At this point, the cautionary tales about fame\u2019s traps and punishments must appear rote, what with pop\u2019s laundry list spanning from MJ to Britney\u2014but what\u2019s surprising about Madison Beer\u2019s story is that it often feels like her career was defined by navigating the fallout of fame before she\u2019d ever even made it. Beer first blew up when Justin Bieber posted a YouTube link to her cover of Etta James on his Twitter, calling the then-13-year-old a \u201c#futurestar.\u201d Bieber\u2019s manager Scooter Braun soon signed the young star, and for a second, it seemed like Beer was unstoppable. But then disaster struck: two years later, Beer\u2019s nudes were leaked. Relentless cyberbullying ensued. