The Mic Recommends... All I Did Was Dream of You by beabadoobee

I have been a fan of beabadoobee since 2020. I had first listened to her due to seeing her 2020 debut album Fake It Flowers in my local record store, gave it a listen and fell in love with it immediately. I loved the throwback nostalgic sound of 90s pop rock which was a breath of fresh air at the time due to how boring I felt so much mainstream pop rock was at this point.

My intrigue and love of the album came from her soft vocals mixed with powerful guitars creating a range of emotions of angry pop rock break up songs presented through Care to the more melancholic thoughtful and sombre tone of How Was Your Day? led to it being an instant hit with me due to my love of angry emotionally led songs as well as melancholic reflective songs.

Both follow-ups, 2022’s Beatopia and 2024's This Is How Tomorrow Moves also leaned on similar themes and built on the sound of Fake It Flowers bringing her sound into the mainstream as her popularity grew. For example, songs on both albums built on genres and sounds at fans her age were discovering for the first time and were becoming popular with a whole new generation, in artists such of The Sundays and The Cranberries being clear influences on both records.

Key examples of this include the Sundays’ dreamy likeness on Beatopia reflected in songs such as See You Soon and The Cranberries' mixture of heaviness and softness on This Is How Tomorrow Moves in songs such as the opening Take A Bite. These styles, incidentally, are reflected in her new single, All I Did Was Dream of You.

The new single builds on all styles gone before and settles on what she does best; dream like vocals with powerful dream like guitars. It is even more impactful through the feature of sad indie icons The Marías creating a further melancholic, dream-like feel to the song. The overall build is pretty good and sonically lush with the fuzzy guitars and dreamy soft vocals working well. It blends her soft side of songs like See You Soon and more heavy ones like Take A Bite really well, so fans of both sides of her sound will be satisfied. Only downside is I would have preferred more push on the guitars, like a longer guitar solo maybe? But I can’t complain too much as before, the lead singles took me a while to get into but this time, I liked this straight away.

Overall, I liked this and can’t wait to see what she brings out next, and am hoping for another

another tour too.

James Dawson

---

Edited by Liz Clarke

Images provided courtesy of Cheek PR