Beabadoobee: “All my angst and anger was necessary for me to understand who I am”
Chaos often reigns Beabadoobee’s world. When NME catches up with her mid-rehearsals one day before the release of her third album ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’, there’s a sense of joyful mayhem swirling around her. As she settles into a seat in front of the camera in the south London rehearsal studio she’s holed up in, bassist Eliana Sewell crawls into view. Sidetracked from our opening small talk, Beabadoobee bursts into laughter. “You don’t have to do that,” she jokingly chides her bandmate as she wriggles across the carpeted floor behind her.
Of late, Beabadoobee – real name Beatrice Kristi Laus – has been trying to shake free some of the chaos that tends to follow her around. Since she shared her second album ‘Beatopia’ in 2022, the British-Filipino indie musician has been doing a lot of self-reflection and has come to the conclusion she hasn’t always made life easy – for herself or those in her orbit. ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’ is, in part, a record of accountability; of owning up to her mistakes and moments where she acted out, and a mature new outlook for the 24-year-old.
“All it took was growing up and maturing,” she shrugs happily today. “A lot of things happened to me within the two-year period of me writing this album – a lot of situations that slapped me back into reality or just forced me to grow up a little bit. I think it’s just the inevitability of getting used to adulthood and navigating womanhood. And I got tired of blaming everyone around me.”
Listen back to some of the songs that helped Laus make her name as one of Gen Z’s most exciting talents, and you’ll hear her old attitude ringing out loud and clear. “It’s all your fault,” she repeats as ‘Emo Song’ – from 2020 debut album ‘Fake It Flowers’ – reaches its end. On ‘1999’, from early EP ‘Loveworm’, she tells the story of two people entangled in the blame game: “You said I fucked up and ruined your life / But little did you know you ruined / Mine.”
“I look back at my younger self very fondly. she’s fucking crazy, but she’s great!”
Going back to her older tracks used to make their creator “really cringe out”, but making this new album has helped her come to terms with what her younger self was pouring into her lyrics. “All of that was necessary – all of that angst and anger – for me to understand who I am today and why I am like this today,” she explains. “I’m really glad I got that out of my system. I think it’s really sweet and charming.” When she pictures the Beabadoobee of two or four or more years ago, she gives her grace: “I look back at her very fondly. I think she’s fucking crazy, but she’s great! No regrets.”
Writing ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’ has helped Laus not just get on good terms with her past self but helped her move forward and process some of the things she’s experienced, with ‘Tie My Shoes’ and ‘This Is How It Went’ having the biggest impact on her. “I find it very difficult to have difficult conversations,” she shares. “For some reason, I understand my brain so much better as soon as I write a song.” Music has always been that safe space for her to unpack her thoughts and feelings ever since she first started writing her own songs: “It’s completely honest and candid, and just helps me be introspective.”
Laus writes her songs with such precise specificity that it’s not hard to understand exactly what she’s talking about in each. Despite that, though, she’s not keen to have her fans follow the current trend in pop music and try to decode who they’re about or piece together the real-life incidents that might have inspired them. “Just enjoy the music, man,” she advises. “I really hope they’re able to relate it to themselves and aren’t caught up with [all that] just because they know so much about my life. I just want them to listen to it like how I listen to music.”
Over the last year or so, she says she’s felt a shit in the way people do respond to her music. Each single she put out in 2023 was met by a reaction more heightened and louder than ever before. “There were more people reacting to it and, I think, with my break-up song [‘The Way Things Go’], a lot of shit around it,” she explains. “There was just a lot of attention from the internet – at times unnecessarily so.” She tried to find the silver lining in that experience, deciding: “I guess my audience is building, and more people want to know what I’m planning to make.”
A few days after we speak, the Official Charts Company announces Laus is on course to score her first Number One album in the UK – a sure sign of a growing, engaged fanbase if ever there was one. As her legions of listeners grow, she’s not about to change how she interacts with them or how much of herself she shares online. “Inevitably, I am a 24-year-old girl that loves to post shit online,” Laus admits. “That’s just something I can’t help and it’s really nice and comforting to know that people really like that and love looking at my cats and love knowing what I’m doing to my house.”
