Almost Famous

On a sweaty night this past August, the crowd by the barricades at Budweiser Stage was packed elbow to elbow and vibrating with a kind of fervour typically associated with cult members, daytime talk-show audiences or—let’s be honest—Swifties. Supplicants threw themselves at the feet of the Beaches, four women in their late 20s who happen to be the biggest rock stars to ever emerge from, well, the Beaches, their childhood stomping grounds and the inspiration for their band’s name. Notwithstanding the crushed Cutwater cans and drained guitar-shaped wine goblets littering the ground, there was a wholesomeness to the collective rapture. Moms and their tween daughters mouthed lyrics about neurotic self-loathing and sipping beers in the shower; couples of all genders swayed to ballads about breakups; a sea of eager hands received a crowdsurfer with the affirmation of a group hug.

This was no Eras Tour, however: the Beaches relied on low-key production design—just the moody glow of their name in marquee lights, a beach ball flung into the crowd and a stylized entrance inspired, the band claimed, by kabuki theatre. (The latter element involved the dramatic drop of a black curtain—the fourth wall!—and a precisely timed leap over it by lead singer Jordan Miller.) Beyond their hooky new wave–inspired rock, which has the sweet-tart bite of Sour Patch Kids candy, the Beaches’ superpower is their unvarnished rizz, as their 260,000 TikTok followers might say. That aura of breezy authenticity is the quality that, 20 months ago, sparked a tectonic shift for the band.

On a basic level, the catalyst was Miller’s ex, Brett Emmons, lead singer of the Glorious Sons. Or, rather, it was “Blame Brett,” the perpetually catchy single Miller wrote in the wake of their breakup. (To answer the obvious question: yes, she gave Emmons a heads-up before the song came out; he was sanguine but didn’t anticipate becoming cultural shorthand for attachment issues.) To tease their sophomore full-length album, the Beaches posted a 25-second clip of Miller in the sound booth recording “Blame Brett” on TikTok in May of 2023. Something about it—the un­mediated performance, the universality of heartbreak, the sardonic nod to the Raptors—clicked, and the video went viral. The original clip has 3.4 million plays; the song, released a few weeks earlier, has been streamed 80 million times on Spotify.

The seemingly instant success of “Blame Brett” belies the fact that lead vocalist and bassist Miller; her younger sister, Kylie Miller, on guitar; drummer Eliza Enman-McDaniel; and keyboardist and guitarist Leandra Earl have been chasing fame since before they were old enough to drive. In the intervening years, they’ve graduated from high school, amassed awards, opened for the Rolling Stones (twice) and played hundreds of shows—but it took that clip to flip the switch.

Six months after releasing the video, the Beaches tore through a two-night stand at Massey Hall like they were going ham at an all-ages punk show as opposed to playing for 5,500-odd ticket holders at a concert hall. In the first half of 2024, they played upward of 70 shows across North America, Europe and Australia. They performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live in February and won Junos for group of the year and rock album of the year in March. In April, Jordan, a huge baseball fan, sang the anthem at the Jays’ home opener against the Mariners and proclaimed it one of the best moments of her life. Then, a year after the Beaches unleashed “Blame Brett,” they sold out their show at the 16,000-seat Bud Stage.

I met them just as they were wrapping up soundcheck. The CNE was in full swing, and a rapidly expanding mass of fans was gathering by the venue’s gates—some of whom, clutching pillows and collapsible chairs, told me they’d been there since 5:30 a.m. Inside, the band fine-tuned technical details, and Earl—the Beaches’ queer heart-throb, wearing a white tank top, a black dad cap and Ray-Bans—refined the logistics of her scissor kick. Once satisfied, they headed into the wings and up to a green room to wait. During the soundcheck, the Beaches were all power chords and swagger, but backstage they oscillated between tired and wired: middle-distance stares and anxious fiddling with pop-can tabs and cartons of Flow water. “I can’t stop shaking,” said Jordan, wrapping her arms around her knees. A week earlier, the bandmates were in the audience watching Avril Lavigne—Earl’s earliest inspiration—play her own sold-out Bud Stage show. When they got a sense of what a full amphitheatre would feel like, their nerves kicked in, said Enman-McDaniel.

