On Pylon, beabadoobee turns the uncertainty of growing up on the road into her most forceful rock record yet, finding connection even while everything keeps moving.
Released on September 18, Pylon is beabadoobee’s fourth studio album, marking a heavier and more expansive chapter for the Filipino-British singer-songwriter. Across 14 tracks, beabadoobee leans further into grunge, Midwest emo, and ’90s alternative rock while retaining the melodic songwriting that has long defined her sound.
Born Beatrice Laus in the Philippines and raised in London, beabadoobee first gained attention with “Coffee” in 2017 and later reached No. 1 in the UK with This Is How Tomorrow Moves (2024). On Pylon, she sounds less interested in repeating that success than in pushing her music somewhere louder and rougher.
Written largely while touring, the album turns homesickness, anger, nostalgia, love, and uncertainty into songs about staying connected while life keeps changing.
Its title captures that idea perfectly: like pylons carrying electricity across long distances, the relationships throughout the record keep their charge even as beabadoobee remains constantly in motion.
beabadoobee Pylon Songs That Reach Across The Distance
“Pylon”
The title track begins by making distance sound almost peaceful.
Fuzzy guitars and an electrical hum create a soft opening around beabadoobee’s thoughts about remaining connected to someone while physically far away.
Then the song gradually breaks open into heavier guitars, previewing the contrast that shapes the rest of the record.
It is a fitting thesis for Pylon. Distance does not automatically mean disconnection here.
Like the structures in its title, the song imagines affection as something capable of carrying across whatever space sits between two people.
The show’s on
And the drive’s long
But the rest of the roads are clear
And every mile just brings you near
“Write Me A Letter”
“Write Me A Letter” makes communication much harder.
Beabadoobee has explained that the song came from recognizing her own mistakes and admitting feelings she found too uncomfortable to say directly.
Matty Healy and George Daniel of The 1975 contribute production as gentle indie-rock textures eventually swell into crunchier guitars and heavier drums.
That shift gives the confession physical weight.Â
The louder it becomes, the clearer it feels that writing something down can sometimes be easier than saying it face-to-face.
The weather’s getting colder
Need you to stay, you make me better
Harder to say, but I’ll write you a letter
I’ll write you a letter
“It’s Alright”
“It’s Alright” offers one of the album’s warmer versions of attachment.
Its lighter band arrangement and backing vocals suggest reassurance, but the comfort carries desperation underneath, as if love has become somewhere to rest while everything else feels unstable.
That combination suits Pylon. Beabadoobee rarely presents connection as perfectly secure.
Instead, she makes it valuable precisely because the person reaching for it still feels uncertain.
Oh, take the wheel, take the wheel
And drive me out to somewhere I’ve never been
Kiss me like somebody you’ve never been with
I only wanted to be good for you, yeah
I only want it to be good
“Memories”
“Memories” looks backward for comfort and discovers that nostalgia can hurt too.
Beabadoobee has called it one of the album’s happiest songs, even though its emotional core comes from romanticizing old moments so intensely that remembering them becomes painful.
Its brighter, dreamier sound provides a welcome release from the record’s heavier stretches.
Yet it still belongs to the same central idea: sometimes the strongest connections survive only as memories, and holding them too tightly can make the present feel even farther away.
The smell of rain on the pavement
It’s 3 a.m. and I thought of you
You’re the best, you’re my favourite
I see you in all shades of blue
“Powerlines”
The pylon imagery becomes literal again on “Powerlines,” where Turnstile frontman Brendan Yates joins beabadoobee.Â
The track develops from a moody opening into fuzzier, heavier guitars as both voices circle distance, time, and the pull that keeps bringing people back to one another.
Yates feels like a genuine scene partner rather than a celebrity decoration.
His voice adds another perspective to an album obsessed with signals traveling between people, making “Powerlines” one of Pylon’s clearest expressions of connection refusing to disappear.
Powerlines help me feel I’m close to you
Despite it all, I finally found the point of view
beabadoobee Pylon Songs That Turn Confusion Into Noise
“Sun Has Set”
If the title track reaches outward, “Sun Has Set” slams a door.
Built around thick guitars and live drums, the song channels resentment toward somebody beabadoobee never properly confronted, giving unsaid anger the loud release it never received in real life.
It is one of the clearest signs that Pylon is operating with more force than her previous work.
Instead of softening bitterness into reflection, beabadoobee lets the guitars become part of the argument.
There’s so much we left unsaid
And so much that you don’t get
Fuck that, not worth thinkin’ about to me now
This sun has set
“Switchblade”
“Switchblade” turns self-protection into a question.
Using the weapon as a metaphor, beabadoobee wrestles with whether courage means fighting back or knowing when to escape, never pretending there is an easy answer.
Distorted guitars and off-kilter rhythmic movement complement that uncertainty.
It sounds defensive without sounding invincible, which is important to Pylon: growing older does not automatically mean becoming sure of yourself.
Do you start the fight or take the flight?
Feeling upset, can I choose to phone a friend?
