beabadoobee appears on the cover of the Fall 2024 Issue — head to the AP Shop to grab a copy.
Beatrice Kristi Laus, otherwise known as beabadoobee, is signing CDs when she logs on for our Zoom call — and not just a handful, either. “I’m probably signing 1,000 CDs as we speak. No, not 1,000… 1,200. 1,200 CDs,” she reveals, scribbling away before pausing to promise, “But don’t worry, I can still answer your questions just fine.”
beabadoobee is a busy bee, and she has no choice but to multitask these days. After all, it’s been a whirlwind few years for the girl who inadvertently went viral on TikTok in 2020; released three albums and an EP since then; collaborated with Clairo, PinkPantheress, and Laufey; was recently and unexpectedly mentioned on mega-reality TV smash Love Island; and embarked on both headlining tours as well as opening tour gigs for Halsey, the 1975, and Taylor Swift.
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bea opened for the latter on select U.S. dates of her massive Eras Tour in 2023. It was both a career- and perspective-shifting experience for the 24-year-old who got her start uploading soft ballads and lo-fi covers to YouTube. “I have a lot of respect for Taylor Swift playing three hours a night,” bea says. “One thing I took away is that if you mess up in front of a stadium full of people, it doesn’t really matter, and life continues. I used to get so scared about fucking up onstage, but then I did the Taylor tour, and I realized if I fuck up in front of that many people, it’s the same feeling as if you fuck up in front of 10 people. You still wake up the next day feeling absolutely fine. It was terrifying every night, but it gave me a lot of confidence.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean beabadoobee is determined to reach the same levels of untouchable pop culture stardom, though. “I was in awe every night watching [Taylor] play live, but I just want to continue making music and being happy,” she admits. “That’s such a crazy, different level of fame, and I can’t really get down with that. I live a very chill life.”
Chill? Sure. Ordinary or slow-paced? Definitely not. bea released her third studio album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, via Dirty Hit this past August. She partnered with Def Jam co-founder and legendary record producer Rick Rubin, and she calls her experience working with the bearded production whiz behind some of the music industry’s biggest hits “pretty lit,” albeit entirely unexpected. “It really came out of nowhere, because I had no expectation that something like that would ever happen to me in my career. I met him, and we got on so well. All of a sudden, a week later, he messaged my manager saying that he wanted to make a record with me. That came as a big surprise.”
To work on the record, bea left her cozy home in London behind and holed up in Rubin’s iconic Shangri-La studio in sunny Malibu — a far cry from the intimate environment that spawned the muffled bedroom-pop recordings of her early career. “It was mad,” she recalls. “It was definitely a massive change, but I quickly came to the realization that it felt like home, and I was very comfortable. Everybody was so welcoming, and it’s also a very inspiring place to be, because all the walls are painted white, so it’s essentially like living in a blank canvas.”
Musically, This Is How Tomorrow Moves is a vocal-focused pop-rock and soft-rock record, at times sounding like early Michelle Branch or the Cardigans, but it also dips into pop, acoustic, and even bossa nova. (“I get bored easily,” bea quips of her expansive and ever-evolving sonic leanings.) There’s an unmistakable sense of ’90s and early ’00s nostalgia present in all of beabadoobee’s work, though, which gels since that’s the music she grew up with. “I’m so drawn to that era of music because of how direct and unapologetic everyone’s lyrics were at that time,” she says.
The album’s moody lead single, “Take a Bite,” was inspired by the work of Elliott Smith and Fiona Apple, as well as Ashlee Simpson’s 2004 debut single “Pieces of Me.” When the track dropped in May, however, many pointed out how similar it sounded to Incubus’ 1999 breakthrough hit, “Drive.” “It’s so funny because I never referenced Incubus,” bea explains of the song, which is about embracing the calm in the chaos. “I realized it sounded like Incubus after I’d released it, because everyone was like, ‘It’s the same chords as ‘Drive’!’ And I’m like, ‘Dude, I actually took the chords from an Elliott Smith song called ‘Bled White.’ Then I heard ‘Pieces of Me’ by Ashlee Simpson, and I was really drawn to the rhythm of the guitar. ‘Take a Bite’ is basically Elliott Smith and Ashlee Simpson merged into one.”
