beabadoobee, beabadoobee, beabadoobee,
beabadoobee, beabadoobee, beabadoobee.
Welcome to my messy bedroom.
Do not look underneath this curtain.
Hey, do you want to listen to one of my songs?
Action!
What’s up? I’m beabadoobee,
aka Bea, Beatrice,
and I play music.
So loud, sorry.
beabadoobee, that’s how you say it.
The worst pronunciation, they somehow put poop into it.
And I thought it was on purpose, so I just kind of rated it from them.
Or people say I’m beababoobies,
and someone made a sign.
beababoobies!
I didn’t flash my tits.
I grew up in West London.
I was born in Iloilo, Philippines,
and I moved here when I was three.
It’s me as a kid in my old house.
Do you want me to leave it there so you focus?
See, I go out with a DP [director of photography].
I know what it’s like.
I thought I was going to be a nun for a really long time.
My mum showed me
and I was like, “Nuns, all they do is just live with each other
and, like, sing.”
When I was seven, I was really intelligent,
and then I fell down the stairs.
And then I just lost all capability of, like, of academics.
I just got really stupid, and I couldn’t do maths.
But then I started being really good at the violin.
Lost some brain cells,
gained some music cells.
I went to a private school in the Philippines,
and I think it’s quite different from the public schools
because they kind of let you do whatever the fuck you want.
It's actually quite bad.
I just remember not really learning anything and...
and just having lots of fun and eating loads of food
and getting really fat.
I can think of a funny time when I did--
It was like a talent show.
It wasn’t really a-- It was a class talent show.
And I sang
by Miley Cyrus acapella, no backing track,
in the middle of the class, in front of everyone.
Full-on dance moves and angst.
My room is so messy.
This is kind of-- This is an insight to my life.
I went through a phase where I just, like,
refused to listen to music on my phone
and just listened to music on a fucking Walkman
because I thought I was edgy.
I’d be on, like, Hammersmith & City line,
and be like...
Beatopia
Feel like everyone’s going to think it was weird
that I chose the color green.
But I thought it was kind of funny because it looked like snot.
This was during the time in year nine
when I was, like, so depressed.
Where is-- Where?
No, there’s loads of pages in this book where it’s like,
“I hate him.”
There’s this page.
It’s just so sad!
There’s, like, weird drawings.
It’s black, for fuck’s sake.
It’s sad because that was just before I got really sad.
She had no idea what was coming, huh?
I’ve always had lots of self-esteem issues growing up...
as an Asian woman in London.
People were very mean.
A lot of backhanded, racist comments.
When I grew up, it was like one extreme to the other.
It was Asian hate to Asian fetishization,
which was really weird.
And I just couldn’t find a good in-between.
It definitely takes a lot of time and maturing
to learn to appreciate your culture and how you look
and your, like, family traditions.
It makes you different, but in a good way,
not in a way that you should hide or you should be embarrassed about.
Cute outfit.
I’d wear that coat, I’d wear that skirt,
and I’d totally wear pink tights.
I wore this for the “Last Day on Earth” music video.
Vintage Dior.
I don’t know anything about brands. I’m just like, “Oh, it looks cute.”
These are my shoes, but not all of my shoes
because there are some shoes downstairs.
These are my favorite ones.
John Fluevog, and they just look like princess shoes.
They’re so cute, like dolly shoes.
And the back reminds me of primary school for some reason.
I don’t know why.
Music was my first job.
I went to Camden,
and I went in all the stores and asked if I could work for anyone,
and they all said no.
So the first job I had was when I actually got signed
and started making music at 18.
So Gretsch made these guitars called Princesses
so they can encourage more girls to play guitars.
There's not a lot of female producers,
not a lot of women on tour.
A song on
is the first time I actually wrote a song about how I feel about that,
and it’s called
I’ve got a lot of people I want to go on tour with.
Taylor Swift.
Elliott Smith would love this shit.
And then we’d write a song afterwards
about Filipino food.
I chose to wear something quite loose because I know I was going to bloat.
I remember when I started making music for the first time,
my parents thought it was a joke.
My mum was much more chiller
because she was super into Madonna and Boy George when she grew up.
She showed me all the bands I listen to now.
I remember her first showing me Nirvana when I was seven
and me watching it and being like, “Oh my God, this is Satan music.”
And order...
vegetable spring roll, chicken wings,
kuro fried rice, chicken adobo,
pan-seared chicken.
I’m really scared because I don’t eat the middles of my meat,
I don’t eat the middles of donuts.
I leave the rim just around the middle.
My dad was really crazy into cholesterol and stuff.
Like, you cannot eat the yolks of eggs.
So every time I'd go in for the yolks of eggs,
“No, you cannot! That’s high cholesterol!”
My mum would feed me the chicken.
She’d miss out in the middle,
and my dad would get so angry, like, “You can’t just feed Bea the skin.”
I only want the skin.
Yeah.
I have this thing where every time I eat seafood,
it feels like that they’re swimming in my stomach.
For some reason, mushrooms remind me of human ears.
I could do shrooms, but not mushrooms.
I had, like, teeth extraction.
I just had a teeth surgery, and I couldn’t smoke,
so I’d have to get edibles.
Ube
It gets you high. It does the job.
Mmmm, Doritos nachos preparados.
Oh my fuck.
It's just the best chicken wings I've ever had in my life.
I’m eating the middle!
I love chicken wings,
and I’m really picky with chicken wings.
Pho, great chicken wings.
One time, they banned their chicken wings,
and I called every single shop in London.
I was like, “Where the fuck are your chicken wings?”
Filipino culture is just so...
so different from English culture,
in terms of, like, how they treat their families
and the food they eat
and what they do on the weekends, shit like that.