Growing up just means to fuck everything up again
Take my switchblade, self-defence is to be brave
“Estranged”
“Estranged” sits closer to beabadoobee’s earlier melodic side, offering a softer counterweight to the album’s more abrasive moments.
Even so, its emotional position remains unsettled, caught between wanting distance and not quite knowing how to feel once that distance exists.
That ambivalence makes it quietly effective.
Estrangement here is not a dramatic clean break. It is the awkward space where leaving may be necessary even when the feelings have not caught up.
Say you can hear me, but I know that you’ll avoid the answеr
And I’ve been screaming at you that I want to go again
Don’t wanna leave my home again, but I don’t want to know
“In Motion”
“In Motion” takes the record’s bottled frustration and gives it momentum.
The guitars stay forceful while sharper vocal moments make honesty itself feel difficult, fitting an album written while its creator was constantly moving between places and trying to understand what that movement was doing to her.
Its title could almost describe Pylon as a whole.
Beabadoobee keeps moving because life demands it, even when emotionally she has not finished processing where she just came from.
I’m in motion, my emotions
Melting in my head
Drownin’ noises with the voices
Swirling ’round my head
“Nothing To Prove”
Hayley Williams joins “Nothing To Prove,” but beabadoobee keeps the song centered on her own conflict.
She connects it to friendships where people seemed interested in what they could gain from her career, turning the track into a rejection of relationships that become conditional on success.
Williams mainly strengthens the song from the background instead of transforming it into a Paramore showcase.
That restraint makes the collaboration more meaningful: beabadoobee does not need somebody else to fight the battle for her.
Run that back
I wanted to play that track forever
You lucked out
But you had to run your mouth, so whatever
“Radio”
“Radio” takes a more sarcastic approach to resentment.
A large guitar riff cuts through dense fuzz while beabadoobee toys with the familiar idea of somebody assuming every song must secretly be about them.
It gives Pylon some much-needed bite without losing its sense of humor.
Not every damaged connection deserves grief. Some deserve an eye roll and a loud guitar.
‘Cause I know it’s just a matter of time
To get it off my mind, I’ll go outside
You’ll listen to this song on the radio
beabadoobee Pylon Songs That Accept What Remains
“Spark”
After so much distortion, “Spark” makes space for something gentler.
Co-written with Pinegrove’s Evan Stephens Hall, the track begins delicately and gradually adds orchestral textures, bringing a dreamier atmosphere to a record that has spent much of its runtime pushing against emotional resistance.
Its softness feels earned rather than passive. By this point, Pylon has already yelled, defended itself, remembered, and reached backward.
“Spark” sounds closer to accepting that moving forward does not require every feeling to disappear first.
From the start I knew it was over
Now I know I probably had it backwards
What was I thinking? I was playing with a spark
How it flickers in the dark
It’s nothing much, but it’s a start
“Despite That”
At only around a minute and a half, “Despite That” works almost like a bridge into the finale.
Gentle vocals become surrounded by increasingly distorted textures while beabadoobee confronts a frustrating truth: somebody can hurt you and still remain difficult to completely shut out.
That contradiction feels perfectly at home on Pylon.
Emotional maturity does not always mean choosing the cleanest response.
Sometimes it simply means recognizing your own pattern while you are still caught inside it.
But you’re gone when I get home
Despite that and despite that
I’ll still pick up the phone
“Satellite”
“Satellite” stretches past four minutes, making it the album’s longest song and an appropriately expansive closer.
Deftones‘ Chino Moreno contributes backing vocals as beabadoobee brings together nostalgia, modern anxiety, doomscrolling, and the feeling of continuing to orbit people and experiences that helped shape who she became.
The song eventually erupts into some of the album’s biggest guitar sounds, but the emotional destination is not a neat solution.
A satellite keeps moving while remaining tied to what it circles.
That image completes the thought introduced by the pylon at the beginning.
I’m looking up
Under the stars
I’m split in two, sing to the moon, orbitting you
Like a satellite
Pylon Finds Power In Not Knowing
Pylon succeeds because beabadoobee never forces the confusion of her mid-twenties into a neat lesson. She can be angry, nostalgic, deeply attached, and uncertain at the same time, and the album lets those contradictions remain unresolved.
Its heavier mix of grunge, Midwest emo, and alternative rock gives those feelings more room to explode without losing the softness that makes her music distinctive. Even with collaborators such as Hayley Williams, Brendan Yates, and Chino Moreno, the album remains firmly centered on beabadoobee and the emotional world she has created.
By the end, the pylon becomes more than a visual from the road. It represents the connections that survive distance, change, and constant movement, even when everything around them looks different.
Pylon shows how exciting beabadoobee can sound when she allows her music to become heavier, stranger, and less concerned with having every answer. She may still be figuring out where she is going, but this album suggests that moving forward without losing those connections could lead her somewhere even more compelling.
Pylon by beabadoobee is now available on all major music streaming platforms. Share your favorite Pylon track in the comments below!
Sources: beabadoobee’s Instagram, beabadoobee’s Spotify, beabadoobee’s YouTube, twnty three
