FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
PHOTO CREDIT: Jordan Curtis Hughes
Part Forty-Eight: beadbadoobee
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I know that I recently included…
beabadoobee in my Spotlight feature - though I think she is a definite superstar of the future and warrants a Modern Heroines spot. Ahead of her twenty-first birthday on 3rd June, I wanted to bring in a few interviews, in addition to a couple of reviews for her excellent debut album, Fake It Flowers. Having released several E.P.s prior to her debut album – including 2019’s Space Cadet -, there was already buzz around the Filipino-born British singer-songwriter, Beatrice Laus. I believe that her new E.P., Our Extended Play, is out very soon/the summer. It was announced alongside the launch of her latest single, Last Day on Earth. It is an infectious gem of a track! Back in March, CRACK (among others) reported on the forthcoming E.P.:
“Beabadoobee has released a new track titled Last Day On Earth. The tune offers fans their first glimpse into Beabadoobee’s next project Our Extended Play, which was also unveiled yesterday (24 March) alongside the lead single. The EP was co-written and produced by The 1975’s Matty Healy and George Daniel. It’s scheduled for release this spring.
Speaking on the new single, former Crack Magazine cover star Beabadoobee said: “Last Day On Earth is about all the things I would have done had I known we were going into a lockdown and the world was going to change the way it has. It was written shortly after the first main lockdown and lyrically it’s me reflecting on how it would feel if we all knew ahead of time what was going to happen. All the things I would have done if I knew it was the last day of our old normality.”
Our Extended Play was written and recorded on a farm in the Oxfordshire countryside, with Matty and George working with Beabadoobee – real name Bea Kristi – and her band on a slew of new songs. “It was really nice being able to create together, my first time writing and recording on a farm,” adds Kristi. “I wanted to experiment on the sounds and sonics even more and the EP to me has a feeling of togetherness to it… how we’re all in this joined as one”.
I shall keep my eyes out, as I really love beabadoobee’s previous E.P.s and Fake It Flowers. Before coming to a review or two of that album, it is worth discovering more about a sensational and hugely prolific young artist. I would advise people to follow beabadoobee and keep abreast of all the latest happenings. Later in the year, you should be able to catch her playing around the U.K. I think that beabadoobee (I shall refer to her by her artist name) is among the greatest young artists in Britain. I love her sound and how she can mix tones and shades of the 1990s and something more modern. Rather than replicating music from the decade, one hears something unique and personal. One can detect and identify this artist who wants to influence people and go far in music. In this 2020 interview with The Forty-Five, we learn more about a hungry and inspirational musician:
“Bea makes no bones about wanting to be an influential force – not a lofty entertainer that people cower at the feet of, but someone who girls can see themselves in. Introduced to female-fronted rock by her mother, Bea found particular comfort in the entertainment of yesteryear, a time before women were subject to the constant scrutiny and comparison of social media. “My Mum used to play Suzanne Vega and Alanis Morissette all the time, and I guess subconsciously you get inspired by that,” she says. “There is just something about 90s culture that is super cool and interesting – ‘But I’m A Cheerleader’ and ‘The Craft’ have the most amazing soundtracks. With ‘…Cheerleader’, every song on the soundtrack is a female singer in a band – that is just SO badass.”
Discovering the work of Kimya Dawson was also something of an awakening. “The first record that genuinely had me was ‘Remember That I Love You’. Her lyrics are just so genuine and funny, and sometimes quite childlike – it’s naive but in the best way possible. I really want to show that within my music.”
At the risk of psychologising, her desire to cocoon herself in the familiar sonics of young childhood feels logical when you consider Bea’s rocky adolescence. Raised in West London, school was far from ideal, and she hints at other struggles too, a ‘dark period’ that seems to link back to a feeling of placelessness, her Filipino heritage rendering her as something of an outsider in a classroom full of insecure teens looking for an easy target. Soon, she had fallen in with the ‘stoner crowd’, and just before starting her A-Levels, her teachers called time on her erratic attendance and attitude – she was asked to find a new school. Not the easiest conversation to have with your parents…
“Well, honestly, at first, I feel like any parent would be like, “er, what the fuck?” she remembers. “I wasn’t taking education seriously. I only got into music quite late in my life, and when my dad bought me a guitar at 17, it meant a lot that he understood that I needed something to distract myself from being so sad. He and my mum saw how hard it was growing up in a predominantly white, all-girls Catholic school – you know those backhanded compliments and snidey little remarks? Girls can be amazing, but for some reason, secondary school is just a shithole.”
