Bebe Rexha‘s new album Bebe is out now, and it’s very inspired by the groovy sounds of the 1970s. But for Bebe, it’s not nostalgia. Since her parents didn’t really expose her to the music of that era, she just did it herself.
“I mean, I grew up in a household [where] we didn’t really listen to ’70s music. They didn’t play that stuff around me when I was little,” Bebe tells ABC Audio. “So, me and my friends did a deep dive into it, and basically I just fell in love with the sound of it. I wanted to incorporate it as much as I could into my own world.”
Mixing those sounds with the other genres she loves was going great, she says — until she unexpectedly scored a global hit with a song she’d recorded several years ago and then forgotten all about.
“I love rock music. I loved dance music. And then I had this newfound love for seventies and was like, ‘How can I incorporate all that and make it into this world?'” Bebe says. “And then during this process –and I was already deep into the process — ‘I’m Good‘ just blows up!”
So, of course, she had to include “I’m Good (Blue)” on the album — and then she and her producer had to figure out how to make this very modern-sounding electronic dance song fit in with the other tracks. But they did find a way.
“We tried to bring [in] dance elements, but with a little bit more of like a Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac-type inspiration to it,” Bebe says.
The result, Bebe says, is an album that she feels is a natural progression.”
“It felt like the right move,” she says. “It felt like the right next step for me.”
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