“If You Loved Me Right” by Beth McCarthy

It was 2020 when Beth McCarthy, an artist who fled York for London, found her claim to fame: after sharing a 20-second rework of Will Joseph Cook’s “Be Around Me”, she ramped up 2.7 million views and quickly became a TikTok sensation.

A full rewrite of Cook’s single, renamed “Omg Did She Call Him Baby?”, ensued, which currently sits at nearly 3 million streams on Spotify. Over 100,000 TikTok videos have snatched McCarthy’s original sounds.

This year has brought two fresh releases from McCarthy, the first a dark pop tune “She Gets the Flowers” and the second a defiant bop “If You Loved Me Right”. Both deal with issues of heartbreak, but her latest is a wry take on her now-ended relationship, an audio bite back against mistreatment.

McCarthy explains: “I wrote ‘If You Loved Me Right’ about being with someone who makes you feel crazy for being insecure or not trusting them when it’s their actions and behaviour that made you that way in the first place ie: a gaslight anthem. I came out of a relationship with someone who would call me names such as ‘psycho’ and ‘totally mental’ in arguments and I remember thinking ‘okay, that’s all well and good but if you actually loved me right and didn’t do all of these things to upset me, maybe I wouldn’t be crazy’ – and the song was born! I want this song to be a way for anyone who’s ever been in this situation to take back the power and realise that they were not the problem.”