[imagesource: Jordan Curtis Hughes]
Beatrice Laus, AKA Beabadoobee, posted a TikTok video of a song that she wrote on a secondhand guitar, for her friends, after she was expelled from school.
Sounds like something that would vanish into obscurity, right?
Instead, it blew up, with billions of views, as it became a viral sensation.
The idea that posting a video on social media, only to be discovered by a record label and whisked off to start a new career as a recording artist sounds like the plot of a teen flick, but that’s what played out.
According to The Guardian, Laus posted the video three years ago, and she only has one regret.
“Beabadoobee!” she laughs. “It literally came from my finsta account, because I didn’t think this was going to be a thing. My friend Oscar said I needed an artist name when I posted a song online and I said: ‘I’m not an artist, I’m going to be a nursery teacher, my boyfriend’s going to listen to this song.’
When everything started popping off, I was like: is it too late to change my name? I mean, I’ve literally written out lists of all the names I could have had. I get jealous of bands like Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth: such cool names, look great on a T-shirt.” She laughs: “And I’m fucking Beabadoobee.”
A ‘finsta account’ is a back-up account where people post things they wouldn’t post to their primary account.
Here’s the song that started it all:
Laus became the subject of online tutorials devoted to copying her makeup and look, toured America, played arenas, and learned valuable life lessons. She was also ‘cancelled’.
“I got cancelled off my own TikTok because I said something like: ‘I don’t know why anyone would do their makeup like mine’ – because they looked 10 times better than me – and people took it the wrong way and thought I was up my own arse or whatever.”
Gen Z is the latest generation to be named, and are defined as born between 1996 and 2015.
Laus was born in 2000.
Ironically, and despite the fact that her career was launched by social media, she doesn’t really care for it, saying that it pushes girls to ‘act a certain way’.
She laughingly compares the disapproval she engendered merely by mentioning on stage that she was suffering from period-related stomach cramps – “Girls online saying it was gross” – to the 1992 incident where Donita Sparks of L7 removed her tampon and threw it into a Reading festival audience:
“Society tells girls to act a certain way and I think some people [online] have fallen into that trap … I don’t know, at times I feel like people have gone backwards a bit. I’m obviously so tame compared to [L7] but it’s like, as soon as I act, like I’m, you know, loud in my mouth, people get angry.”
Whatever she’s doing, most people seem to like it.
Enjoy:
Check out more on her YouTube channel.
A last word from Laus, who has been dubbed “the voice of Generation Z”:
“I’m still the girl that kind of doesn’t know what the fuck she’s doing. But … I’m just riding the wave”.
Posting a random song on social media for her friends certainly worked out better for Laus than it did for Rebecca Black.
It’s Friday, Friday…
[source:guardian]