In 2023, the odds of the band following in Lavigne’s footsteps seemed like a moonshot—one they’ve since landed with what seems, on the surface, like impossibly dumb luck. But, when “Blame Brett” put pop culture in a chokehold, the band knew enough to immediately capitalize on the momentum. It wasn’t a particularly elaborate strategy: they decided they could and would headline Bud Stage, and in Kylie’s words, “We worked our butts off to make that goal happen.” That may sound basic, but it captures the indomitability of their MO. Since the four women were in their teens, they’ve reassessed and reconfigured their sound, their look, their management and their name, and leveraged the social media of the moment, for ultimate optimization. Now they’ve finally figured out the algorithm—which is both a thrill and a curse, because they know better than most that the code could change overnight. “It’s almost too good to be true,” Kylie says. “And because of that, we’re trying to seize every opportunity.”

Historically, the band had never turned down an offer, but not long before I met them, they finally did. It was a dream show (Shania Twain!) with a hefty paycheque. It was also their only day off in Toronto in as long as they could remember, so they folded—­reluctantly. In an industry dictated by the whims of fickle fans with microscopic attention spans and insatiable appetites for novel content, artists can’t help but feel like the pop-music equivalent of sharks: stop moving and you’ll die.

Jordan and Kylie Miller are nothing like Noel and Liam Gallagher, Oasis’s forever-feuding brothers, but a certain amount of sibling rivalry is at the heart of the Beaches’ origin story. At six years old, driven by a fascination with Sheryl Crow, Jordan begged for guitar lessons. Her parents, Tracy and Kirby, both of whom worked in media sales and marketing, agreed, mostly because they’d heard that kids who learn music do better in math. They enrolled Jordan in Saturday morning classes at the Scarboro Music School near Victoria Park and Kingston Road and set one condition: if they bought her a guitar, she had to commit to the full 10-session package—no quitting. “After one lesson,” says Tracy, “she said, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ And we were like, ‘Too bad!’”

The sisters shared a bedroom, so it wasn’t long before five-year-old Kylie picked up Jordan’s guitar and started strumming. The prospect of being able to drop off both kids and enjoy an uninterrupted cup of coffee appealed to their pragmatic dad, who convinced instructor James Quinn to combine two individual 30-minute sessions into a joint one-hour class. Kylie was a natural on guitar, infuriating Jordan, who switched to bass. “I was very petty,” she says. “I didn’t like that Kylie was better than me.”

As part of their lessons, Kylie and Jordan learned to harmonize. Within a couple of years, they were writing songs together. Sensing potential, Quinn—who is part of the Beaches’ touring crew to this day—connected them with three of his other students, guitarist Megan Fitchett and a pair of brothers. The five of them formed a band they called Sisters, Others and Brothers, or SOB. Their first performance was in front of the Scarboro Music School, with Kylie on lead vocals and Jordan singing backup. The sisters were natural performers, says their dad, who describes himself as an “evangelist” for his daughters from the jump. By 2008, the boys had dropped out, and the Millers enlisted neighbour Eliza Enman-McDaniel, who’d taught herself to play drums on a kit in her grandmother’s basement. The rejigged quartet became Done With Dolls.

