Best Friends & Big Hopes: Beabadoobee Live In Leeds

Millie Cain on 8 December 2024

Blank white tapestry sheets hang loosely, fluttering in the wake of a packed 02 academy. Beabadoobee needs no sign, no moniker to represent herself, hundreds have been queuing all day in the grey drizzle for just a glimpse of her. For when Beabadoobee graced the stage, the hush of respect that befell the whole room was unlike anything I’d experienced in quite some time. 

She loves you. You can feel it even as she gazes across a crowd of thousands. Or you think so anyway. Since you’d definitely be best friends of course! You have so much in common after all, don’t you? And she’s funny, and sweet, just like you, my slightly unstable reader. Beabadoobee’s crowd of best friends revered her, that’s undoubtable, but perhaps we can open up a parasocial relationship conversation off the back of this. 

After some poetically written lonely years of touring for Beatrice Laus, it appears she’s found a love for live performance & is lighting up venues up and down the UK. Beabadoobee is the grassroots acoustic sweetheart, in only a couple of years playing Key Club to now packing out 02 Academy. As much as I’d like to say she’s outgrowing these venues, after all, she’s now got over 20M monthly Spotify listeners and the queue for the show was building all day long, I’m glad Bea hasn’t yet hit the arenas. She’s certainly got the sound and fanbase to do so. But, her breathy vocals and slight, lilting tone is one that feels like it could blow away with the gentlest hush, and one that is so well suited to an intimate venue. As an audience we gazed, captivated, on her slower tracks ‘Ever Seen’ and ‘Post’ I could feel myself grounded to stillness, under the guise of an irrational fear that we may scare her off. Like a mirage or a doe in the woods, Beabadoobee has a presence that can only be described as ethereal or fae-like. Despite her slightly shy nature on stage, she commands the gravitas and control of space with ease that every screaming frontman literally begs for.

For this tour and despite her tranquility, Beabadoobee has captured a cool poise. She’s shaken her nerves, obviously reflective of This Is How Tomorrow Moves, her new album released this year, and she is taking strides in both herself and her career. Tangling her sound further into an eclectic mix of bossa nova, shoe gaze, and now fuzzy rock, Bea is feeding into more genres than I can hope to define. Standout track from this 3rd album ‘Real Man’ is a true marvel live. This is my formal apology to my housemates, boyfriend & workmates who have had to listen to me humming the pre-chorus endlessly on a loop for days on end. It seems it hasn’t wormed its way into just my head, as the crowd bobbed along & nearly drowned out the band for a mid-set dancealong. 

Beabadoobee has created a whole entire new niche of irresistible indie-pop. I hate to justify him ever, but Matty Healy’s best musical decision lies in signing Beatrice * surname to Dirty Hit at just 17. Now 24, Beabadoobee is facing the loneliness that comes with fame, and everyone who owns an acoustic guitar thinks that they know her in a completely unique way than anyone else who has ever listened to her ever. Happy to report, however, that Bea’s exploration into her own agency has resulted in a truly beautiful 3rd album. Dare I say her best work to date? Actually, yes I happily do. It’s fun, it’s light and genuinely refreshing to hear & she performed it with so much soul and happiness she quite literally glowed. 


As the white sheet finally fell during lead single ‘Beaches’ minds were lost, consciousness altered & maybe I’m a tad dramatic but in my defence, it was really cool. Revealing a wall of lingering plants, tangled and breathing along to the music, Beabadoobee had the stage, and us all in the palm of her hand. Unsurprised & welcomed. She was giddy with excitement, gushing about her tour & her relief to return home the next day. A sight to behold, and once she floated off stage for the encore, her fans knit themselves together, tightly and happily sighing as she returned back to the stage for ‘Coming Home’. Aptly finishing on ‘See You Soon’, its clear that Beabadoobee will absolutely be back, and accelerating at her rate alongside her truly unique talent, stardom awaits for her.

Words by Millie Cain.

This Is How Tomorrow Moves: Beabadoobee Album Review

Karishma Phandey on 8 August 2024

Written by Karishma Phandey, edited by Millie Cain.

Following her sophomore album Beatopia, the Grunge-Pop Princess softens into her third album with a dazed sense of maturity and zealous yet bewildered lyrics – all accompanied by an undercurrent of folk, jazz, and country influences. 

