Bedroom Pop Darling Beabadoobee Goes ‘90s Slacker Rock on ‘Fake It Flowers’

Jessica Shalvoy

It’s been a busy couple of years for bedroom pop meets slacker rock newcomer Bea Kristi, who records under the moniker Beabadoobee. Just three years ago, at 17-years-old, the Filipino-born Londoner began teaching herself how to play acoustic guitar using YouTube tutorials, and learning songs like “Kiss Me” by Sixpence None the Richer. The first original track Kristi wrote, “Coffee,” a lo-fi coffeehouse-style song with a saccharine hook and dreamy melody, garnered 50 million streams on Spotify. “Coffee” was then used in Powfu’s “Death Bead (Coffee for Your Head),” and has gone onto receive over 200 million views on YouTube and been featured in over five million videos on TikTok. Now, with a viral smash, a radio hit, and a slew of EP’s under her belt, Kristi has released her debut full-length, “Fake It Flowers.” 

With help from producer Pete Robinson (formerly of the Vaccines), Kristi fully leans into the nostalgia of her ‘90s alt-rock indulgences, bringing a decade of influences like Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Elliot Smith, and movies like “The Craft” and “But I’m a Cheerleader,” into the 21st century. She even “rediscovered” Alanis Morrissette and the Cranberries while making her debut album, despite being a Gen Z kid.  

Themes of love, angst, and the trials of a coming-of-age young woman flow through the record. In her signature rasp, she lets her anger show on lead single “Care,” with lyrics like, “I don’t want your sympathy / Stop saying you give a shit / ’Cause you don’t really care.” Through soft tones and sweet pop melodies, her lyrics cut like a knife. With “Dye It Red” she tackles a classic tale of an abusive relationship, that despite not experiencing herself, too many young girls have. Lyrics like, “Fuck me only when I’m keen / Not according to your beer,” and closing with the line, “I’ve had to put up with your shit / When you’re not even that cute,” make the track relatable to most anyone who has ever dated. This type of unfiltered relatability in Kristi’s lyrics is one of her strongest qualities as a songwriter. 

Kristi begins to show her vulnerable side on “Back to Mars.” At a minute-and-a-half, and softer and more atmospheric than the album’s other fare, it serves almost as an interlude and feels reminiscent of some or her more subdued earlier work. The Sundays-esque love song “Horen Sarrison” is a spoonerism of her boyfriend’s name that boasts sweeping string arrangements and soft-soaring melodies. A stark juxtaposition to her channeling her best impersonation of Courtney Love, screaming “Throw it away” in the chorus of earlier track “Charlie Brown,” the hardest-hitting song on the album. 

On “Emo Song” and “Sorry,” Kristi gets even more personal, the latter of which touches on not being able to be there for someone because it’s too hard to watch. “Sorry” starts off slow with lyrics like, “It hurts me / That you could be the one that deserves this even more / But you stayed in the same dark place, that I adore / But, you stayed for more,” before picking up momentum then kicking into full-fledged rock revelry. Songs like “Further Away” and “How Was Your Day” are simple and more subdued, while touching on being misunderstood by the people you’ve left behind and missing loved ones while on the road. 

“Together” is full of grunge angst, with a signature rock tempo, distortion and all the works, while tackling toxic relationships and codependency. Kristi closes with “Yoshimi, Forest, Magdalene,” a youthful, gloriously messy bit of fun where she admits, “ I think that I want to marry him / But I really don’t want to freak him out.” Yoshimi, Forest and Magdalene are meant to be the names of her future children — Yoshimi taken from the Flaming Lips album “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” Forest for Tom Hanks’ character in “Forrest Gump,” and Magdalene, inspired by the Pixies song “Magdalena.”  

Kristi’s inexperience shines through at times, in the form of a teenage girl penning simpler ideas of her favorite songs in her childhood bedroom — but it’s endearing. The appeal is in the album’s nostalgia, not in its depth. As a whole, “Fake It Flowers” plays like a love letter to female alt-rock singers of the ‘90s, borrowing inspiration from a range of sounds that include Juliana Hatfield, Liz phair, Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh, and the Sundays, and mixing them with bursts of angst that sound borrowed from the likes of Veruca Salt, the Breeders, Sleater-Kinney and L7, to name a few. 

In a world full of Gen Z artists that are chasing the “genreless” label or trying to make the next Billie Eilish record, with her debut album Kristi is living her idea of a ‘90s indie rock dream, while trying to be something different: a reincarnation of a time when young singer-songwriters embraced being outsiders. Overall, “Fake It Flowers” is an impressive debut from a promising young artist who continues to expand as a musician and is clearly on her own unique path of musical growth. 

“Fake It Flowers” releases Oct. 16 on Apple Music.