A brand strategist couldn’t have picked a better time for their coalescence. All-female pop groups (the Pussycat Dolls, Danity Kane) and all-sibling pop groups (Jonas Brothers) were more than happy to fill the void left by the Spice Girls and NSYNC. Avril Lavigne was an international star: in 2007, her song “Girlfriend” was one of the most downloaded in the world, and Forbes listed the Napanee native eighth in its roundup of top earners under 25. Done With Dolls, a bratty, mall punk–tinged teen band anchored by two sisters, was perfectly in step with the zeitgeist. Quinn helped them record a demo CD, which Kirby passed along to Raine Maida of the alt-rock band Our Lady Peace via an unlikely connection: a guy he’d met at a hot dog cart who’d grown up with the frontman. According to Kirby, Maida and his singer-songwriter wife, Chantal Kreviazuk, thought the kids were cool but needed to be elevated. For the band, that meant slow and steady development in the form of regular practices and performing material co-written by the couple.

It was an awkward in-between stage, all baby faces and sideswept bangs and songs reminiscent of a Walmart Great Value take on big shiny hits by the likes of Pink and Kesha. The band toured Canada, wrote the theme song for Really Me, a tween dramedy on the Family Channel, and brokered an unexpected sponsorship deal with Dairy Farmers of Canada. But they weren’t feeling it. The breaking point was a chipper tune called “Days of the Week,” penned by Kreviazuk, which the band was booked to play on CBC Kids. After they performed, Tracy recalls, “Jordan said, ‘I don’t want to do this stuff anymore—I want to play the kind of music I like.’” They decided to move on. When I ask the present-day Beaches about Maida and Kreviazuk, they avoid saying anything specific. Kylie offers some vague diplomacy: “Even though some of our experiences with different collaborators over the years were challenging, we learned a lot going through each thing.” For his part, Maida attributes the split to a “communication gap.” He praises their talent and says he and Kreviazuk have “nothing but love” for the band.

It wasn’t the only split looming. As the band reoriented, ­Fitchett quit, leaving an opening. Leandra Earl, a classically trained pianist and a peer tutor in Enman-McDaniel’s music class at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts, was Done With Dolls’ ­biggest fan. The remaining members were veering toward a crunchier, bluesier sound—more feedback, more minor-key melodies, more angst—and Earl’s technical proficiency was a major asset, so they invited her to join them. The new group’s first show as the Beaches, in 2013, was also Earl’s first time performing live. “I’d only ever played at home,” she says, “and on the clarinet at school.” She did their entire set staring at the ground, petrified.

The next few years were a series of false starts, but the Beaches refused to let up. Every Wednesday for a year, the band played a midnight set at the Super­market lounge in Kensington for a handful of people, then struggled to make it to school on time the next morning. (Music was the vocation; formal education was an unavoidable task on a long to-do list.) In 2014, they promoted their first EP with a mini-tour of England and shows at South by Southwest in Austin, which landed them a development contract with Island Records, an arm of Universal Music Group. For a crew of 16-to-19-year-olds, a major label deal was huge; in practice, it involved rotating sessions with songwriters and producers who tried to shape their songs for mainstream pop radio.

Later that year, the Beaches met Grammy-winning Irish producer Jacknife Lee (U2, REM, the Killers) at a rock and roll bootcamp in LA, and he was the first to encourage them to follow their gut. “He told us we needed to figure out who we were,” Kylie says. Back in Toronto, they eventually started working with Metric’s Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw, who signed on to produce the Beaches’ 2017 full-length debut, Late Show, a collection of songs anchored in a space between ’70s rock and ’90s grunge that snagged them a Juno for breakthrough act of the year and a big North American tour. The Beaches were fans of the musicians they were working with, which made an immediate difference. Haines and Shaw, Kylie says, inspired the group to develop their own style. “We’re four fun young girls from Toronto,” Jordan adds. “For a long time, our music wasn’t capturing that.” From Haines’s point of view, the band simply needed help aligning their sound with their identity, not the identities of their many advisers. “You can take advice, but if you don’t have an inner voice, there’s not much anyone can do for you,” she says.