Music didn’t cure Bea’s depression overnight, but it definitely helped. With a new outlet to express herself, things started moving fast. Uploading the first song she ever wrote – ‘Coffee’ – to YouTube, she swiftly racked up 30,000 hits, and a genuine escape from the drudgery of formal education proffered itself in the form of a Dirty Hit record contract. It was an opportunity that even her parents knew she couldn’t pass up.
“I remember when I first got really into making music and ended up telling Dad that I didn’t think I wanted to go to University, and he was like “WHAAAAT”, she laughs. “But now he’s the most supportive person ever, as well as my mum. To be honest, I feel like my mom lives vicariously through me because she’s always wanted to play guitar, it’s super cute.”
“I just want to give a message that girls should be confident in who they are, and do whatever they want.” She reasons. “That doesn’t mean I’m saying “stay in school and be a good girl”, but I’m also not saying “go outside and do loads of fuckin’ drugs”. Do what you think is right, but do whatever you’re doing for yourself. All of the people that I looked up to didn’t look anything like me, and I felt really confused and alienated and shit. So I hope to think that I can inspire girls in some way, even if it’s like the tiniest amount, to just get out there and be passionate about something. And if they can find something that helps them come out of their shells and organise their brain a little…it can be a bit like therapy. Music really does help. If you feel shit, write it down”.
I am going to end by looking ahead to the E.P., Our Extended Play. E.P.s are become more popular and prolific. I think it allows artists a chance to put out songs that they could not fit on an album, or ones that offer a bridge between albums. For beabadoobee, songs like Last Day on Earth follow on from Fake It Flowers and shows that she is a musician who can provide something joyful and hypnotic. Even though a lot of her compositions are sunny and full of colour, her lyrics tackle something deeper and hard-hitting. When she spoke with Vulture last year, the nature of lyrics comes up. Vulture also asked why now (2020) was the time for an album – as beabadoobee was releasing E.P.s before that:
“Kristi has made ’90s-influenced rock music addressing young women for years, but Fake It Flowers is her clearest statement yet. Born, like her EPs, from her childhood bedroom in London, it’s an album of “everything I was supposed to tell someone but couldn’t,” Kristi says. Tracks reference and address her mental-health journey, past relationships, and her current longtime boyfriend, Soren Harrison. It sounds bigger than her past EPs, drawing deeper from the ’90s rock music she grew up with, from Alanis Morissette to the Cranberries. “I love that feeling of nostalgic-ness where it feels like a warm blanket,” Kristi explains, calling from Harrison’s West London house. And, unsurprisingly, people have been craving the comfort: The album comes off the heels of the first song she ever wrote, “coffee,” turning into a chart-topping TikTok hit as a sample in Powfu’s “death bed.” Kristi spoke to Vulture about the album, her TikTok stardom, and making rock music for young women.
What has it been like to be back at home? I know it’s been a really inspiring place for your music.
I love my bedroom. I always say this, but I feel like no one knows you better than your own bedroom. Your bedroom has seen you go through the worst and it’s seen you at your best, and I feel like that’s why I have such a close relationship with my bedroom. It’s the place where I’m most comfortable in. And that’s where I’m most creative.
For a while, you were just releasing EPs. What made you decide, Okay, now’s the time to do the album?
I feel like I had grown so much because of tour and through those EPs, and as a girl. I wanted to write something about everything I’ve been through in my life. I started doing therapy again, and I realized how a lot of things from my childhood have affected the way I act as a young woman today. I remember going on tour as well, thinking I knew myself; I didn’t know myself at all. I wrote about why I thought that, and it’s all in Fake It Flowers.
This album that has this really big, blown up rock sound. How did that fit into everything?
There are certain points in music where I want to pinpoint and pick and re-create in my music today, like a guitar sound in My Bloody Valentine. If I hear a really good guitar sound, I’m going to go copy it. You know, nothing’s really original these days. And I wanted something big. I’d just done an arena tour with the 1975, and I wanted music to fill that space. I just wanted to go crazy; I wanted to go big; I wanted to rock out”.
