beabadoobee joins Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to discuss her new album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, and the stories behind new songs including “The Man Who Left Too Soon” and “Girl Song.” She also shares what it was like to work on the album with Rick Rubin at his Shangri-La recording studio, and the story of when she got her first guitar.
beabadoobee tells Apple Music how her new album is a reflection of her personal growth...
I think there was a two-year period between playing shows and a lot of things that have happened in my life that caused me to snap back into reality. It was almost like the pinnacle moment of like, "Okay, now I need to be a grown up. Now I just can't constantly blame and complain about other people. I need to look at myself much more introspectively." It was in the middle of tour. It was in the middle of me being quite unhealthy on the road and unhealthy in general, if I'm being honest. I guess that was the point where I really needed music to help me understand what my brain was going through at the time and how to navigate that moment through time.
beabdoobee tells Apple Music what sparked one of her biggest moments of growth…
beabadoobee: I just went through a very intense breakup. I think it was the aftermath of the breakup and what happened afterwards that really shifted my brain.
Zane Lowe: Like hole in the soul breakup.
beabadoobee: Yeah. But it wasn't so much the breakup itself, it was the actions that happened afterwards that hurt me, or the way just people handled it. Then I realized a lot of my life was seen by a load of people, my music, my life at home, my relationship. And I can't help that, because I don't think when I post, I just post whatever. My relationship with the internet I would like to think has improved since then, but there was a weird embarrassment or a dependency with that.
Zane Lowe: A validity came from it almost.
beabadoobee: Exactly. And on top of that, it was the constantly being away from home and not knowing what real life actually was and constantly not being sober. I was in a very strange part of my life.
beabadoobee tells Apple Music what it’s like writing songs about past relationships…
I think it's always important to be honest with your truth. As much as it would hurt the other person, I feel like there is an understanding there because I create art as well. There needs to be a mutual... I think I've only been with boyfriends who have created art, so I think there should be a mutual understanding there.
beabadoobee tells Apple Music about her song “The Man Who Left Too Soon"…
beabadoobee: I've never really experienced death in a family at my conscious age. I always wondered how that felt like. Meeting my current boyfriend who unfortunately lost his dad around his twenties, I really got to see how that would feel like and how that would affect someone. I wanted to write about it so I can understand what that would mean to other people and what that would mean to him and what that would mean to me.
Zane Lowe: Yeah, an observational lesson and turned to emotion. I love that.
beabadoobee: But then there's a hopefulness to it, where it's like at the end of the day, we're both just looking at the same moon.
beabadoobee tells Apple Music about how her dad gifting her a guitar sparked her interest in making music…
beabadoobee: I didn't tell [my dad] I wanted a guitar. I had interest in music, but I had no interest in making it at all. I was just very confused and lost. I was obsessed with the idea of becoming a nursery teacher, and I still am. But at that time I was like, “maybe that's my calling, working with children." And I still think it is in some ways, but when my dad got me that guitar, everything made sense.
Zane Lowe: What about the first time you picked it up, you played it, did it feel natural or was it like, "No, this is going to be hard?”
beabadoobee: It felt very strangely natural, but then again, I did play violin for seven years.
beabadoobee tells Apple Music about how she trusted her instincts while making her new album…
Before going into that studio or whilst I was writing these songs, I always wondered how I wrote songs at the beginning of my career. A, there was no pressure, and B, I wasn't that... I'm not a crazy guitarist and I'm not a trained musician. So whatever I do with my instrument, I never double-think it. I don't think about it too much. I just play it. I tried thinking about that when I was writing This Is How Tomorrow Moves.
beabadoobee tells Apple Music what it was like working with Rick Rubin at his Shangri-La studio in Malibu…
Zane Lowe: Even the way you sing some of these words and lines in these songs, I haven't heard your voice sound like that. It's like you go to different places. Is that Rick, did he help you do that?
beabadoobee: I honestly think, not much the songwriting of the melodies changed when we were recording it properly.
Zane Lowe: But the performance?
beabadoobee: The performance in some ways, yes. Because I think being in a space like Shangri-La, and knowing that you're making this record with Rick, it definitely kind of kicks you in a bit. I'm like, "All right, it's time to shine," pretty much.
beabadoobee tells Apple Music about her first meeting with Rick Rubin...
Because the entire meeting was about life and about just catching up, he was asking me loads of questions and stuff. It was nothing about an album. I had plans making this album in London with Jacob or just us two again at my house, whatever. Then just a week later after that meeting, his manager hit up my manager and said he wanted to make this album.
beabadoobee tells Apple Music that she doesn’t like to be constrained by one genre...
If you look at my earlier stuff, I am so comfortable holding an acoustic guitar. Even all the rock songs are born from an acoustic guitar, it just depends how you're going to produce it. I just love writing songs. It doesn't matter what genre I choose for it to be in, I always find it so, what's the word, claustrophobic if I have to stick to one thing. Even when I listen to things, I go from listening to Title Fight, then, I don't know, Will Young.
beabadoobee tells Apple Music about her new song “Girl Song”…
I think you can argue that "Girl Song," out of all the songs in the record is the most tragic. I know there's "Tie My Shoes" and "This Is How It Went" and "The Man Who Left Too Soon." But then there was always a sense of hopefulness in that song. I think with "Girl Song," I wrote it because I'm still trying to figure that one out. Just in terms of growing up and loving myself and the way I look and physical appearance and all that mumbo-jumbo. But it sits at number six [on the tracklist], just because I just felt like it was perfect. It had to be perfectly in the middle of the record because it didn't suit neither the beginning or the end, it was just how I felt at that moment.
beabadoobee tells Apple Music what the title of her new album means to her...
This Is How Tomorrow Moves to me, there is something about the word “moves" that's so physical. It's like I had to write all those songs to be able to move on from everything that I was going through that time, to move on to tomorrow, to be able... I had to pass through this time. I think that's what the title means to me.
