Movement in 2003. Like her band colleagues, Beth Ditto kept afloat financially, mainly with part-time jobs between tours. They moved to Portland , where Beth Ditto suffered from depression and the first symptoms of chronic sarcoid . In 2005, Kathy Mendonca decided to leave the band Gossip and lead a regular life. Ditto had decided to focus more on the band by this point and they had an offer to tour with Le Tigre . Hannah Blilie, who previously played at Shoplifting , was accepted as the new drummer .

In 2006 the band recorded the album Standing in the Way of Control with the title track of the same name. The album was a huge success , especially in Great Britain, and in the same year Beth Ditto was the winner of the NME Cool List published by the English music magazine New Musical Express . She was the first woman to win on this list, and at the same time there was no cover picture of her on the magazine. The NME then persuaded Beth Ditto to appear naked on the cover of the magazine the following year, which it assumed - she was featured with the headline “Kiss my ass” and an article in which it was about revelations from the rainbow press and “Size Zero “(size 32) went. In addition to her music career, the singer wrote a column for the British newspaper The Guardian from 2007 , the series was entitled What would Beth Ditto do?

Beth Ditto 2010 in Cannes

In February 2009 she was also naked on the cover of the English glossy fashion magazine Love to see the headline "Icons of our generation". In April 2009 it appeared on the cover of the fashion magazine Dazed & Confused . For the British clothing chain Evans , Ditto designed its own collection for plus sizes, which appeared in July 2009.

Private life

Ditto is an openly lesbian , she is known for her feminist comments and supports the LGBT movement. In 2012 Beth Ditto published her autobiographical book Coal to Diamonds: A Memoir (published in German under the title Heavy Cross ) together with the feminist author Michelle Tea , in which she mainly describes her childhood and youth as well as the first years of the band's history from Gossip to Represents appearance of the album Music for Men .

In July 2013, Beth Ditto married her partner Kristin Ogata in Hawaii . On December 31, 2014, she performed the wedding in Oregon, USA. Same-sex marriage was legalized there in May 2014 . In the spring of 2018, Ditto stated in an interview that she and her wife had separated and that she was now living with the musician Ted Kwo.

Discography

With Gossip

Solo and features

Studio albums

year title Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK
2017 Fake sugar DE22 (4 weeks)
DE 		AT23 (2 weeks)
AT 		CH11 (12 weeks)
CH 		UK47 (1 week)
UK
First published: June 16, 2017

EPs

year title Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK
2011 Beth Ditto - EP DE78 (2 weeks)
DE 		- CH45 * (2 weeks)
CH 		UK76 * (1 week)
UK
First published: March 4th, 2011
* Ranked in the singles charts

Singles

year Title
album 		Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK
2011 I Wrote the Book
Beth Ditto - EP 		DE24 (14 weeks)
DE 		AT43 (4 weeks)
AT 		CH59 (2 weeks)
CH 		-
First released: January 10, 2011
promo single

More singles

  • 2017: Fire
  • 2017: We Could Run
  • 2018: I'm Alive

As a guest singer

year Title
album 		Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK
2014 Running low DE100 (1 week)
DE 		- - UK80 (1 week)
UK
First published: June 16, 2014
Netsky feat. Beth Ditto

more publishments

Awards

  • 2006 - NME - Coolest Person in Rock
  • 2007 NME Awards Sexiest Woman of the Year nomination
  • 2008 - Glamor Awards - International Artist of the Year

Publications

swell

  1. ↑ a b Thomas Gross: Come in without knocking , articles in the period June 18, 2009, accessed on July 2 in 2009.
  2. ↑ a b Beth Ditto, Michelle Tea: Heavy Cross , German by Conny Lösch. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2012; P. 30 ISBN 978-3-453-26675-9 .
  3. ↑ Beth Ditto, Michelle Tea: Heavy Cross , German by Conny Lösch. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2012; P. 46 ff. ISBN 978-3-453-26675-9 .
  4. ↑ Beth Ditto, Michelle Tea: Heavy Cross , German by Conny Lösch. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2012; P. 63 ff. ISBN 978-3-453-26675-9 .
  5. ↑ a b Beth Ditto, Michelle Tea: Heavy Cross , German by Conny Lösch. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2012; P. 74. ISBN 978-3-453-26675-9 .
  6. ^ A b Ray Rogers: The Music That Made Me: Beth Ditto . Interview with Beth Ditto on billboard.com, March 7, 2013; Retrieved January 10, 2015.
  7. ↑ Beth Ditto, Michelle Tea: Heavy Cross , German by Conny Lösch. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2012; 76. ISBN 978-3-453-26675-9 .
  8. ↑ Beth Ditto, Michelle Tea: Heavy Cross , German by Conny Lösch. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2012; P. 123. ISBN 978-3-453-26675-9 .
  9. ↑ Carsten Schrader: Feminismus goes Fashion ( Memento from May 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), article in U mag from July 20, 2009, accessed on May 1, 2019.
  10. ↑ Beth Ditto, Michelle Tea: Heavy Cross , German by Conny Lösch. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2012; P. 172. ISBN 978-3-453-26675-9 .
  11. ↑ Beth Ditto, Michelle Tea: Heavy Cross , German by Conny Lösch. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2012; Pp. 185-186. ISBN 978-3-453-26675-9 .
  12. ↑ Beth Ditto, Michelle Tea: Heavy Cross , German by Conny Lösch. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2012; Pp. 190-191. ISBN 978-3-453-26675-9 .
  13. ↑ Naked Ditto Most Controversial Mag Cover? ( Memento of April 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), advocate.com, April 15, 2010
  14. ↑ Coverwatch: LOVE Magazine with Beth Ditto ( Memento from April 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), lesmads.de, February 13, 2009
  15. ↑ Dick in Mode , article in Vogue April 16, 2009, accessed July 2, 2009.
  16. ↑ Coverwatch: Beth Ditto at Dazed & Confused ( Memento from April 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), lesmads.de, April 14, 2009
  17. ↑ bethdittoatevans.co.uk. ( Memento of June 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on May 1, 2019.
  18. ↑ Beth Ditto: What would Beth Ditto do? . The Guardian. June 8, 2007. Retrieved February 3, 2019.
  19. ↑ Beth Ditto marries her partner . stern.de. May 13, 2013. Retrieved February 3, 2019.
  20. ↑ Tom Lanham: Gossip's Beth Ditto goes for guitars on solo album . The San Francisco Examiner. March 21, 2018. Retrieved February 3, 2019.
  21. ↑ a b c d Chart sources: DE AT CH UK

Web links

Commons : Beth Ditto  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Ditto, Beth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Patterson, Mary Beth (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American rock singer
DATE OF BIRTH 19th February 1981
PLACE OF BIRTH Searcy , Arkansas , United States