I want to put together a couple of reviews for Fake It Flowers. There was such a widespread and positive reaction to the album. I think that Fake It Flowers was the best debut album of last year. In their review, CLASH had this to say:
“Debut album ‘Fake It Flowers’ is much more than her story so far – it’s Bea in 360, the clearest, most honest depiction of her life, her thoughts that we’ve had to date. Moving from cute, coy indie pop through to screamo, it touches on the innocent melodies of OPM while betraying some of her darker emotions.
Lead single ‘Care’ sets the tone. The voice wrangles with conflicting statements, struggling not to care while being swept up in her emotions – as potent depictions of adolescent angst go, it’s up there with the best of ‘em.
‘Worth It’ and ‘Dye It Red’ crunch hard, the guitar tone and vocal techniques honed on those mammoth tours, moving from sweatpit venues to actual arenas. Throughout, beabadoobee displays incredible control – each note, each moment feels endlessly poised, pursued to the final degree of emotional worth.
The twists and turns of word play that fuel ‘Charlie Brown’ pluck at the heartstrings, treating your chest like a worn out Telecaster, while ‘Sorry’ and the love-lorn ‘Horen Sarrison’ pull down the divide between Bea’s life and listener.
At times glossy at others unadorned, beabadoobee seems to be in thrall to the inner needs of her songwriting. She’s chasing something, and it’s a real ride to move along with her – just check out the seismic difference between ‘Back To Mars’ for example, and DIY lockdown hymn ‘How Was Your Day?’, recorded in her boyfriend’s parents garden.
Indeed, the latter is a reminder that no matter how natural, how innate beabadoobee’s pop instincts are, she remains tied to outsider artists. First handed the guitar by her father as an attempt to shake her out of a teenage slump, it’s become the means for Bea to process and define her emotions – underneath the production, the drama, the sold out shows, her approach is akin to early hero Daniel Johnston, proffering cassette tapes to strangers in the street, asking them to listen.
There’s a purity to the way ‘Fake It Flowers’ unfolds that, well, can’t be faked. Ending with the delirious joy of ‘Yoshimi, Forest, Magdalene’ it’s a record that hauls together many different layers, colours, and hues, a subtle but extremely immediate project that displays beabadoobee’s songwriting in full bloom.
A real pearl of a record, ‘Fake It Flowers’ is a starting statement that runs on unmitigated confidence, a revealing, enthralling, enchanting debut record, one that finally finds beabadoobee throwing open the gates and letting the world into her life. It’s a joy to behold”.
The other review I want to bring in is from The Line of Best Fit. They had a lot of love and praise for Fake It Flowers. They made some excellent points:
“Delving into the track treasure trove of Beabadoobee (aka Bea Kristi if you prefer a formal introduction), you’ll find earworms galore – from lo-fi acoustic offerings such as 2017’s calm and comforting “Coffee” (the first song she ever wrote) to the juxtaposing saccharine scuzz of 2019’s “She Plays Bass”. Despite the slight disparity between these sounds, one thing stays the same; their infectious nature.
Fast-forward to 2020, and Beabadoobee is still producing binge-worthy tracks, this time on coming-of-age soundtrack, Fake It Flowers. Lead single "Care" is a hook-filled hoot with angst-addled lyrics to boot. “I don't want your sympathy” Bea coos “Stop saying you give a shit / 'Cause you don't really / Care, care, care, yeah” she repeats, uniting those who have struggled to get people to understand their past experiences.
Follow-up release, "Sorry", is an alt-rock slow jam, with ruffled guitar work to make way for heavily emotive string-assisted exclamations from Bea in the chorus “And it hurts me […] you stayed in the same dark place, that I adore / But, you stayed for more / I guess that's what happens to the best of us / The best of us”. It’s a step away from the bubblegum bops on the record such as "Dye It Red", which speaks of youthful impulses to feel empowered and in control but presents her story of growth – how inconsistent it can be and sound, as we continue to learn and evolve.
Bea is a beacon of nostalgia for '90s kids who wished they were born a decade or two earlier, donning their Walkman, listening to cassettes, swapping out one grunge gem for the next. Bea provides a much-needed trip down memory lane, but not so much that it’s a pastiche to the era, rather an ardent nod, an ode to.
