Beatopia

Beatopia is the second studio album by Filipino and English singer and songwriter Beabadoobee. It was released on English independent label Dirty Hit on 15 July 2022. It features collaborations with singer PinkPantheress, Matty Healy and George Daniel of the 1975, Cavetown, and Jack Steadman of Bombay Bicycle Club.

Critical reception

At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 78, based on 16 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". In a three-star review, Rachel Aroesti of The Guardian said that Beatopia's "crowd-pleasing combination of poppy euphoria, laidback cool and often rather generic lyrics tends not to leave a lasting impression of much beyond stylishly executed nostalgia". Arielle Gordon of Pitchfork criticised the lyrical content of the album as being "often more form than function", though in a mixed review for PopMatters Jay Honeycomb noted that the lyrics deal with the challenges of human intimacy. In a more positive review, Kerrang! characterised Beatopia as a progression from Beabadoobee's debut album with "more diversity, more complexity and less care paid to the genres it falls within", marking an artistic evolution. Similarly, Hollie Geraghty writing for NME sees "the seeds that were planted in Fake It Flowers not only blossom, but inhabit an entirely different world" with Beatopia. In a mixed review for The Telegraph, Kate French-Morris wrote, "Kristi's music may sound fresh to the ears of those born this side of the millennium, but it's rehashed, scrubbed-up, 1990s alt-rock to everyone else, so well-cribbed she sounds like a fictional artist dreamed up to soundtrack a teen movie." Writing for The Line of Best Fit, John Amen scored the project 8/10 and commented, "If Fake Flowers featured Laus toeing the indie line, at times self-deprecatingly, Beatopia is her unapologetic leap into mega viability."

Track listing

All tracks written by Beabadoobee and Jacob Bugden, except where noted.