beabadoobee’s New Song “Memories” Finds the Ache in Nostalgia

The contradiction at the center of beabadoobee’s “Memories” is what makes it stick. She has called it one of the happiest songs on her upcoming fourth album, Pylon, but the lyrics describe something closer to self-aware melancholia: “clinging onto ideas that should make me happy but actually make me feel sad.” The single doesn’t treat nostalgia as comfort. It treats it as a loop you can’t leave.

That tension aligns with the record’s wider approach. Pylon was written largely in solitude, a return to the intimate, unfiltered method of her teenage years. “Memories” carries that rawness without stripping the arrangement to nothing. It was first aired at Lollapalooza and Hinterland, then brought to Red Rocks Amphitheatre before its official release.

The timing is strategic. beabadoobee will take Pylon on the road with the Powerlines Tour, her largest headline run to date, beginning October 1, 2026. Stops include Madison Square Garden, the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, and London’s O2 Arena. For an artist whose writing often romanticizes the past, “Memories” makes clear she isn’t looking back from a distance. She’s still inside it.