On 17th September, the night before her album Pylon dropped, Beabadoobee played an intimate show at Bush Hall in West London for a room of her top local fans. The show was the final night of Spotify’s inaugural Hometown series, a concept built around reconnecting artists with the communities that shaped them, following Jorja Smith’s return to Walsall and Nemzzz’s homecoming in Manchester earlier that month. For Beabadoobee, West London is exactly that. You couldn’t buy a ticket. The crowd was curated, the venue was kept confidential until the night, and the whole thing was filmed for an exclusive Spotify concert film. As setups go, it was a good one.
The night before the show, Beabadoobee had visited The Avenues Youth Project in Queen’s Park, a community centre that has been a cornerstone of the area since 1979, supporting over a thousand young people every year across music, art, film, dance and more. She joined a small group of young musicians from their Releasement and Mic Drop programmes for an intimate songwriting workshop, listening to tracks they’d been working on, offering feedback, and sharing her own experience of finding her sound. It was the kind of visit that made the whole Hometown concept feel genuinely earned rather than just well branded.
The evening itself began at Chet’s, the Thai-American restaurant inside The Hoxton in Shepherd’s Bush, where guests sat down together before being walked over. The food was genuinely excellent. Prawn toast, sticky wings, coconut fish curry, a pineapple fried rice that was the standout of the table. By the time we pushed back from the table, the group had already settled into the easy warmth of people who’ve eaten well together, and the three minute walk to Bush Hall felt like the right amount of anticipation.
I came into this mostly new to Beabadoobee’s music. ‘Coffee’ from lockdown was about the extent of it. But Bush Hall is the kind of venue that does something to a show regardless of how much you know going in. Ornate and genuinely intimate, the room makes whoever is on stage feel close no matter where you’re standing. I was towards the back and it didn’t matter at all.
She opened with ‘Sun Has Set’ and the room was immediately alive. People around me were jumping before certain songs had even started, that specific fan recognition that tells you everything about how deep this crowd’s relationship with her music runs. Beabadoobee played guitar throughout and it added something real to the performance, watching someone actually feel the music rather than perform in front of it. Her band were excellent alongside her, adding texture without ever pulling focus.
As the time of her album release edged closer and closer you could feel the nerves sitting underneath the excitement. Spending those final hours like this, in her hometown, in a room this size, with people who have followed her from the beginning, felt like the right way to do it. ‘Radio’ from the new album got one of the biggest reactions of the night. ‘In Motion’ showed how settled she already sounds in this era, playing it with a confidence that made clear she knows this record is something to be proud of.
Then she played ‘Tired’, a song she hasn’t performed since 2022. To bring that one back on this specific night, in the neighbourhood that shaped her, the night before everything got bigger, was the kind of moment that lands differently in a room that small.
She teared up at the end. Couldn’t quite finish what she was trying to say. With over 10.5 million monthly Spotify listeners, Beabadoobee is not a small artist by any means. But for one night in Bush Hall, it felt like exactly that.