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“When we started, I wanted older men to think we were cool,” says Jordan. “Now I could give zero fucks”

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Just as the Beaches seemed to find a groove, Covid hit, derailing their first headlining tour across Canada. The music industry was foundering, and like most big labels, Universal was reassessing its business model: household names were the priority, not young artists who had yet to make an impact. Presented with the prospect of being moved to a smaller subsidiary label, the Beaches decided to walk away. The band was unmoored for the first time in seven years. They felt like orphans, but it gave them permission to reassess their career with Marie Kondo–calibre vigour in the name of breaking into the international market. “We cleaned house of people who weren’t serving us,” says Earl. “And we asked ourselves who wanted to help us achieve our goals.” As it turned out, the folks who didn’t spark joy were a lot of older men—which ultimately included Kirby, who’d acted as the group’s default road manager and consigliere since day one. “I’ve been relegated to hanger-on,” he told me wistfully, admitting that the shuffle was key to the band’s current success.

Rebuilding with a team composed almost entirely of women wasn’t a conscious choice, but it was the right one. The Beaches met with a handful of managers before connecting with ­Laurie Lee Boutet in 2022. Boutet knew a thing or two about leveraging the power of the internet: while studying in the UK in her early 20s, she started a music-review blog that landed her a job in 2013 as an A&R scout for Universal Music UK. After Boutet’s visa expired, she moved back to Toronto and worked for Universal Music Canada before launching her own company, Wednesday Management. When she first sat down with the band, she was struck by the disconnect between their onstage and in-person attitudes. “They were so fun,” she says. “Not pretentious. They dressed cool. They were themselves. But when I looked at the brand and the music, something wasn’t clicking.”

Sold on her insights, the band hired Boutet, who crystallized their “Cool Girl era.” The concept was simple: starting with the premise that the band members (or their platonic ideals) were their own target audience, Boutet—who has “impeccable taste,” according to Kylie—led them through an overhaul that amounted to a reverse market-research campaign. The Beaches rethought their logo (out: fussy art deco meets hieroglyphics; in: sans serif block letters reminiscent of a drive-in marquee) and their merch and ditched the ’70s cosplay for clothes they’d actually wear out in the world. Easy, unbothered. “We had to stop being so try-hard,” says Earl. “Instead, we focused on what the five of us find cool,” adds Boutet. “The audience we want is women. Every decision that came up, I’d say, ‘Does this feel Cool Girl?’ If not, we didn’t do it.” Boutet’s approach is an established marketing tactic—identify an archetype, build a narrative around her and play to it—but that doesn’t make it any less authentic here. Besides, isn’t it better than letting a bunch of suits in a boardroom workshop the parameters of cool?

Boutet’s vibe is best described as “fun aunt.” When we first met, she waxed effusive about IV vitamin therapy, which she had recently tried. “When I get into something, I can’t stop talking about it,” she told me. That unfettered enthusiasm was in high gear when Boutet talked about the Beaches, whom she called “basically the coolest fucking band on earth.” When she came on as the group’s strategic co-conspirator, her first move was to make TikTok their top priority. Boutet insisted that they film everything, especially behind the scenes, and post as consistently and intentionally as possible.

This 24/7, no-detail-is-too-banal approach to content is well-worn territory with influencers on TikTok and Instagram, but there are precedents in mainstream music as well. Madonna laid the groundwork with 1991’s Truth or Dare, the behind-the-scenes documentary detailing her Blonde Ambition tour. During the four-month shoot, director Alek Keshishian tried to disappear into the woodwork, using two-way mirrors to capture candid moments without disturbing the vibe. When it comes to engaging today’s fans via a stream of curated content, the gold standard is unequivocally Beyoncé, who established her own production studio, Parkwood, in 2008, and hired full-time videographers to broadcast a tightly controlled version of her professional persona.

The 25-second behind-the-scenes clip that shifted the Beaches’ trajectory was the work of Megan Moore, known professionally as Meg Moon—a Minnesota transplant who had studied at OCADU, met Earl and Kylie at a drag bar in the Village, and was until then best known as a house photographer for Queer Wine Night, a regular event at the Bloorcourt bar Paradise Grapevine. Moon may not have been a social media manager, but she was unquestionably a Cool Girl—which, on balance, held far more weight.