So that was quite strange.
Also being friends with loads of white people
and going out with a lot of white boys...
because that was a crazy cultural difference.
And I remember my dad...
going home one day and my dad watching the football,
and he never watched the fucking football.
And I was like, “Why are you watching the football?”
He was like, “This country accepted us,
so I have to understand their culture.”
It was obviously quite hard.
My parents moved to a country they’ve never, ever been before,
and they had to start from scratch.
Ultimately, that was hard on them,
and if it’s hard for them, that’s going to be hard on me.
And fitting in at school was quite difficult.
The typical Asian group in secondary school that I was in,
it was really hard to find common ground with them.
They loved my culture, but there was a lot of differences.
They didn’t understand that.
They didn’t listen to the same music.
So I found an amazing group of girls that can, you know,
accept me for who I am.
We used to do this thing. My dad--
This is so stupid, now that I think about it.
My dad used to make me the craziest Filipino food for school
and pack it in a thermos.
And I'd eat that shit in the form room
because I’d be too embarrassed to eat it in the lunch hall.
Which is stupid because now if I pulled up in school
with a fricking thermos with rice and chicken adobo,
I’d be like, “Yeah, check this out, motherfuckers.”
When you’re a kid and you’re in such a predominantly white environment,
you feel like an alien.
You grow up, and you realize that’s stupid
and that you’re actually cool as fuck, so...
The problem with growing up in a strict household
is that you create quite rebellious kids.
Guitars being thrown.
And you have the stereotypical teenage angst
where you just are a bitch, basically.
That makes me really sad that I used to be mean to my parents.
They’re really lovely people.
I think it definitely takes time
for very traditional, first-generation Filipino parents
to accept who you are.
Like, I didn’t tell my dad about my first boyfriend for a year.
First time he wanted to meet him, he told me to bring him to church.
This is my old book. It’s my old diary.
Oh, it’s, like, for songwriting.
“Bea’s book for songwriting.
Owner: Bea.
Please return to Bea, who is the best Bea.”
Underneath, there is my address, and it says, “If found, cash prize,”
which is a lie.
All the boys I have crushes on—
Duckie from
to the Beast from
Adrien Brody. I have taste.
Timothée Chalamet is on there, but I’ve crossed him out.
I've been teaching my boyfriend how to play guitar.
I’ve taught him how to play the Deftones,
which was quite sweet.
He’s a cultured white boy, you know.
We had something in a Filipino restaurant
that I don’t usually like, but my dad made me eat.
He was like, “Mmm, yummy!”
I’m like, “You don’t have to eat it.”
He was like, “What was that thing in that Filipino restaurant,
chula-chula?”
And I’m like, “What?”
Like, “Chula-chula, mocha-mocha.”
I’m like, “It’s fucking
Do your research.”
For dessert...
I want leche flan.
Oh my fuck, it’s warm.
See how smooth that shit is? Crazy.
Ube.
Holy fuck me.
This is sick.
This is the best day of my life.
And
This is good
My dad will freak out.
I feel like I’m in
and someone’s giving me all their desserts to eat,
and I have, like, a little bite of every one.
I’m like, “Hmm... great texture.”
People keep telling me I give off furry vibes.
You go upstairs, and there’s a bin bag—
it’s in the bin bag because it’s from tour,
not because I’m trying to throw them away—
of all the toys the kids at shows have given me,
and I’ve kept every single one.
This one’s called Poop
because he just kind of gives poopy vibes.
This is my Sully.
I always get scared because
it looks like he’s got a camera hidden behind his eyes.
This is my red panda rug because I love red pandas.
My bassist, Eliana, who’s also my best friend,
she collected all the flowers from the
and she pressed them, and she kept them,
and she framed them.
I got some paintings from fans.
Someone made this for me,
and I’ve got this random Polaroid of this couple,
this cowboy hat they threw on stage at our show.
They have no idea that this Polaroid of them is on my fridge.
I’ve got Electric Light Orchestra.
Galaxie 500, which is where my TikTok name comes from
because my TikTok name is gnocchi500,
and I really love gnocchi, but I also really love Galaxie 500.
Up there, there’s some of my books.
There’s this Sonic Youth book
that has every single one of Thurston Moore’s tunings.
Chabuddy G gave me this book.
Chabuddy G,
And there’s a Jude Law book... yeah.
It’s basically a book about that he’s not just a pretty face,
and he has talent.
This is the book...
this was when I properly started writing loads.
I’ve written most of my songs on this guitar.
I started writing music as a way of therapy.
All the music that stemmed from
is from a place that I had for so long
tried pushing under the rug and forgetting.
I like when people say my music is nostalgic
because it makes me feel like, “I know I am a little bit.”
At the end of the day, I am a 22-year-old girl
who has the exact same problems as other girls.
I think when you have a platform,
you should express what you feel and your opinion,
especially if it’s a good one, especially if it’s about politics.
As much as social media can benefit a lot of people’s careers
and a lot of people in general,
it can be very damaging,
and a lot of people on the internet can be quite mean or judgmental.
You're never going to have 100 amazing comments.
There’s always going to be one person disagreeing with you.
There’s always going to be one person that’s going to say some shit.
And I think it’s something that you just have to build tough skin with.
The people on the internet are not real,
and ultimately, they do not know who you are.
The only people who know you are your family and your friends, really,
so their opinion doesn’t really matter.
Be really jokes if you printed out some hate tweets.
I would totally love to be like, “Fuck you, John.”
Some of the sounds I hear, am I chewing?
One time, I did that, and then the mic was still on,
and I took a wee.
It was at Abbey Road.
I’m a chicken girl.
Thank you,
and the Filipino gods for giving me really yummy Filipino food...
for free?