Beabadoobee Figures Out Her Fame

There’s one crowd that Beabadoobee is afraid to play. It was a discovery she made on a recent trip to Japan, where she celebrated both her and her boyfriend Jake Erland’s birthdays. For the latter, they had booked out a karaoke spot, the intimidating kind with an open stage, a room full of spectators, and zero tolerance for shyness. When the singer stepped up to sing The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven,” it was as if the temperature was dropping the longer the unexpectedly lengthy instrumental went on, and on… and on. “It still gives me nightmares,” she says now. “I think everybody expected me to sound good, and I was like, ‘Just like heaven!’” she sings as off-key as Beabadoobee could possibly be — which is to say, she still sounds as angelic as always.

Today, Bea has welcomed me into her home in North London, on the U.K. General Election Day, of all days. (“My dad said I should vote Green because I smoke weed.”) She’s a self-admitted hoarder, a trait she inherited from her lola — who is, to quote exactly, “the realest b*tch alive.” A green rotary phone hangs in the hallway that leads to her living room, where a golden miniature harp sits on the floor. Bea beelines for the mantlepiece, where she proudly displays her collection of ceramic baby figures, also passed down from her lola. Upstairs two floors is her bedroom, a boho haven she shares with Erland, her stuffed animals, and her two cats, Kimchi and Miso. Kimchi watches dutifully from a cat tree as we step outside to her balcony: This has been the setting for many a TikTok, and some milestones, too. When she split up with an ex in 2022, Bea and labelmate The 1975’s Matty Healy sat right here for the obligatory post-breakup debrief. (“He’s basically like a big brother,” she says of the musician. “A stupid big brother.”) This balcony, clearly, has seen some things.

It’s the kind of serene, isolated enclave that’s perfect for heavy reflecting, and recently, Bea has been doing just that. On the singer’s third studio album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, out Aug. 16 and produced by Rick Rubin, her signature diaristic songwriting turns further inward. “A lot of pinnacle moments had happened that altered my brain chemistry and the way I acted and the way I saw myself,” she says. “I grew up really quickly. I fell out of love, had a really crazy breakup, then fell back in love. I went on loads of f*cking tours and was hardly home. I was by myself quite a lot at times, but I’m grateful that all of those things happened to me because I got to write an album about it.”

“I was feeling very introspective,” she continues. “In my past records, I was constantly blaming other people, but this time I felt like I finally understood why people acted the way they did at times.”

If Bea is taking accountability on the album, doing so places her in a more vulnerable position than ever. “In a way, I’m figuring it out at my own pace,” she sings opposite a solitary piano on “Girl Song,” which Bea calls the most “tragic song” on the album. On the pre-release single “Coming Home,” she yearns to be with her boyfriend, knowing that “a hotel room only means I’ll be with you soon.” The track was born from her stint supporting Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour in early 2023. Reflecting on her part in the record-shattering tour, Bea is grateful, but admits she “felt quite numb on stage.” When Bea looked out to the crowd, she says, it felt like staring at a 2D image. She couldn’t hone in on people, only intangible, faceless figures scattered across a matte painting. “Someone told me by the second show — even by the second song — it’s gonna feel super normal,” she recalls, shielding her eyes from the sun. “By the end of the tour, I was wanting to sh*t myself every time I went on stage, and I’m like, ‘Nothing has changed.’”

There has been real, palpable change in Bea’s life, also in part due to these bigger and bigger stages. “There’s loads of places I can’t really go to,” she says. She can’t get a pint at her usual pub anymore, “which is really depressing,” and she stays clear of the sardine tin-like crowds at Portobello Road on the weekend. But for all of Bea’s encounters with virality, she’s grateful that her trajectory has been a slow and steady growth. “I’m in a comfortable place where, yes, I get clocked here and there, but it’s always really respectful, and I can still live my life,” she elaborates. “I can still look like sh*t and go to the shops, and not have the fear of someone seeing me or a fan asking me for a picture. I’d like to keep it that way.”

She’s seen firsthand how her peers live with their fame, how they tune it out like a tinnitus ring. On a day out in West London with Olivia Rodrigo, she could feel the widened, holy-sh*t eyes of every passerby on them. “I just love it here!” Rodrigo told her. Bea replied in disbelief: “You’re getting clocked every second. Are you sure you want to stay here?”

For all of the pressures of her encroaching fame, Bea feels ready to see her fans at her shows again. “I can actually play a two-hour show right now,” she says, proudly. “I want to play a two-hour show. I cannot wait to tour this album because I think I was playing a lot of the same music for ages, and now I’m like, ‘Sick, new content.’” On her previous tours, she had fallen into unhealthy habits. “I used to get really f*cked up on tour, to the point that I’d have to cancel shows or go to the hospital,” she confesses. There came a turning point where she realized that touring was a marathon you had to prepare your mind and body for. “So now I do ballet and I train,” she explains. “I also do all tours sober now.”

Bea is set to tour the United States and Europe later this year, but it’s her dream to play to a home crowd at Iloilo City, located centrally in the Philippines’ constellation of islands. The closest she’s been to performing at home was a boat ride away in Boracay, an island of ethereal, postcard beauty with white sand and clear water as blue as precious sapphires. At a beachside restaurant on her grandmother’s birthday, she played “Glue Song” well before the entire world became obsessed with it.

Bea moved to London when she was 3 years old and learned English a year later when her teacher discovered that watching exclusively Teletubbies had made her effectively mute. “I think I grew to really love the culture and being Filipino,” Bea says, though it took time. The unfortunate reality of Filipino culture is that it celebrates proximity to whiteness: As a teenager, she would apply eyelid tape to crease her monolids, and a friend was given whitening soap as a gift. Now, she says, she has embraced her tanned skin. “All I want to do is look Filipino. There was a point where I didn’t want to look Filipino at all.”

Bea attended an all-girl Catholic school she hated until she was kicked out, ostensibly for smoking in the toilets, even though it was an open secret her teachers took lightly. “It’s actually f*cked up,” she tells me. “They only kicked out POCs.” But when one parent threatened to sue, the school backed down. “All of a sudden they were like, ‘Actually, we made a mistake. Everyone come back! And I’m like, ‘F*ck you.’”

I tell her that if it was me, I’d go back just to rub in how far I’ve come. “I tried putting a billboard right in front of it,” she says, smiling. “I tried doing that with my ex, but I was like, ‘You know what? I’m above that.’”

Top image credits: Kiko Kostadinov sweater, talent’s own jewelry

Photographs by Ryan Saradjola

Styling by Patricia Villirillo

Hair: Clare Hurford

Makeup: Elaine Lynskey

Production: Zoe Tomlinson

Talent Bookings: Special Projects

Photo Director: Alex Pollack

Editor in Chief: Lauren McCarthy

SVP Fashion: Tiffany Reid

SVP Creative: Karen Hibbert