It may still be a man’s world, as James Brown once sang, but in the current pop landscape, women run the table. The most obvious illustration of this is Taylor Swift, whose Eras roadshow became the first tour to gross more than $1 billion (US) and whose fandom has become such a powerful force—some estimates suggest she’s generated as much as $5 billion (US) for the American economy alone—that market analysts have coined the term “Swiftonomics.” But this isn’t just a Swift-specific phenomenon. In 2024, sapphic singer Chappell Roan released her in­escapable single “Good Luck, Babe,” which was streamed seven million times in its first week. Queer pop star Billie Eilish put out her smash album Hit Me Hard and Soft, then teamed up with Brat’s Charli XCX for a version of “Guess,” one of the songs of the summer. The Beaches’ breakthrough is anchored in this moment. “It’s the first time women’s opinions and fan obsessions haven’t been maligned,” Jordan says. “They’ve always been cool, but there’s a different kind of acknowledgement and respect now—even from me. When we started 10 years ago, I wanted older men to think we were cool. Now I could give zero fucks.”

A large part of that DGAF mentality has to do with the pendulum swing. The fact is, older men have rarely been the arbiters of cool. As Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones said about the road to fame, “First come the gays, then the girls, then the industry.” And women have been on top in pop before. Madonna and Cyndi Lauper ruled the 1980s; the ’90s gave us the Spice Girls’ kitschy girl power and the juggernaut of Lilith Fair; the early aughts brought a cavalcade of choreographed stars in the Britney Spears mould. Coming of age—especially as a gay or a girl or an outsider—has always been confusing and vaguely traumatic, and fans form profound attachments to performers whose work and personas help us through. I am proof: during Lilith Fair’s heyday, as a teen struggling with her nascent queerness, I lined up outside the Yonge HMV at 6 a.m. clutching a handmade choker and an inscribed copy of Le Petit Prince. I was patiently waiting to present them to Sarah McLachlan, who’d affected me on level I couldn’t quite articulate. My ardour was shared by the other zealots who joined Murmurs, McLachlan’s online fan club, a space that presaged today’s fan-oriented internet communities. Where industry executives (generally older men) and, to a lesser extent, rock critics (ditto) once operated as gatekeepers, fandoms (often dominated by extremely online young women, girls and queer folks) now hold unprecedented power, in large part because of the way social media grants access and fosters an immediate form of collective connection.

For Earl, Enman-McDaniel and the Millers, that power shift was a key factor in the band’s evolution. Ditching the drive to prove themselves to dudes—both the ones in their audience and the suits calling the shots—freed up space to have a good time. In their initial rage against the label’s cookie-cutter hit machine, compelled to prove themselves after being dismissed because of their gender, they’d overcorrected. “There was definitely a rejection of all things girly and feminine when we were first trying to figure ourselves out,” says Jordan. “There was so much misogyny—internalized and within the music industry at that time.” They’ve since unapologetically taken charge and transformed the band’s sound into something more glam and less grit. (“Their music was great,” Boutet says. “It just needed to be, like, 20 per cent more pop.”) Their lyrics also changed: the songs on Blame My Ex are more candid than the group’s previous repertoire. “I knew writing about personal stuff would have an impact,” says Jordan. “I weighed the pros and cons and realized that part of being an artist is sharing that side of your life with the people listening to your music.” This calculated vulnerability certainly resonated with the woman I met at Bud Stage in August who proudly sported a “Blame Hannah” T-shirt—and all the other fans who show up at Beaches concerts with their own exes’ names emblazoned on their chests.

