Beth McCarthy: IDK How To Talk To AUSSIE Girls Tour

London based singer/songwriter Beth McCarthy recently made her debut down under with her ‘IDK How To Talk To AUSSIE Girls’ tour stopping in three major Australian cities, Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne. Originally hailing from York, England, Beth started out in the music world as a young teen who, inspired by the likes of Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran, gigged at local clubs and busked on the streets of England for two years before she made her way onto season three of The Voice UK in 2014 at only 16 years old, following the release of her debut EP ‘Northern Lights’ in 2013. For her blind audition, Beth performed hit song from the time ‘I’m Sexy And I Know It’ by LMFAO. While Beth didn’t win the competition, she continued to hone in on her craft which was best described by Meadows Music Management who stated that “Beth's music tells the stories of a twenty-something trying to understand love, friendship, and the feelings that come with figuring out who you are", which I couldn’t have described better myself. She gained her first taste of fame in November of 2020, when she posted a TikTok of her singing a rewrite of ‘Be Around Me’ by

Will Joseph Cook. The 20-second video gained over two million views which eventually caused her to write a full version of the song from the girls perspective, which was uploaded to Spotify titled ‘Omg Did She Call Him Baby?’. The song has over ten million plays on Spotify and is still an audio that floats around TikTok and Instagram Reels to this day. Following up on the success of the re-work, Beth released her single ‘She Gets The Flowers’ in March of 2021, which was inspired by a TikTok video about a girl who recounted her experience of another person getting into a relationship that she wanted. Beth wrote the chorus using words from the video and uploaded it to her own account, sparking multiple comments from people who had experienced and felt the same way. It was from this outpouring of support that she decided to release the full song which has garnered over 22 million Spotify plays as of writing this review.

Beth McCarthy live at The Brightside

Photographed by Jazmin Wilkins

Lyric opening for Beth McCarthy

Photographed by Jazmin Wilkins

Beth’s first ever show in Australia was opened by local artist, Lyric. Lyric is a 21 year old singer/songwriter from the Gold Coast, Australia and was in my opinion an amazing pick to open Beth’s show. She is a self-taught producer who writes all of her music in the comfort of her home studio with a true gift for storytelling and puts on a truly captivating performance. With her music being inspired by the likes of Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish while still having her own unique flair, it was only going to be a matter of time before her music blew up online, which it did!

Lyric released her single ‘Gravity’ on January 19th of 2024, which garnered a lot of attention from TikTok users. The song has had over 500K streams on Spotify and has amassed over four million views across all of her social platforms, prompting her to follow up with her two newest singles ‘Wildfire (Make You Mine)’ on May 31st, and my personal favourite song of

hers, ‘Isabella,’ on July 26th, which was named Triple J Unearthed’s Track of the Day. Lyric continued on with her success and went on to win the People’s Choice Award at the 2024 Gold Coast Music Awards before later releasing her sophomore EP titled ‘Nostalgia’ on September 20th of 2024. Nostalgia explores emotional themes of growing up, reminiscing on your childhood, and feeling like time is passing by far too quickly. It’s a very raw and vulnerable body of work that I’m certain most people would relate to, and it gives a lot of insight into Lyric’s creative mind and authentic personality, making it hard not to love her. She has just sold out her first ever Australian headline tour and is an artist to keep an eye on for the rest of 2024 and 2025.

Beth took to the stage at 9:45pm, bursting out excitedly onto the stage with a huge smile plastered across her face. Across the one hour and fifteen minute long set, she played multiple of her hit songs as well as a couple of unreleased ones that haven’t yet been recorded. Beth’s show was full of energy and gratitude toward her audience, talking in between songs about how excited she was to be in Australia for the first time. One of my favourite songs from her set was ‘You Ruined Love For Me’ both song and performance wise. I feel like it was at this point in her set that the initial nerves from the performance had been replaced with a huge adrenaline rush, helping her to settle in and put on an amazing show. It didn’t take long for the audience to try and convince her to do a shoey, which is a long held tradition for performers to do on their Australian shows. My favourite moment of the night was when Beth finally gave in to doing a shoey, but in typical Beth McCarthy fashion, her first ever shoey was done out of a bedazzled cowgirl boot that an audience member had given to her, vowing to never do another one, which didn’t last long as she did a second shoey in Sydney just a few nights later! With this small rundown out of the way, let’s dive more in depth of the show with the star rating!

Venue: ★★★★

Beth McCarthy performing live.

Photographed by Jazmin Wilkins

Beth played at a venue I frequent often, The Brightside Indoors. I have always said that The Brightside is the perfect venue for artists that have never played in Brisbane before as the venue is small and compact, but can still fit a large amount of people in a small area. The venue suited the audience and Beth’s performance style very well as she often likes to walk into the crowd and interact personally with her fans in between songs. I’ve always said that the only thing I dislike is the lack of a photo pit in the indoor stage, as during sold out shows like this one it makes it very hard to manoeuvre through the crowd and find the best spots to capture the show. However, from a concert goer’s point of view, I think The Brightside was a great venue choice for both the fans and the artists.

Performance: ★★★★★

As far as Beth’s performance goes, she cannot be faulted. If there’s anything I can say about it, it’s that Beth is a true born performer who absolutely thrives when on the stage. Her interaction with the audience was next level and you can tell how much pride she puts into her performance. The show was high energy and involved a lot of audience interaction, including taking a pride flag during the third song of her set and wrapping it over her shoulders and jumping into and walking through the audience while still singing. She is extremely authentic and her excitement was obvious as between songs she’d look out into the crowd and loudly exclaim how excited she was to be playing her very first show in Brisbane, causing the audience to erupt in cheers each time. As I stated above, towards the end of the performance the audience ended up convincing her to do a shoey on stage, which she had stated after the first song that she would under no circumstances be doing. However, once she saw the bedazzled white cowgirl boot make its way through the crowd, she knew she had no other choice and gave in to the Aussie tradition. She would later do another one at her Sydney show after being adamant on the boot being her first and last shoey experience. Her music transitioned very well from studio to live tracks, mainly due to the instrumental backing tracks and help of her onstage drummer. Beth also surprised the audience with an unreleased track that she had written about a ‘close friend’ whose identity she refused to disclose, but that song had to be one of my favourites of the night, and I do hope she eventually does decide to record it, but according to Beth she has no current plans of releasing this song as a single. All in all, I absolutely loved Beth’s performance and I hope she’ll get the chance to play at a larger venue and to a bigger crowd the next time she returns.

Overall Experience: ★★★★

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the show in its entirety. From Lyric’s vocally powerful opening to Beth’s energetic and dynamic performance, the entire period of the concert was thoroughly enjoyable and I would absolutely love to photograph and attend a show from both artists again! High energy shows are my favourite to attend and I hope to one day see Beth and Lyric perform in more professional lighting as The Brightside feels like more of an underground venue, and I would have loved to see more fun lighting and maybe a smoke machine for more of an atmosphere indoors, but that’s just me nitpicking the smaller things about the show. I would happily go and see Beth McCarthy and photograph her show again! And based on the turnout for all of the Australian dates, I reckon she’ll come back sooner than we all think.

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