walking upstream…
beabadoobee
photo: david lee · cc by 2.0 ↗beabadoobee
Beatrice Laus picked up a secondhand guitar at seventeen and wrote "Coffee" in a single afternoon, turning bedroom-recorded hiss into a career built on hooks and heartbreak. Born in Iloilo City and raised from age three in West London on her mother's Cardigans and Cranberries tapes, she filters 90s alt-rock and slacker-rock nostalgia through unguarded, diary-entry lyrics, moving from lo-fi confessionals through the full-band 90s throwback of Fake It Flowers and Beatopia to the widescreen pop of This Is How Tomorrow Moves.
the sound in question
2022
the perfect pairbeabadoobee
walk the tributaries ↓
Pavement1990s · slacker rock / indie rock / lo-fi
The deliberately loose, detuned guitar tone and half-spoken vocal delivery Bea reaches for when a song wants to feel unbothered rather than polished — a debt she's acknowledged directly, right down to naming an early single after Stephen Malkmus and later meeting him backstage.
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone — Space Cadet interview (Pavement/Elliott Smith superfan, 'Coffee' backstory) ↗
1994
Gold SoundzPavement
2019
I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmusbeabadoobee
listen forVocals that sound almost talked rather than sung, sitting loosely on top of guitars that seem to shrug rather than resolve their chords — the 'slackness' Bea has said she borrowed straight from Malkmus's voice.
Elliott Smith1990s · Indie folk / Lo-fi / Indie rock
The hushed, close-mic'd acoustic fingerpicking and diaristic lyric-writing on Bea's earliest bedroom recordings — Smith is a songwriter she's named repeatedly as a hero since long before she was famous, and wears tattooed on her arm.
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone — Space Cadet interview (Pavement/Elliott Smith superfan, 'Coffee' backstory) ↗
2000
Everything Means Nothing to MeElliott Smith
2017
Coffeebeabadoobee
listen forA vocal take that sounds recorded late at night with headphones on, sitting right up against a single fingerpicked guitar rather than a full arrangement — the same hushed, confessional intimacy she's pointed to in Smith's own records.
The Cranberries1990s · Alternative rock / Jangle pop / Celtic rock
The yearning, melody-forward vocal lines and dreamy, atmospheric guitar wash from a stretch Bea has said she spent listening to almost nothing but The Cranberries and The Cure.
listen: upstream & heresource: Elite Daily — beabadoobee on 90s influences and the Cranberries/Cure origin of 'She Plays Bass' ↗
1993
LingerThe Cranberries
2019
She Plays Bassbeabadoobee
listen forA vocal melody that floats and lilts rather than sitting square on the beat, drifting over jangly, reverb-soaked guitars — the dream-pop-adjacent side of 90s alt-rock.