Songfacts®:

• Built around a euphoric acoustic guitar, "Memories" finds Beabadoobee dwelling on the small, sensory details of a relationship she still treasures. Recorded for her Pylon album, she described it as "one of the happiest songs on the album, clinging onto ideas that should make me happy but actually make me feel sad, because I wish they were just moments I lived in forever."
  
  That contradiction lies right at the heart of the track: the moments we cherish most often hurt precisely because they are over.
• The smell of rain on the pavement
  It's 3 a.m. and I thought of you
  You're the best, you're my favorite
  I see you in all shades of blue
  
  The line about "the smell of rain on the pavement" calls back to "Horen Sarrison," a track from her 2020 debut album, Fake It Flowers. On that song, she described her then-boyfriend, director Soren Harrison, as smelling like "pavement after the rain." Hearing the same sensory detail pop up years later shows how that specific scent still triggers memories of their time together.
  
  Beabadoobee and Harrison were together for seven years before breaking up in June 2022. She later wrote about the messy end of their relationship on "The Way Things Go," even teasing its first verse on TikTok after Harrison began dating her best friend, Fiona. "Memories" looks back at an earlier, sweeter chapter of that same history. Instead of pretending her ex doesn't exist, Beabadoobee uses her songs to map out the whole relationship, the good parts and the bad.
• In the pre-chorus, Bea connects the track to her earlier Pylon single, "Sun Has Set":
  
  Just stay a little while
  The sun is always here
  Just stay a little while
  
  This line creates a direct contrast between the two tracks. In "Sun Has Set," the setting sun signals a relationship coming to an absolute end. In "Memories," the sun is "always here," representing feelings that linger long after the actual moment has passed. One song watches a romance go dark, while the other holds onto the light.
• Speaking to Jack Saunders on BBC Radio 1, Beabadoobee explained the bittersweet nature of the song. She admitted memories make her sad because "they don't exist anymore," chalking it up to her "pessimistic brain." She labeled "Memories" a "happy-sad song" about looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses, noting that writing it while away from home made the past feel especially "perfect and amazing."
  
  Bea added: "I think, in a way, it's like what I'm singing about is just ultimately something that's very sweet and something that's very lovely. But I guess you can get happy or sad memories."
• Beabadoobee co-wrote "Memories" with Shane Moran and Gianluca Buccellati, and produced it with Jason Vance Harris and Luca Buccellati, the same writing and production team who crafted "Sun Has Set."
• The song came together in isolation during the Pylon sessions. Beabadoobee wrote much of the album alone in hotel rooms while touring, a setting that reminded her of writing songs at 17, trapped in her bedroom and "feeling sad as f--k." That solitude fed into "Memories," capturing how physical distance gives you a totally different perspective on past relationships.
• Bea gave "Memories" its live debut during her US festival run in early August 2026, playing it at Lollapalooza and Hinterland before featuring it at her Red Rocks Amphitheatre show in Morrison, Colorado, on August 7, 2026.
• Serving as the third single from Pylon, following "Sun Has Set" and "Switchblade," the song offers a gentler, acoustic counterpoint to the album's heavier moments. While the first two singles lean into aggressive grunge and Midwest-emo guitars, "Memories" strips away the distortion to let the vocal melody carry the weight.
• Across Pylon, Beabadoobee moves through anger, loss, guilt, and love, with "Memories" offering a key moment of tenderness. Next to the fury of "Sun Has Set" and the confusion of "Switchblade," it shows her music isn't just about loud guitars and unresolved grievances; sometimes it is just a quiet guitar, the smell of rain, and the realization that the sweetest memories are often the ones that sting.