Beeson’s Music Is Inherently Political
Author: Dhruvak Mirani
Jane Beeson’s definition of poetry is loose. She searches for rhythm in street signs and sometimes turns what she notices into a haiku. “Poetry is like a lens,” she said, “if you let it be.”
Beeson, who performs under her surname, is a singer-songwriter originally from Arizona. Beeson attended Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and graduated in 2023. During college, she began pursuing a music career that has continued to grow.
She performed in Washington, D.C., last fall, opening for The Dreggs, and she will return to Washington on Feb. 10, supporting Mat Kerekes at The Atlantis.
On some level, Beeson told me, she is doing exactly what she thought she would be doing.
“By the time I was a junior, I was playing a bunch of shows and realized that I wanted to lean into the thing that I was really good at and see how it went,” she said. “So here I am.”
In the past, Beeson has said she writes about what it is like to be a young adult right now. She does so with brilliant lyricism. In “Gap Teeth,” the opening track on her 2024 EP, Ritual, she longs to return to the idyllic life of her 13-year-old self. She delivers lyrics constructed with familiar language that evoke rich imagery, such as the line, “lately breakfast brings me to my knees.”
In “I Haven’t Seen You Since the Summer,” which she released in 2023, Beeson addresses someone from her past, asking, “Do you ever wonder how I’ve been? And do you think it’s time to be friends again?” These lines beautifully juxtapose the maturity of having a past worth revisiting with the innocence of seeking reconciliation.
When I asked what she thinks it is like to be a young adult right now, Beeson described some of the economic problems that members of Gen Z are experiencing, such as job and housing insecurity. But she also touched on the necessity of creating boundaries with technology to a degree unlike any previous generation.
For Christmas, Beeson gifted herself an MP3 player so that she can delete Spotify from her phone. She also recently purchased a Brick—a device that limits access to selected apps unless she physically taps her phone to it.
But for Beeson, the differences shaping Gen Z are not all negative. “At the same time, our generation is also really artistic, really politically active,” she noted. “We also have so many beautiful things going on.”
Among her musical influences, Beeson has previously cited poet Mary Oliver as a source of inspiration. In fact, she told me, several of her songs start as poems. A few days after her show in D.C. in September 2025, Beeson released “Tommy,” a song named after her younger brother, who she says experiences life in an open way. It begins with a scene of him trying to catch snakes on the side of the road.
She said when writing the song, she was experimenting with iambic pentameter. When I gave “Tommy” another listen, it was evident in the first lines of the song.
Other times, Beeson added, “My poetic lens goes away for a while, and I end up just looking at the world through a more musical lens.”
Equally fascinating as Beeson’s approach to songwriting are the subjects of her songs themselves. She said she does not only want to write songs about her romantic partners because they are not the only important people in her life, and she views other relationships as equally crucial.
“I want to write songs about my siblings and my friends. And I think in pop music, it’s easy to get sucked into writing a pop song about your crush because it’s so fun and so cool. And I’m going to do that forever as well,” she said. “But it’s a really fun challenge to write pop music about your brothers or your friends.”
In her songs, Beeson is also candid about her personal life, including how her experience leaving the Mormon church during college has shaped her songwriting.
“I think my music is inherently political because I’m a girl who left high-demand religion,” she said.
For example, on “Keeping Score,” Beeson sings, “I gave up the gun when I learned to behave.” In addition to the obvious metaphor, she explained, “I think religion is violence, and I think that it takes the power away from the people who don’t want violence in literal ways.”
Notably, Beeson believes her music examines power systems more frequently than it makes statements, in part because she feels like she is still figuring everything out. In fact, it is often the songwriting process itself that helps her take inventory of her own observations.
She is also refreshingly willing to talk about current events. On her Instagram story, Beeson recently called out the actions of the U.S. Border Patrol in killing Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis ICU nurse.
Beeson believes that it is a privilege to make art in late-stage capitalism and that everyone who has a platform has an obligation to use it to further social justice. She cited Adrienne Lenker as an artist who is mostly offline but still uses her platform for important causes at critical times.
“I will say it does take a lot of responsibility to have a platform, and it’s scary, and not everyone’s up to it,” she observed. “But it doesn't take much to advocate for people who need help. It really isn’t that much work.”
That sense of gravity is not limited to Beeson’s politics. Many serious things have occurred in her life, and as a result, influenced her music. But she also believes these events have forced her to be lighthearted, and in the past, she has not brought that tone into her music.
“I’ve always been a little shy about being funny in my songs,” she said. “It’s really vulnerable to be funny, and I think you have to be really tactful.”
She believes her new music—including her latest song, “Luckiest,” which came out on Jan. 28—is “a lot funnier” than her old music. While introducing a snippet of the song on TikTok in November, Beeson said, “This is my impression of a girl who has just received the bare minimum.”
Beeson is excited to lean more into her sense of humor.
“It’s more like me, honestly, how I actually am,” she said.
Author: Dhruvak Mirani | Artist: Beeson