Music is a small fraction of what’s involved in being a rock star. Algorithm-driven streaming services have fundamentally altered our listening habits, and unless you’re Taylor Swift, it’s unlikely that an entire album will catch fire with the broader culture. At best, most artists are lucky if a few songs emerge from the aural wallpaper to find a following. This is part of why so many millennial and Gen Z performers are heavily invested in developing distinct, holistic identities—branding isn’t just marketing; it’s a conduit that allows fans to feel as though they’re part of that world. And for artists who haven’t yet made the A list, fostering and mobilizing online fandoms is crucial.

Meg Moon, who describes herself as having been anti-TikTok before Covid, started uploading videos during lockdown to stave off boredom. “I was making silly little videos, trying to be a relatable newly out lesbian,” Moon says. In one clip, she poses in a boiler suit under a text overlay that reads “wondering why it took 24 yrs for me to come out” before unrolling a quick-cut montage of Christian worship imagery. Another clip, accompanied by the caption “DM me with your girlfriend application,” is a tight shot of her face in a backward baseball cap. The TikToks are what compelled the Beaches to recruit her as their in-house photographer, videographer, social media overlord and content strategist and ask her to hit the road with them in 2023.

Some of their early experiments—self-conscious promos, stylized “performances” on location—didn’t quite gel, but as Moon became more enmeshed in their day-to-day world and adopted a fly-on-the-wall approach, her POV as de facto fifth band member became the portal through which the Beaches connected with the world. Moon is as much a character in this universe as the band members. For fans, she’s a proxy, offering the promise of insider access through a queer lens: Cool Girls through the eyes of a Cool Girl. Deceptively fizzy, her posts are a cunning balance of behind-the-scenes snapshots, memes, concert footage and snippets that capture the goofy off-stage intimacy devotees crave.

The Beaches’ queer cred, however, predates Moon. Jordan, who’s bi, channels a sort of equal-opportunity allure in the mould of David Bowie and Mick Jagger. Earl, who came out in 2019, is loud and proud, with the gusto of a late bloomer who’s finally found her place; the band’s song “Edge of the Earth” is a testament to her gay awakening. An unscientific assessment of the DIY signs at shows suggests that she has the band’s most dedicated fan base—hand-lettered highlights include “Lesbian of the Century” and “Lesbian of the year? No—Leandra Earl: Lesbian of the UNIVERSE!” The most hard-core groupies stake out Earl’s best friend’s coffee shop (the Brockton Haunt), order Earl’s go-to drink (a strawberry latte) and just…wait. But it’s Moon who shapes how the Beaches are received; it’s through her eyes—literally a queer female gaze, if you want to wade into theory—that fans gain access to the objects of their fixation.

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For a band so tethered to home that their name pays tribute to Toronto, being constantly away is no small thing

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As to be expected, all this visibility has affected the band’s following. Scroll back half a decade, and the Beaches’ Facebook page is dominated by bros (many of whom encouraged the band members to smile). Now they’re a beacon for queer-leaning Gen Zers in particular, like the 21-year-old I met who’d been waiting outside the Bud Stage box office since daybreak to get the best spot on the amphitheatre’s lawn. “It’s so important to see other queer people and female artists onstage,” she told me. Earlier in the summer, she’d travelled across the country to see the Beaches at the Calgary Stampede.

In most instances, Earl is quick with a one-liner or a ­pratfall—the group’s clown—but she is earnest when it comes to the LGBTQ community. Last May, when their flight from Alabama was cancelled at the last minute, the band drove a breakneck nine hours to make a show in Florida with nonbinary drummer and singer G Flip. “I remember Leandra saying, ‘Guys, we have to do everything we can to get there,’” Moon recalls. “‘Florida is literally the worst place to be a gay kid, and they deserve this, at least.’” The band made it to the gig—15 minutes before they had to hit the stage. On International Lesbian Day this past October, Earl’s Instagram featured a carousel of photos (including one of her ex-turned-BFF, Alex Simpson, in the wings at Bud Stage wearing a “World’s Best Ex-Girlfriend” T-shirt) and a caption about how she’d never felt more authentically herself.

