Beatopia - beabadoobee — Orpheus Review

Artist Beatrice Kristi Laus, AKA beabadoobee, posed in front of large wall decal announcing her album Beatopia. Image sourced from https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FN00oDoWUAkf3fN.jpg.

When she was seven years old, Beatrice Kristi Laus created an imaginary world. About a month after she turned 22, she released an album with its very name: Beatopia.

Beatopia is the Filipino-British singer-songwriter’s second album. Her other musical creations include a few EPs—accumulated from 2018 to 2021 under Dirty Hit: Lice, Patched Up, Loveworm, Space Cadet and Our Extended Play—as well as her debut studio album, Fake It Flowers.

beabadoobee, her stage name born from an Instagram handle, has delivered an album that’s hard not to like. This multi-genre record is infused with personality and care. It even shows in the fantastic cover art of doodles, a fun blend of psychedelic whimsy reflective of the album itself. As a whole, Beatopia proves more experimental than her past work, and that very experimentation seems to reflect a young artist working to develop her distinct, mature voice.

“I wanted it to feel like a massive trip,” beabadoobee told NME of the album. “If [listeners] came out of it feeling like they were in some sort of lucid dream, then I did my job.”

And Beatopia really does feel like a dream. Starting with the folksy “Beatopia Cultsong” to the bossa nova of “the perfect pair” all the way to the delicate “You’re here that’s the thing,” beabadoobee creates a transportive, genre-exploring world within an album—equipped with its own lore, stories, and sensations.

“broken cd,” nestled right in the middle of Beatopia, is a clever acoustic number. Not only does she explicitly compare herself to a broken CD, (“Don't think I'm over it like how I said I was / Like a broken CD that plays on repeat”) but she uses the same lyrics and chord progression for both the song’s beginning and end. But by the conclusion of “broken cd,” after experiencing the entirety of the song, beabadoobee intends for something to almost feel different. I like to think of it as growth, plus a sort of retrospection wherein the lyrics haven’t changed, but maybe both you and the songwriter have.

The album’s lead single “Talk” is a personal favorite of mine. It calls to Avril Lavigne in, obviously, a good way—and not just because beabadoobee pointedly asks, “Why'd you have to be so complicated?” The pop-punk track goes on to offer delightfully entertaining lines like, “We go together like the gum on my shoes” and “You don't exist, you're my imagination / You don't exist, you're just a bad decision.”

Not to mention, I absolutely adore “Lovesong.” Maybe it’s not the most complex in the album, but it is so incredibly charming. beabadoobee sings tenderly in the chorus, “I missed the train again / I called your name / As if you'd drive it back,” and those are probably my favorite lyrics in the whole album. The soothing love ballad is open, unabashedly romantic, and a comforting listen.

The influence of The 1975 throughout Beatopia is also so present and distinct. Some might argue it’s too much, but this really is just a bit of extra fun. It’s worth remembering that the band’s frontman Matty Healy played guitar on her 2019 Space Cadet EP, beabadoobee supported them on their 2020 UK tour, and her 2021 Our Extended Play EP is a collaboration; Healy and The 1975’s drummer George Daniel co-wrote and produced the four tracks. The band is part of her musical journey. In Beatopia, Healy is credited as a co-writer on “Pictures of Us” and “You’re here that’s the thing.” The former even features vocals from Healy, and his impact is especially recognizable there.

beabadoobee shared with Apple Music, “It was Matty’s song: He gave it to me and I changed the first lyrics, which were about his childhood. I wanted to write about my childhood and a girl I knew, who I actually wrote about on Fake It Flowers.” She credits Healy for writing, “She reminded me that God started with a capital letter,” which ultimately turned into “She reminded me that God starts with a capital.” It’s a perfect fit for the Midwest emo sounds of “Pictures of Us.” The line, much like the song itself, is striking, open to interpretation, and so quintessentially Healy.

Looking at Beatopia, beabadoobee has come a long way from going viral for her hit song, “Coffee.” She’s no longer just “the coffee girl” recognizable from Canadian producer Powfu’s sensationalized lo-fi hip-hop remix, “death bed (coffee for your head).” It might even be said that she’s breaking out of her carefully crafted persona revolving around that spunkier, edgier, grunge aesthetic critical to her public identity. Beatopia just feels less restricted in terms of what it could be defined as. Nothing feels forced or disingenuous as beabadoobee balances softness and ethereal tones with biting lyrics and distortion in a way that is so distinctly her.

The origins of Beatopia the fantasy universe (not Beatopia the album) make it all feel so much more genuine. As a child, she immigrated with her parents from Iloilo City in the Philippines to London. According to Pitchfork, she then felt like an “alien” in a predominantly white school, “finding a much-needed escape in the invented alphabet, people, and places of Beatopia, but [blotting] out her fantasy land after her teacher and classmates found—and roundly mocked—her grand escapist vision.”

While beabadoobee has never been one to shy away from difficult or personal topics in her songs, it’s as if she’s sharing a heavier, more vulnerable part of herself in Beatopia, its tracks united through this underlying idea of reclamation and a greater confidence in what she is doing. This is not to say the album lacks fun or whimsy; it’s experimental, still biting and bold at times, and rather angelic with beabadoobee’s signature soft vocals.

It’s just that through the imaginary world of this album, beabadoobee becomes so much more real.

Her 2022 North American tour is scheduled to run from October to December. Later this month, she’ll be performing a sold-out show at Union Transfer in Philadelphia.

See you in Philly, Bea.