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Hitmaker RuthAnne has revealed how she was told she wasn't 'hot enough' to be a Beyoncé or 'fat enough' to be an Adele as she started out in the music business. The Dublin star has songwriting credits on tracks by international superstars such as Britney Spears, One Direction and Avicii, and has just released an acclaimed second album, The Moment, in her own name. But her two-decade career - detailed in a new memoir/music industry guidebook, It's Not Just a Song - has necessitated a thick skin despite her abundant talent. The 39-year-old told the Irish Mail on Sunday: 'When I was very young - like 18, 19, 20 - I had people in the industry say to my face, "You're not hot enough to be Beyoncé or J-Lo and you're not quirky enough to be [Gossip lead singer] Beth Ditto." "Or fat enough to be Adele"' was one comment.’ 'Like, you have to be either really fat, or you've got to be really hot, size zero, skinny enough - even though I was so skinny then.' RuthAnne, from Donaghmede on Dublin's northside, said things have changed since the 'pop machine' early 2000s, with record label 'gatekeepers' disempowered by the internet and the direct channels it offers between artists and fans. 'You had to have a record deal. You had to have the bigwig boss, and the label think that you're a star, and the Simon Cowell [figure] deciding: "She's a star, she's not a star." There's no gatekeepers anymore. If anything, it's gone completely the opposite - people want to see people singing in a car park.' The woman christened RuthAnne Cunningham had her first major hit at the age of just 17, co-writing US singer JoJo's Too Little Too Late, which went to number three on the American Billboard charts. From early on, she was forced to navigate music industry sleaze - so endemic in the pre-MeToo age. The mother of two young girls remembers one piece of advice she got when she was around 21: 'I had a female executive in the industry telling me that I needed to use my sexuality and make A&R [talent finders] think they could sleep with me, and even if I didn't want to sleep with them, to make them think that they could if they wanted to.' She was also once flashed by an artist in a recording studio and was sexually assaulted at a writing camp in Nashville. The incidents are detailed in her already award-nominated book, which is intended to help aspiring performers and songwriters (and their families) navigate the music business. A chapter called Boys Club will be 'very valuable, not just for females, but also for males', she hopes, 'so they understand the female experience and they understand and are aware of how to make female creatives feel comfortable in those studio atmospheres where it's more male-dominated.' Of the music released under her own name, the former Billie Barry kid is best known for The Vow. The soaring ballad has become a wedding staple, and RuthAnne played it live as Tommy Fury proposed to his fellow Love Islander Molly Mae. She said it is 'incredible' to be 'the soundtrack for people's big moments in life', and wrote her new album to give people 'more songs to soundtrack their big moments - that's why it's called The Moment.' Your Beginning was written 'in tears on an acupuncturist table' after a devastating miscarriage - RuthAnne has battled with endometriosis and is founder of the educational initiative Endo&Me. 'I was thinking about all the failures that I felt I'd had in life,' she said. 'Like times I hadn't made it in the music industry, times I spent all the money, or didn't have the hit, or messed up the audition, relationships that had failed. 'I started thinking about the fact that all the failures that have led me to where I am, which was engaged to my husband. Then a few weeks later, I found out I was pregnant again.' Her sparkling new album showcases an ease hopping from soul to country to orchestrated ballads. But she insists a song 'has to come from a real place' rather than how well it might do. 'It's a very difficult career to be always rich from. It's always a rollercoaster. 'You're going to be broke, you're going to be rich, you're going to have hits, you're going to have no hits. That's just the nature of the game. So I think if I was in it for money or fame, I would have given up by now. I'm in it because I love making music.
