“My frontal lobe is developed now”: How Benee is finding her place, in LA and on tour
image via @beneemusic / instagram
words by lara daly
We catch the singer in-between her Australia shows to talk LA clichés, existentialism, and why “there’s a little bit of bogan in all of us down under.”
Benee joins our Zoom call on a Monday wearing silver disco-ball eyeshadow and candy-pink blush. The glam is impeccable, her energy, slightly less so.
“I’m sorry I’m so hungover today,” she confesses four minutes in, her voice huskier than normal. “We went to The Dare afterparty [last night]. My energy is rapidly declining.”
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It’s a small but telling contradiction — sparkle and exhaustion – one that mirrors the emotional register of her sophomore album, Ur An Angel I’m Just Particles. Across its punchy pop hooks and surreal production, Benee explores what she calls the meeting point between “childlike wonder” and “existential dread”: a tension she’s been living inside for the past few years, both personally and creatively.
She’s in Sydney, having performed at Laneway Festival yesterday and in the singer’s hometown of Auckland a few days prior. Usually based in Los Angeles, Benee is in the middle of a packed schedule that’s seeing her flit across New Zealand and Australia, performing multiple shows in Melbourne later this week. Then she’s back to North America touring 23 shows until April. Who could blame her letting off some steam at a Freakquencies party in between?
Her latest album, released in November 2025, marks her first studio record in five years. “It took a little while, for sure,” she says. “I was trying all these different genres.”
That time wasn’t spent stalling, however. Instead, it became a period of recalibration. “My approach to songwriting now does just feel a little bit more mature,” says the 26-year-old. “My frontal lobe is developed now, apparently… what I’m writing about feels deeper. I’m less afraid to explore and be more experimental because I’m just more comfortable as an artist.”
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Much of that growth took place in LA, where Benee has been based for the past few years. It’s a city she describes with equal parts appreciation and reluctance. “It’s good for making music, but I don’t love it over there, to be honest. I miss Aotearoa,” she tells me.
LA’s contradictions are well-known but still jarring: beautiful nature hikes if you know where to look, but beaches that are “actually dirty”; relentless ambition alongside a social scene that can often feel transactional. “Sometimes you get the sense people are waiting to see if they can leverage off you,” she says. “They ask for your Instagram and you’re like, oh, for fuck’s sake. Sometimes I just want people with regular, nice jobs to sit down and play Catan with me.”
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Still, there’s something undeniably energising about the city’s self-belief. “People really talk themselves up,” she says. “They toot their horns to a point where they just believe they can do anything, and I think that’s actually kinda cool.” That same energy can also be exhausting. It’s a place of aspiration and artifice, a duality that seeps into the album itself.
Even LA’s health grind has found its way into her routine. “The whole yoga, green juice vibe, it’s very cliché LA girl but you know what? I’m down for it.” Between “fucking up” Pilates sessions on a Megaformer and spending $20 USD on smoothies, she’s found a rhythm that works, even if the city still doesn’t quite feel like home (“everyone here’s like, what’s a bogan?”)
Sonically and visually, Ur An Angel I’m Just Particles leans into Surrealism, a genre Benee says she’s long been drawn to. “I like when things don’t make sense,” she explains. “Just like life.” Early on, the idea of making a cohesive album felt daunting. “I was like, how am I gonna make an album? I feel so eclectic with my work.” What she wanted was a theme, something conceptual that could hold the chaos together. “Weirdly, it just happened over time.”
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From pop-rock anthem ‘Off the Rails’ and the girly rave track ‘Princess’, co-written with PinkPantheress, to the introspective lyrics in ‘Cinnamon’, the album is experimental in its craft but doesn’t necessarily sound experimental. It’s distinctly Benee.
Some tracks took longer than others to fall into place. One slow-burner, ‘Underwater’, was the final piece of the puzzle. “I wanted it to sound like it was underwater but also pop – like bang – and feel really intense and emotional,” she says. Even the album’s colour palette evolved. “I originally thought it was gonna be pink, but over time it changed to silver.”
That same instinct for contrast comes through visually in the music video for ‘Princess’. Shot in the desert outside LA, the clip features a cartoonish pink bouncy castle set against a dry, beige landscape. It wasn’t the original plan (Benee had imagined lush green hills) but a brutal summer left the location barren. “We just had to settle for it,” she says. “But it kind of made sense.” The result is striking, something magical and childlike dropped into an otherwise bleak setting.
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“There were a lot of those contrasts inspiring me in life and within the music,” she reflects. “You’ll see beauty in a really ugly place sometimes, like a pink trash bag on the ground in a puddle. It’s disturbing because it’s sad, but it’s beautiful at the same time.” Those small, unsettling moments became a recurring emotional reference point for the album.
That sensitivity also extends to how Benee thinks about success. After her song ‘Superlonely’ went viral in 2020, she was hit with waves of “one-hit wonder” comments – something she says she’s now largely immune to. “I don’t really want to make music to make hits,” she says plainly. “I want to make music that connects.” Chasing virality, she believes, rarely leads to meaningful work. “When you try to make a hit, I don’t think it’s generally a hit.”
Instead, she’s interested in depth, in unlocking “a very deep part of your imagination” and trusting that real connection will follow. Watching the industry’s obsession with TikTok trends and rapid turnover has only reinforced that mindset. “It makes me really appreciate when there’s a genuine love for an artist,” she says. Success, at this point, looks less like numbers and momentum, and more like comfort, health, and a small circle of people she trusts.
It’s not at all a rejection of wonder, just a more grounded version of it. One that allows for dread, disillusionment, and the strange beauty that can exist alongside them. In the quiet space between sparkle and exhaustion, Benee seems to be figuring out exactly where she belongs.
Keep up with Benee here.
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