“He’s just an incredible guy… So awesome, very spiritual. He helped my brain a lot”: Beabadoobee says that meeting Rick Rubin for the first time was like a therapy session

Beabadoobee
(Image credit: Photograph: Jules Moskovtchenko/Creative Direction: Patricia Villirillo)

London-based singer songwriter Beabadoobee has been opening up about the difference Rick Rubin has made to her new album This Is How Tomorrow Moves.

The singer, born Beatrice Laus, was speaking to Dan O’Connell on Radio X, about how Rubin acted almost as a therapist more than a producer. “He is so awesome, very spiritual,” she said of the bearded production guru. “He helped this album a lot. He helped my brain a lot.”

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When pressed by O’Connell as to what this phrase meant, Laus explained: “The first time I ever met him - and we had no conversation about making a record together - but I remember I missed my therapy session that day, and then I went and met Rick, and I was like, ‘Whoa!’ Because, like, I actually had a therapy session.”

She went on: “He’s just an incredible guy, and he did this thing at the beginning of when we were making the record where he wanted me to play not my demos that we made in London, but how I wrote the songs in my bedroom, so acoustically. And I think hearing my songs stripped back like that really gave me the confidence and the way I wrote my music.”

Later on during the interview Beabadoobee sang the praises of Taylor Swift, whom she has supported on the Eras tour. “She actually inspired me a lot in terms of some of the songwriting on this record. Because I saw her live every night. I loved her little country hooks, so I tried putting that in one of the songs on the album.”

She described the experience of opening up for the biggest pop star on the planet as “overwhelming” but “really really fun”. She continued: “I think the one thing I took from that experience, was that if you mess up in front of like that many people, it really doesn't matter. Because you still wake up the next day and feel fine. Literally, I messed up so many times on stage, and like the equivalent of messing up in front of like 50,000 people, it’s like messing up in front of like 5,000. It’s like no difference at all.”

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Laus’s third album., This is How Tomorrow Moves, came out last week and stands a fairly decent chance of going straight in at Number One when the new UK album chart is announced this Friday. She plays All Points East this weekend, the Reading Festival the weekend after, before some US dates in September.

Will Simpson
News and features writer

Will Simpson is a freelance music expert whose work has appeared in Classic Rock, Classic Pop, Guitarist and Total Guitar magazine. He is the author of 'Freedom Through Football: Inside Britain's Most Intrepid Sports Club' and his second book 'An American Cricket Odyssey' is due out in 2025