Having the song “Rich” on the white-hot Amazon series Off Campus, British artist Bea jokes about going Hollywood. She finds herself spending more time in L.A. “I made it,” she says laughing. “Well, maybe. I feel like being here you get a bit of energy, like the sun’s shining. Life’s good. Life’s always good when it’s hot. It’s cool to be in California when everything feels like it’s bubbling up, which is exciting. And yeah, it’s always great to be here. I was here earlier on in the year doing some writing as well. So, I’ve already been twice this year, which is kind of crazy.”
As a 22-year-old with a song taking off thanks to a hit series, you’d expect Bea to be partying at Chateau Marmont, hitting clubs, living the party life. So, what does she do first when she gets to Hollywood?
“I always go straight to Beverly Hills Cookies, to be honest. And I get the Dubai chocolate cookie. Then I go to Crumble Cookie, and I order anything Dubai chocolate style related from there. apart from that, probably another cookie related thing because I’m obsessed,” she says. “I’m such a sucker for a viral trend. Yesterday, I tried the crispy tuna rice from Erewhon. I was like, ‘Yeah, this is what it’s about.’
Bea may be young and riding the Off Campus crest, but she has an extremely level head about her success. Maybe because all of this snuck up on her. In fact, she admits laughing, she forgot about the series at first.
“It’s one of those weird things I basically got an email six months ago saying, ‘Hey, there’s this new series Off Campus, they want to use your song. Are you cool with that?’ They send you the terms and you’re like, ‘Yeah sure.’ I didn’t really know what Off Campus was, I’d never read the books, I had no idea what it would turn into,” she says. “You approve it and then six months later it comes out. I didn’t even realize it had come out and suddenly I started getting all these texts like, ‘Oh, I just heard your song on Off Campus.’ I was like, ‘What is Off Campus?’ I was reading back through my emails and I was like, ‘Oh, no way, it’s that TV show. Okay I’ve got to go watch it.’ So, then I go to watch it and it’s in the first six minutes. I’m like, ‘That’s pretty cool.’ So, yeah, I almost forgot about it and then it resurfaced and it was pretty great. I guess it felt like a surprise even though I technically knew about it.”
Of course, a song’s success in a show or movie also depends on how it is used. Bea says the song was perfectly utilized.
“It gave me a similar vibe because I guess she was slightly pied off. Hannah was in her independent era, cycling on the way to class, like having no time for boys kind of vibe, which is, I guess, in a similar vein to how I imagined the song. I was really sad when I wrote the song. And I guess I wrote the song in an attempt to find some sort of joy,” she says. “It was kind of used in a similar way in the show, which is nice. I wouldn’t say the lyrics are very obscure. I think if they were quite obscure and I’d left them open to interpretation, fine. But I feel like they’re quite direct.”
However, Bea recognizes and acknowledges that any song is open to interpretation. Take a song like Hall & Oates’ iconic “Sara Smile,” literally named after Daryl Hall’s girlfriend at the time, yet beloved by millions. So, even the most personal song, written to one person, can be reinterpreted and adopted by the whole world. To Bea, that is part of the beauty of music.
“Music’s one of the things that connects with people with such individuality, it’s so specific to how you’ve lived your life. As soon as you put out a song it’s not your song anymore, it’s theirs. When people hear a song, they don’t think of you, they think of them and it’s crazy how many people will message and be like, ‘This song changed my life for x, y and z reasons.’ You’re like, ‘That’s so cool that one of my songs that I wrote from this place could have such an impact on you in that alternate way.’ It’s just really powerful. And I feel like music’s one of the only things that really does that,” she says.
Growing up, what were the songs that had a similar impact on her?
“I was obsessed with ‘Jar of Hearts’ by Christina Perri. I feel like, for some reason, everyone was obsessed with that song,” she says. “But anyone who went to school with me will remember this: when I was nine years old, and I was so terrible at singing I don’t even know why I ever wanted to be a singer because I just had no hope whatsoever. But I basically started giving singing lessons to my peers at nine years old and teaching them ‘Jar of Hearts’ by Christina Perri in my break times. That was probably the song that had a lot of impact on me. I don’t know what I was going through to resonate to that song so deeply because it’s so sad. But clearly, I was going through it.”
Looking back on it, Bea doesn’t fully understand why such an intense and sad song resonated so deeply with her nine-year-old self, but she quips it might have something to do with the fact she sought the spotlight and was breaking hearts from a very young age.
“Honestly, it’s still pretty nonsensical to me. The song is like, ‘Who do you think you are running around leaving scars, collecting your jar of hearts, tearing love apart?’ That must have been a pretty bad heartbreak. Maybe it was a boy in the playground. I used to have quite a lot of young lovers back in the day. We used to play Lego in the playground and have fake marriages. Our friends would marry us off; we’d create fake wreaths and put them on our heads and have fake diamond rings. So, maybe he broke my heart and that’s what I was thinking of. My first divorce. It’s so heartbreaking,” she jokes. “What was pretty heartbreaking actually is I hosted a birthday party when I was eight and we basically went into this back room at my birthday party and we had our first kiss. And then all our friends walked in as we were kissing behind the curtain. Then I think he got really embarrassed and run off. That was the end of that. Maybe if I listen to my songs now and think of that situation, I could draw some parallels.”
If Bea sounds like she was a bit precocious as a child, she explains that it was her way of fighting through the crowd. “I’m the youngest of four. And I think when you’re the youngest of four, you’ve got to fight for your voice to be heard and make them think that you’re not totally useless,” she says.
Ultimately, those early experiences with emotion helped teach Bea about the importance of open, vulnerable songwriting. When she thinks of the music that reaches through the crowd and speaks to her, it is music that screams authenticity.
“I fucking love honest artists,” she says excitedly. “It’s like Hayley Williams, Lily Allen, Regina Spector, Fiona Apple. I just read all the lyrics. I just find it so fascinating when people are like, ‘This is it,’ like Kate Bush. There are so many, like Amy Winehouse. She’s so punchy and direct and poetic, but it just feels like she’s just saying, she doesn’t give a shit about anything else going on around her.”
It taught her how to always speak her truth as artist. “I just try and write things that fulfill me and try and fulfill an emotion that I’m thinking, and I just want things to always be brutally honest. I’ve always been brutally honest, growing up as a kid, I’ve never really been afraid to speak my mind whether that’s for good or for bad. I just want to try and incubate that and never lose the ability to be as honest as I can just because of what other people might be thinking. I’m trying to navigate that at the moment,” she says proudly.