The Beaches aren’t on the record as a gay band. But, from a marketing perspective, they are queer-coded—which, for them, is a smart move in more ways than one. “I think it’s always been a band for everyone,” says Boutet. “I mean, Leandra definitely has a gay agenda. But, when you have that openness and when you stand for things that are important to you and you create spaces where people can come and feel accepted, they’re naturally going to come.”

It’s the nature of viral success that change happens quickly and exponentially. In December of 2023, the Beaches were playing for crowds of a few hundred in Europe, sharing beds in tiny hotel rooms and travelling in Sprinter vans. When they returned to Belgium seven months later to play the music festival Rock Werchter, which has been around since the 1970s, 30,000 people were screaming the chorus of “Blame Brett” in unison. This frenzy of enthusiasm is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the women are barrelling through their bucket list at lightning speed. On the other, they have no time to process any of those experiences. And for a band so tethered to home that their name pays tribute to Toronto, being constantly away is no small thing.

Behind the scenes at Bud Stage, there’s a current of yearning beneath the pre-show nerves. Jordan, who recently moved in with her boyfriend, desperately misses him and their dog when she’s on tour—which is always. She’s set on keeping this relationship out of the spotlight despite her winning track record with airing her romantic trials in public. It can be easily argued that “Blame Brett” is less about one breakup than it is about how letting people in can thoroughly mess you up and how deeply uncomfortable it is to be vulnerable—that’s what resonated with fans. But, at the back of Jordan’s mind, there’s this worry that can’t be quieted: writing a record from a place of misery helped the Beaches catch lightning in a jar. “There’s a certain beauty, an unparalleled thing, that happens when you’re in the depths of despair,” she says. “You create magical art. But I would like to be a happy person over a talented artist.”

Whether the band can have both fame and happiness is a thorny question. If you ask people who love the Beaches—their fans, their friends, their families, their team—they’ll tie the recent success to some version of “authenticity.” As a marketing strategy, it makes sense. In practice, it’s a catch-22: as soon as you’re selling authenticity, it stops being authentic. And in a universe where nurturing intimacy with the fans you have and the fans you want drives popularity, serving all that realness can be exhausting and unsettling. It is a kind of kabuki, after all—not in a disingenuous sense but from the vantage of navigating a line between artist and influencer, public and private, filtered and candid. And while balancing these elements has always been part and parcel of pop, performers have never had to deal with the level of entitlement and expectations of access that exist in fandoms today. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person and your base could turn on you in a heartbeat.

By October, the push-pull was palpable. The band had been run ragged. Even in the course of reporting this story, their available time was winnowed down to a sliver. Boutet’s top priority, she said, is managing her clients’ mental health. The spectre of burnout loomed; it was woven through Enman-McDaniel’s responses to a Proust Questionnaire–style survey in Spin magazine: “I’d really love to be: …Honestly, home. I’d love to be home.” “My daydreams consist of: Being at home. This whole time, I’m just like, home, home, home.” In November, when I managed to get the Beaches on the phone for one last interview, they were two shows away from taking a break for the rest of the year. I asked about hitting a wall, their daydreams of being at home and whether they’re worried that their success has an expiry date.

“We’re just so grateful for this opportunity, and we worked so hard to finally make it where we are right now,” said Jordan, who is battling a pernicious cough. “So, while it does feel like a lot sometimes, and my voice could use a break every once in a while, and we could all use a bit more sleep, it feels really difficult to complain about this moment.” It was an honest response but also a politic one, shot through with that shark mentality. Their peers—most notably Chappell Roan, who catapulted to global fame last year on the heels of her album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess and has publicly dealt with depression and burnout as a result—have raised the hackles of fans by trying to set clear boundaries regarding what they owe others. After fighting so long to have their say, the Beaches have no intention of backing down.

This story appears in the January 2025 issue of Toronto Life magazine. To subscribe for just $39.99 a year, click here. To purchase single issues, click here.