“I am a 24-year-old girl that loves to post shit online. that’s just something I can’t help”
One potential factor in the increase of Beabadoobee fans – other than Laus’ affecting brand of songwriting, of course – is the exposure she got from opening for Taylor Swift on The Eras tour in the US last year. “It was like getting picked as one of the kids for Charlie And The Chocolate Factory – I felt like a little boy,” Laus says, wide-eyed. “I was really, really happy, despite being scared shitless every night. I think Taylor’s an incredible performer. I have so much respect for her… but I was shitting myself every single night, that didn’t change!”
Touring with Taylor also had an impact on ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’, revealing the world of bridges to Laus and inspiring her to sprinkle some country-tinged magic into one song, ‘Ever Seen’. “I think Taylor’s obsession with bridges, I was just really obsessed by,” she begins, leaning down to her side and quickly losing her train of thought. “Sorry, there’s a really cute, fluffy dog here… I saw her [live], and she was like, ‘We’re entering the first bridge of The Eras tour’, and it was such a massive moment. I was like, ‘Wow, bridges really do make a difference because you can just go to a completely different world and just transcend from the song – why have I been taking this shit for granted?’”
One of her favourite bridges on the album comes in ‘Girl Song’, a track penned during her time in Rick Rubin’s studio Shangri-La. “It was one of the first things I ever wrote in the studio, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, this place is magical – it just made me write my favourite bridge, and I don’t even fucking write bridges!’ That was lit.”
‘Girl Song’ details some of Laus’ insecurities with the same vulnerable candidness as Charli XCX’s ‘I Think About It All The Time’, from the way she looks in the mirror to the size of her waist. It stemmed from one simple, common moment – her getting a spot on her face and realising her period was a week away. “There were a lot of hormones going on, and I just felt like the world was crumbling down over this one spot,” she says. “I think that’s why I appreciate music so much because the song is so deep and meaningful, but I almost laugh about it – I can’t believe that was just from one spot on my face.”
Teaming up with Rubin – who co-produced the album alongside Laus’ guitarist and longtime collaborator Jacob Bugden – was another form of getting away from the chaos. Usually, she would record in London (and often in her bedroom) – a base that is rife with distraction. “If I do a record in London, I’m going out partying and doing all that stuff,” she explains. “But Shangri-La is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to and there’s something so magical about it that just made me want to stick around and only focus on the record.”
Rubin’s hallowed studio is the complete opposite of her home back in the UK. “It’s just so serene and peaceful. Everything is white – it’s almost like a blank canvas for your creativity, like you need to fill the space with your music and your thoughts. People call my house the Teletubby house because every room’s a different colour. I remember going back home and it being like going from this beautiful, serene white space into [something like] an acid trip.”
The chaos around Beabadoobee is about to build once again, with her getting ready to head back out on the road for festival dates and, later, headline tours in the US and UK. There are some big moments among those shows – not least headlining London’s Alexandra Palace in November and topping the bill at the Radio 1 stage at Reading & Leeds at the end of this month.
“I’m really nervous,” she says warily of the latter. “Inevitably, you’re gonna clash with someone. I’m terrified no one’s gonna watch me!” As if to try and snap her out of this thought process, the dog somewhere by her side starts growling, successfully distracting her into a new, positive thought: “It’s going to be amazing; I can’t wait to play to everyone.”
On the road, Laus is trying her best to keep destabilising chaos largely at bay and has made the decision to tour sober. It’s a move she made after repeatedly getting sick before shows and fits with her new attitude of taking accountability for her actions. “It’s not worth having to cancel a show and disappointing so many kids because I got fucked up, and now I’m ill,” she says solemnly. “That’s on me. I take full responsibility – at times, I was overworked, but I was a crazy 20-year-old girl who wanted to do crazy things.”
It probably helps her stick to these new ways of touring that she sees her fans as “the best people ever”. She may not want them to hyper-focus on how her songs relate to what they know of her personal life, but that doesn’t mean they don’t mean “the whole world” to her. “They’re all batshit crazy, but they shut up when you sing, and they’re respectful,” she laughs. “I love how that’s like me – I can be crazy but I can read the room. They can [too]. I always say in an alternate universe, we’d be in a really big friendship group.”
As Beabadoobee’s star continues to rise higher and higher, that circle of friends becomes ever bigger. Laus’ hopes for what it brings to her life, though, remain refreshingly humble. “I’m really happy in the place I’m in and just really excited to put it out,” she smiles. “I just hope it helps everyone in some way.”
Beabadoobee’s ‘This Is How Tomorrow Moves’ is out now via Dirty Hit
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Rhian Daly
NME
