“I just wanted to branch out,” beabadoobee tells Apple Music of making her second album Beatopia. After 2020’s insular, bedroom-crafted debut Fake It Flowers—on which she unflinchingly delved into the chaos of her teenage years—the London singer-songwriter was ready to get out of her own four walls, and her head. And so, once the worst of the pandemic restrictions lifted, beabadoobee (aka Beatrice Laus) holed up in a studio in South West London with friend and producer Jacob Bugden to try a new way of making music. “I feel like this record was the first time I was really intimately collaborative with another musician,” Laus tells Apple Music. (Three of this album’s songs were also written with The 1975’s Matty Healy, alongside a collab with PinkPantheress.) “I felt so much more comfortable. Everything just made sense.” Having turned to the sounds of the ’90s artists she idolised growing up for Fake It Flowers, she was also ready to broaden her horizons. “There were no rules,” remembers Laus. “We created a really long playlist of all the songs we love, and they were all so different. I don’t want to be tied to one genre. I realized I can make anything I want.”
The result is an album that reveals a lighter side to beabadoobee, and on which the clouds that lingered over Fake It Flowers seem to have cleared. These are songs about being in love, staying out late on a weeknight, remembering to take care of yourself and, most of all, appreciating the support network of true friends. “I feel like with Fake It Flowers, I talked quite a lot about negative experiences, and it really helped me through those situations,” says Laus. “But I think Beatopia was the moment that I finally accepted my past.” As for this album’s title (which Laus says should be pronounced bay-a-topia)? That’s all about self-acceptance too, a reference to a fantasy world a seven-year-old Laus had created to escape into, and which she disregarded after a primary school teacher shamed her for it. “Bringing back the idea of Beatopia was finally accepting things inside of me that I wasn’t so confident about,” she says. “I finally felt myself just becoming a better person and being more comfortable with who I am.” Read on as beabadoobee guides us through her dreamlike second album. Ctsy Apple Music
- Beatopia Cultsong 2:31
- 10:36 3:15
- Sunny Day 2:40
- See You Soon 3:26
- Ripples 3:07
- The Perfect Pair 2:57
- Broken CD 2:50
- Talk 2:38
- Lovesong 4:05
- Pictures of Us 4:39
- Fairy Song 2:44
- Don’t Get The Deal 3:40
- Tinkerbell Is Overrated 3:48
- You’re Here That’s The Thing 3:18
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