Meanwhile, Kylie Minogue was one of the more obvious inspirations for the song’s Y2K-tinged music video, which borrows visual influence from the Aussie pop icon’s 2001 “Come Into My World” video. Both clips find their respective artists repetitively looping around a confined yet bustling cityscape as an overarching butterfly effect sparks both profound and mundane changes in the background. “We took a lot of inspiration from that Kylie Minogue video, because we loved it so much. I just love referencing things that remind me of my childhood, because I love feeling nostalgic. I feel the videos back then were way more timeless than the videos now,” bea says.
The video was directed by bea’s boyfriend and sometimes muse, London-based director and cinematographer Jake Erland. “I like collaborating with my boyfriend a lot; we have the same taste in art and everything,” she gushes. While working with a lover doesn’t always end well in the music industry, bea says collaborating “comes easy” for her and Erland because they’re both “very similar” people.
“I’ve definitely worked with past boyfriends for videos before, and it does get really tricky. Me and Jake have a really nice time talking about music videos and movies that we love, and creating things together,” bea explains. “It’s one of our favorite things to do. The balance is just having full creative freedom, because that means we can go off and do whatever we both want.”
Despite its nostalgic sonic trappings, This Is How Tomorrow Moves is a future-facing record. “For all the songs on this record, I feel like I had to go experience [these things] to be able to move on to tomorrow,” bea shares. She went through a painful breakup, fell in love again, went on tour, traveled the world, and got “reality slapped back in [her] face” all within the two-year span during which she wrote the album. The result is a record as self-meditative and cathartic as it is relatable.
While her past records fixated on coming of age, …Tomorrow Moves finds bea stepping into the hard truths of adulthood. One of the things bea figured out in recent years is how to take accountability — a big, profound lesson that can take some people years to learn, if they ever learn it at all. “If you constantly blame other people for everything that goes wrong with your life, you can’t move on or grow up,” she admits. “I think I spent so much time being annoyed and being frustrated with everyone else that I never took the time to look inward at what I was doing.”
bea also learned how to advocate for herself and set boundaries. After being forced to cancel the European leg of her 2023 tour due to illness, she no longer goes out for more than three weeks due to the mental and physical toll it’s taken on her in the past. “I can’t do any longer, because that’s when I start to struggle,” she explains. After previously partying too much on tour, she also does all of her shows sober now, which helps her “feel less shit the next day.” Feeling run-down and homesick while out on the road inspired her song “California,” on which bea sings about being “tired of living so fast.”
Elsewhere on the album, “A Cruel Affair” is a playful bossa nova ode to how bea and her friends can’t help but compare themselves to others on the internet. “That other person you’re comparing yourself to probably hates themselves just as much as you do from time to time,” she explains. “I needed to write that for me and my mates to be like, ‘It’s not that deep. You feel like shit sometimes, and you’re going to compare yourself constantly, but everyone’s beautiful in their own way.’”
On the tender piano ballad “Girl Song,” she reflects on trying to navigate the emotional turbulence of her low self-esteem-riddled teenage years, her voice warm and sweet like caramel. “I still feel the same way I felt when I was 15 sometimes — it never goes away,” she muses. Still, bea counts “Tie My Shoes,” with its fuzzy guitar riffs and distant, plaintive saxophone flourishes, as the track that challenged her most while recording. She had to dig deep into her complex feelings about her childhood for that one, and in the end, she says, writing it helped her heal her strained relationship with her dad.
Though she’s looking squarely toward the promise of tomorrow these days, if she could go back in time, bea says she’d tell her teenage self to “be less angry at everything — just appreciate life as it is, and change your socks.” Our advice for baby bea? Stock up on Sharpies for all those CDs you’ll have to sign for fans someday.