Despite the uncertainty this year has brought, the true essence of who Beabadoobee is is here to stay, taking us back to simpler times, adorned with mohair knits and baggy jeans”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Beabadoobee in London on 13th August, 2020 photographed for The Forty-Five/PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Louise Bennett
Looking ahead, and we have a new E.P. to enjoy. Our Extended Play comes very soon after Fake It Flowers. On the strength of Last Day on Earth, it sounds like it is going to be a must-hear release. It is, as this interview from Stereogum reveals, an E.P. with a collaborative nature:
“Still, despite her bedroom beginnings, Bea had bigger, bolder plans for her debut. The choruses of Fake It Flowers practically beg to be screamed in a crowded arena or blasted at a music festival. The sugary punch of “Charlie Brown” is designed for a concert’s collective catharsis; the programmed strings of “Worth It” are meant for the exuberance of a good house party.
But Bea embraced the intimacy and closeness of her strangely restrained release: The sepia-toned video for “Worth It” was shot entirely in one motel bedroom. In the months following the album’s debut, she, like so many other burgeoning acts during the pandemic, virtually invited countless journalists and fans into the confidential confines of her room, performing concerts and teasing small glimpses of her upcoming projects.
That next endeavor, at least in part, will take the form of an EP out this spring, titled Our Extended Play. The EP’s plural pronoun might be a cheeky reference to the record’s collaborative nature: Whereas her previous releases were entirely written and composed by Bea, she created the EP along with Matty Healy and George Daniel, the production and songwriting wizards behind the 1975. “I already had a really nice relationship with Matty,” Bea adds. “You know, we were friends beforehand, and it was just such a comfortable atmosphere to work in.”
The first single from their collaboration, “Last Day On Earth,” combines the trademark styles of the two artists — somewhere between the familiar, breezy soft rock of mid-aughts romantic comedies and the ethereal, reverb-heavy indie pop that’s become a calling card for Dirty Hit releases. While the flourishes — a pitched-up backing vocal track adding “ahs” and “yeahs,” a chorus made up of nonsensical, sing-along ready “shoo doos” — are all Healy signatures, the verses’ easy rhythms are pure beabadoobee. “You made it,” she sings reassuringly. “Your last day on Earth.” As on Fake It Flowers, she has a knowing penchant for melodrama and an unmistakably honeyed voice. Only Bea could deliver the line “You killed someone last night/ You’ve been going to church” like it’s a childhood secret between two best friends.
Releasing “Last Day On Earth” now, as the world is precariously taking its first steps into a version of post-pandemic normalcy, is meant to be a palliative gesture: “I guess it just offers a positive distraction and kind of reminds people of togetherness and unity — you know, alluding to some type of hope,” Bea says. “Me and Matty both definitely wanted the chorus to be something easy that people can sing along to.” After a year of deferred gratification for Bea’s biggest musical endeavors, she sees that earworm of a chorus as a bit of wishful thinking: “If festivals do happen…” she starts, almost hesitant to wish for it too soon. “Sonically, I think that song would just be so nice to play live.” As it stands, she’s booked for several summer fests — including the UK’s Reading and Leeds, which announced they’re full speed ahead for late August — as well as a headlining tour of the UK and Ireland in September.
In many ways, working with the 1975 is a natural progression for beabadoobee — she signed to the group’s label Dirty Hit immediately after “Coffee” became a viral hit, and the two British groups share a similar penchant for technicolor nostalgia. At the 2020 NME Awards, Healy even passed his own Innovation Award to Bea, who he called “the most exciting thing I’ve seen in modern music” (Bea won the “Radar Award” for emerging artists that same night). And as Healy takes on a more active role in Dirty Hit, working with labelmates like No Rome and Pale Waves, Bea’s dayglo chords seem like an obvious choice as the next face for his second coming of Britpop.
For Bea, who’d barely written songs with a full band, let alone an outside producer, the transition to a shared songwriting environment was a bit more of an adjustment: “I find collaborating with art quite hard.” For some of the songs on Our Extended Play, she came into the process after the instrumentation had finished, which seemed alienating for her at first. “I always have the guitar with me,” she says casually, seeming almost surprised that some of these songs were written without it. But writing over Healy’s instrumentation allowed her to focus on her voice as an instrument, and on writing lyrics as an end within itself”.
I will leave things there. Having released some phenomenal E.P.s – with one on the way – and a marvellous album, I think we will see beabadoobee go from strength to strength. At only twenty, it is amazing to think of all she has achieved and how complete her music is – like she has been in the industry for decades! I love Last Day on Earth and looking ahead to what is to come. With beabadoobee in our midst, we have an incredible young artist who…
IS a legend of the future.