Swapping her bedroom recording style for recording Rick Rubin at his Shangri-La studio in Malibu, this 14-track album is a maturation of her previous work, whereby the rose-tinted fantasy of Beatopia is overturned by her new-found acceptance of crimson reality. And so begrudgingly, she battles all of which encompasses her human experience on This is How Tomorrow Moves – out on her label Dirty Hit on 9th August. 

Rubin’s work with acclaimed artists spanning from Hip-Hop’s Public Enemy to Country’s Johnny Cash is starkly heard throughout the project. From styles of punk, ska, jazz, indie, and pop – Rubin lays a jaunty yet confrontational foundation reclaimed by Bea’s bubblegum indie vocals. Yet, her blunter lyricism and fluidity with genres solidifies her as an artist in such we bear witness to Bea swapping her DIY-indie-Doc Martens for worldly-polished-kitten heels.

On This is How Tomorrow Moves, Beabadoobee is dealing with bittersweet womanhood by sonically exploring herself through the lens of mid-20s-journaling, moving away from the angsty teen-diary-keeping. We can find Bea grounding herself through descriptions of self-awareness, vanity, emotional turmoil, and maturity. She says, “I love this album – I feel like it’s helped me so much more than anything else has in navigating this new era, this new understanding of where I’m at. I guess it’s about becoming a woman.’ Despite the dissonance of her thoughts and reality, we are very much dealing with Bea reclaiming her perceptions of herself.

The album opens with heavy indie-rock-influenced tracks including her lead single, Take A Bite. An introduction into Bea’s growing pains, she spirals into self-sabotage because her love-lorn conscious “wanting a taste” is overridden by a craving for sanity. This is both sonically and thematically followed with California, a spring-break rock tune, cased in her indie roots, depicting her romantic accountability. 

As the troubles and turmoil of love continue, the influences take an eccentric turn with sorrowful and apathetic ex-lore (the punchy One Time) and her unsatisfying one-night-stands voiced by her restlessness (the whimsical of Real Man). 

However, Bea’s insecurities extend beyond the romantic – with the country-folk fuelled Tie My Shoes, the vocally-charged ballad Girl Song, and bluesy Coming Home – as she veers into a cripplingly vulnerable state of self-analysis. The previously unruffled singer is forced to look inward, reconnect with childlike meekness, and consider her connection between familial wounds and feelings of worthlessness as a self-saboteur. Notably, her contemporaries are accompanied by another girlhood anthem as Billie’s poignant What Was I Made For, Charli’s vibrant Girl, So Confusing and Clairo’s rustic Sexy to Somebody is joined by Girl Song. 

The pacing of This Is How Tomorrow Moves revivifies as her tone elates. Another single, Ever Seen, captures a contemplative optimism adorned with a thumping drum beat and country strings. Considering it was inspired during Bea’s time touring with Taylor Swift and her upcoming Glastonbury performance, this hold-your-friends-close-to-you anthem is sure to match festival seasons. Then ensues (my personal highlight of the album) A Cruel Affair – a vivacious bossa nova, ska union detailing her bittersweet adoration of another woman – and indie-pop tunes Post and Beaches. 

Bea finalises her project, weaving her vulnerabilities with conviction into a tapestry of acceptance. Everything I Want, similar to Real Man, is a jilted declaration of self-affirmation with a honky-tonk production. This is followed by The Man Who Left Too Soon, a cinematic piece examining bereavement and grief, which is a solemn reminder of the universal experience of observing life. She finishes off with the whimsical lullaby This Is How It Went, where she softly begs for both escapism and boundaries. 

Following her previous album, Beabadoobee continues her struggle into aimless adulthood however with a tone of acceptance. It is a poignant elaboration on growing up as a tolerance of fate with a lingering child-like neediness. Though not dropping the aspects of her bubblegum grunge, her and Rubin’s direction and variety were playful in moments like Ever Seen’s punchy drumbeat and One Time’s Matilda-esque chanting. It is not a dramatic shift, which is unfortunate, but the project’s cohesiveness is commendable.

This Is How Tomorrow Moves is available on all streaming platforms tomorrow, and is on tour this November, including shows at Leeds 02 Academy (17th November) and Manchester 02 Victoria Warehouse (16th November).