Thursday 7/16: beabadoobee—"Care"
Today, we share our thoughts on the new song from the Filipino-British indie pop artist beabadoobee.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him) and Eric Bennett (they/them). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. Now we’re, also a M-F newsletter about songs. Our format is simple: a link to a song and a short take from each of us about what we think of it. Each day of the week has a corresponding genre: Monday is indie, Tuesday is punk, Wednesday is hip-hop, Thursday is pop, and Friday is misc.
Today, we share our thoughts on the new song from the Filipino-British indie pop artist beabadoobee.
beabadoobee—"Care"
Eric Bennett:
Baebadoobee, the stage name of Bea Kristi, is one the many fey creatures dwelling within the soundscapes of TikTok. At the beginning of March, her song “Coffee” was the oft chosen soundtrack for people making that whipped Dalgona coffee that, face it, you liked more than you’ll admit. Gifted with a sweet, melodic voice, Kristi has all the makings of a breakout act. Her debut album, Fake It Flowers, is out later this year, and its lead single, “Care,” is a delightful throwback to the days of guitar-driven pop. Calling to mind the likes of Hoku, Liz Phair or Alanis Morissette, it’s familiar enough without sounding reductive.
Eli Enis:
It’s hard for me to think about beabadoobee’s music without gawking at how jaw-droppingly popular it is. The 20-year-old Filipino-British artist has over 27m monthly Spotify listeners. She strums ukulele and puffs out a pitched-up coo on a track with the vapid TikTok rapper Powfu, and it’s surpassed half-a-billion streams on Spotify alone. If there are people out there who are still bemoaning the lack of young guitar acts on the cusp of the mainstream, point them toward beabadoobee: the Mac DeMarco or Tame Impala for gen-z. Although many of her most popular tracks are lo-fi acoustic bedroom numbers, she’s been honing a more fully-fledged rock sound for some time now, and “Care” feels like a solid indication of where she’s headed on what’s being billed as her proper debut (she has two seven-song projects that’re categorized as “albums” on Spotify, but I guess that’s just semantics).
The reason beabadoobee’s popularity flummoxes me—in a good way, I suppose—is that the music she’s making now wouldn’t have come close to mainstream crossover just two or three years earlier. Her older stuff would fit snugly in a playlist with indie acts like Alex G and Frankie Cosmos (whose combined Spotify followings are a mere 3% of beabadoobee’s). “Care” is a bit different, though. It’s a fully-fledged rock song that sounds kind of like Avril Lavigne crossed with Oasis, replete with a searing, almost shoegazy guitar solo and pounding drums. Its VHS-quality video sees her romping around angstily, stubbing out cigs, and headbanging with a carefree catharsis. The instrumentation is chunky, her presentation is grungy, and she has the look of the emotionally fraught guitar-slinger (smeared eyeliner, raggedy sweaters, and frizzled hair). But she sings with the wistful sensitivity of a singer/songwriter like Phoebe Bridgers or Snail Mail. I doubt that beabadoobee is ever going to truly crossover into Billboard top 10 territory (I also doubt that she’d even want that, she seems pretty content just rocking out), but it should be abundantly clear that the sensibilities of her music are extremely in vogue right now.