On ‘Pylon,’ beabadoobee questions the cost of success
Following up on her 2024 record, the artist articulates the anxiety, heartbreak, and loneliness she found amidst the success
Beabadoobee released "Pylon" on Sept. 18.
Erika Kamano
Words by Andy Crump
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
This year has been a banner year for young women interrogating their feelings and reaching for self-discovery through their music. Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, released in June, and Charli xcx’s Music Fashion Film, released in July, take their authors on this painful, difficult journey in their unique ways, though as much as these albums differ from one another, “unfiltered” aptly describes them both. Bea Laus, better known by her professional moniker beabadoobee, now joins Rodrigo and Charli on her fourth production, Pylon, a post-success LP about the effects of a hit album on one’s life, rather than one’s career.
A hit is what any recording artist wants, of course, though many will understate this goal in favor of putting up a front of creative purity. No one, however, puts music out into the world in hopes that it won’t be heard. What beabadoobee explores on Pylon is the ways in which the success of her last record, 2024’s This Is How Tomorrow Moves, impacted her as a person: how isolation from her social circle and family while on tour stirred new angst within her, anxiety over being separated from them, and perhaps creeping distrust of the people in her orbit as she hit the road. She isn’t the first musician to confront such feelings in song—New Zealand indie pop band The Beths made similar retrospections on their sophomore record, Jump Rope Gazers (2020)—but the tonal shift that Pylon takes compared to This Is How Tomorrow Moves is noticeably sharp.
If the latter leans into pop funk grooves, all the better to dance to, then the former leans into a far spikier formulation: one part emo, one part grunge, one part alt rock, all parts attitude. It’s not that beabadoobee leaves no room for details like vulnerability here. It’s present on the title track, a slow-paced, gentle lament targeted at what sounds an awful lot like a significant other, but could in fairness apply to a cherished confidant or even a sibling. “And I love you,” she murmurs on the third verse. “And It’s pouring / In a place that I don’t know the name / But you’re always worth the wait.” An admission like that takes a certain clear-eyed candor, which is one of Pylon’s all-around defining traits, not just in exhibitions of beabadoobee’s softer side, but here it strikes like iron no matter the tenderness of her delivery.
“Pylon” crescendoes with buzzing electric guitar and deliberate drum beats. Then, the record kicks into a higher gear with “Sun Has Set,” “Estranged,” and “Switchblade,” carrying on further into the track list on songs like “Nothing To Lose,” which makes a lot of sense given the participation of Hayley Williams—lead singer of Paramore and one of the great rock frontwomen of the day—as its co-singer. The mood ebbs and flows across each. “Nothing To Prove” especially carries an upbeat, cheery aesthetic, the kind of song one bounces up and down to in a crowded venue, which, again, fits Williams’ persona as a bubbly live wire. It’s a bop. Pylon’s throughline of resentments nonetheless remains in the song’s DNA, directed at the hangers-on, folks who try to capitalize on beabadoobee’s achievements and popularity.
“You dress it loud, sell it true / Want the world to look at you / But I’m done (I’m done) With what’s unsaid (unsaid),” beabadoobee sweetly sings on the second verse. The intention is about as personal as it gets; no one likes a vulture, and no one likes being used. Within the rebuke “Nothing To Prove” delivers, though, is a dawned confidence. Beabadoobee grew up between This Is How Tomorrow Moves and Pylon. She stepped into herself as a woman, as a twentysomething, as a performer. The graduation from her youth to her adulthood resonates across Pylon, the gluey motif that holds the album together. “Sun Has Set,” like “Nothing To Prove,” deals with the dissolution of friendships (“When I say we’ll never be friends / I mean we’ll never pretend”). But there’s a degree of pride baked into the brisk tempo and fuzzed-up rock chords, as if the statement beabadoobee makes to her subject comes a place of newfound maturity.
"Pylon" is beabadoobee's follow-up to her 2024 record "This Is How Tomorrow Moves."
Erika Kamano
Cutting bad actors out of your life takes determination. It takes grit. Not to overdo it, but it also takes courage, and if “courageous” is the wrong word for characterizing Pylon, it’s nonetheless a record about chutzpah. Beabadoobee seems to be pointing to the difficulty of doing what’s right for oneself across these tracks, in between rounds of lovesickness, heartbreak, and loneliness. Being an adult, as well as a self-possessed person, is hard, no doubt about it. But the hard work of achieving that kind of agency while rising to higher peaks in her profession is core to Pylon’s spirit—a serious theme for an album defined by the pleasure of beabadoobee’s songwriting.
Published on September 30, 2026
Words by Andy Crump
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers movies, beer, music, fatherhood, and way too many other subjects for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours: Paste Magazine, Inverse, The New York Times, Hop Culture, Polygon, and Men's Health, plus more. You can follow him on Bluesky and find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65 percent craft beer.