Photo by Budiey
Indie rocker Beabadoobee had no intention of becoming a working musician, but that’s exactly what the the Philippines native, born Beatrice Kristi Laus, became.
“I never really wanted to be a musician,” she says. “That wasn’t the plan. I listened to music so much, it was such a massive part of my life. When my mom played me lots of music growing up, my real love for music started.”
Laus moved with her family to London at the age of 3, and the Filipino music and ’80s songs she listened to with her mother planted a seed for her desire to create her own. At the age of 17, she was given a secondhand guitar by her father and taught herself to play by watching tutorials on YouTube. She wrote her first song and posted it online in 2017 under the moniker “beabadoobee,” the username of her Instagram account. Laus may have been an ordinary girl, but Beabadoobe was about to be a star.
The singer’s streams skyrocketed in 2019 after Canadian rapper Powfu sampled her composition “Coffee,” a love song for her boyfriend at the time. Powfu altered Laus’ voice to match the lo-fi hip-hop beat of his song “Death Bead (Coffee for Your Head),” which details a doomed relationship. The song went viral on TikTok and got some play on radio, becoming the sonic backdrop to the beginning of the pandemic as millions of users posted their morning routines and confessions of love on the video-focused social network and similar outlets.
Laus didn’t know that Powfu had used her music without her permission until fans messaged her to officially release the song on streaming platforms.
“At first, I was like, ‘What the f---?’ ” Laus says. “But after appreciating it, and especially after growing up and maturing, I've looked back and I'm like, ‘This has given me so much opportunity.’ ”
Indeed, the 21-year-old collaborated with The 1975’s Matty Healy and George Daniels recently, and she now has 10 million monthly listeners on Spotify. She’s become somewhat of an icon to Generation Z with her drawn-on freckles, her no-care attitude and her straight-from-an-early-2000s-movie style. Backed by nostalgic guitar riffs and unapologetic lyrics on love and drug use, Laus went from writing songs in her bedroom to being one of the youngest performers at Coachella this year.
“This whole thing is very out of the blue, but I'm extremely grateful for it,” Laus says.
Laus released her debut album, “Fake It Flowers,” in 2020. She is prepping her sophomore album, “Beatopia,” for a July release. Its concept originates from a poster Laus made when she was 7. The poster was a guide to a made-up world, complete with country and city names and its own alphabet.
“I think the misconception with this album is that it’s a conceptual record, but it’s not, really,” Laus shares. “It’s like the name ‘Beatopia’ was something that was always in me, and something I just had to be comfortable enough to accept and never went away. And I think in terms of the record as a whole, it’s just like … everything that I’m coming to terms with. I'm not really living in the past anymore. I’m more talking about the present and how I feel right now.”
Beabadoobee comes to The National on June 7 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $22.50 to $25. thenationalva.com
