CMAT: From Brit Awards to BBC 6 Music Festival, a new pop star has arrived

At one point during last weekend's Brit Awards, Clara Amfo was introducing the next performer when she glanced to her side and broke off from her script.

"Ooh, she'd better calm down!" the co-host nervously exclaimed.

Next to Clara, a woman wearing an elegant full-length black gown with balloon sleeves and bronze beehive had spun around to reveal that the back of her dress was a lot more revealing than the front.

It had a large cut-out area exposing her back, plus the top half of her buttocks.

The woman put a leather-gloved hand to her mouth in mock horror at her own exposure before breaking into a wide mischievous grin and exiting stage right, her mission accomplished.

"We've calmed down," Amfo confirmed, creasing with laughter.

The woman was CMAT, the rising Irish singer who was nominated for international artist of the year.

It was the sort of moment that people (mainly people who remember the 1990s) complain is missing from the modern Brit Awards - pop stars behaving badly. Or if not badly, at least cheekily. In this case, literally.

CMAT's moment didn't quite spark the same tabloid frenzy as the last great pop star bum at the Brits - Jarvis Cocker's, being wiggled in the direction of Michael Jackson in 1996 - but it was an attention-seeking intervention, and it succeeded.

Six days after the ceremony, CMAT proved she is worthy of attention for more than her outfits, stealing the show at the BBC Radio 6 Music Festival in Manchester, where she announced herself as one of pop's best new performers.

The charismatic country-rock singer-songwriter's captivating set signalled that she's "taking off to the stratosphere", 6 Music DJ and singer Cerys Matthews wrote afterwards.

Fellow presenter Stuart Maconie described it as "one of the most brilliant things I've seen in years".

CMAT - Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson - started her career in Dublin, but the city was "a wasteland" for women trying to pursue music, she told 6 Music's Matt Everitt.

"I felt was that I was this tokenistic prize of property. The minute that someone found out that there was a woman singer-songwriter in Dublin, I was suddenly getting booked for every support slot under the sun because they wanted to make themselves look good by having a woman on their line-up.

"But they may not have listened to my music, and certainly I wasn't getting booked or encouraged to be a headliner."

She moved to England - to Manchester because she couldn't afford London - but it wasn't a happy time and she still struggled.

A turning point came when she got a place to attend a fan session listening to unreleased music by boundary-pushing pop singer Charli XCX.

When it was CMAT's turn to give her views, she gave brutally honest feedback about the songs. It was enough for Charli to recognise she had musical nous.

"She pulled me aside afterwards and was like, 'Clearly you know loads about music, and clearly you're really talented, and you're not doing anything with your life right now. I don't know why but you should be doing far more than you're doing'," CMAT told BBC Radio 1 last year.

"That is genuinely probably the most important thing that's ever happened to me. And I needed the person that I worshipped to give out to me and scold me, and that is what she did."

After that kick up the now-famous backside, CMAT broke up with her boyfriend, moved back to Dublin, and reinvented herself.

Her debut album If My Wife New I'd Be Dead came out in 2022, and the follow-up Crazymad, For Me was released last year.

Despite encouragement from women like Charli, the music industry is still male-heavy. CMAT said it was "is absolutely shocking and appalling" that she didn't have a female producer or recording engineer on either album.

But she told Everitt: "In the words of Garth Brooks, everything that is a blessing is a curse.

"When you're a woman in a situation where there's a room full of men, there is a kind of 'sink or swim' thing that happens. You either allow men to walk all over you and talk all over you, or you learn really quickly and very aggressively to stick up for yourself.

"And I actually think that if I had been in a comfortable environment very early on, I may not have learned how to be the director of my own music and be the basically co-producer of all my records."

The two LPs have already made her a superstar in Ireland, both going to number one, with the debut winning the Choice Music Prize for Irish album of the year.

The follow-up was a painfully honest hangover from a messy relationship, its combination of regret and defiance laced with humour in off-kilter but fabulous pop songs.

It was named the second best album of 2023 by the Observer and earned her a place on the BBC Sound of 2024 list, as well as the Brit nomination.

Which brings us back to that outfit.

She was, she claimed, making a "political" point as well as making trouble.

She made sure the amount of bum crack on show was the same as the average amount of breast cleavage, which is seen as acceptable, she told BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour in the aftermath.

Models and others have worn similar "bumster" outfits before, she pointed out.

"I think mine caused a stir because it's big and because I'm a size 14 as opposed to a size six, which is commonly what you do see on television especially when it comes to musicians and pop stars.

"I had a lot of people that were very angry that I would do such a thing. They were horrified, and people were really angry and aggressive in comments, telling me I had to go to the gym. The backlash was crazy."

Speaking to 6 Music, she added: "Loads of people in the comments are like, 'She's attention seeking! She's an attention seeker!' So? Yeah, that's my job!"

At the station's festival, she grabbed the crowd's attention - whether by hurling herself around the stage with wild abandon, or body-popping with her keyboardist, or persuading several thousand 6 Music listeners to do a line dance during I Wanna Be A Cowboy, Baby!

And she also commanded attention by simply standing still and holding hands with special guest John Grant on a scintillating duet of Where Are Your Kids Tonight, which showed off the operatic kick in her voice.

The intoxicating show left the impression that a star had arrived, and that it won't be long before she's the headliner at last.