Bea and Her Business takes her business very, very seriously. So seriously that as a 16-year-old, the popstar – real name Bea Wheeler – would represent herself in meetings with swarms of label executives after her singing videos went viral online. “It was just me with nine execs being like, ‘Hello!’” she tells me. “My parents probably wanted to come, but I was like, ‘No, leave this to me!’ When I tell industry people that I was doing that, they’re like, ‘Are you mad?’ But I was adamant I had to do this on my own.”
On the day Wheeler signed with Warner in 2023, aged 19, she hit one million TikTok followers – and has since wooed crowds in the form of two confessional, bolshy and radio-ready EPs, 2024’s Me vs. Me and 2023’s Introverted Extrovert, which sound as if Lily Allen’s brattish 2006 debut album Alright, Still was melded with Olivia Dean’s breezy chart-topping pop ballads. In her latest single, “Rich”, Wheeler sticks up a middle finger to the London economy, Allen-style, as she croons, “And London price can suck my tits/ Sorry, how much for a fancy spritz?”. In her orchestral belter “Me Against My Head”, a song about navigating body confidence issues, she sings: “I live by the rules of the b**** inside my mind/ I couldn’t impress her even if I tried.” Wheeler’s business, really, is in writing killer songs.
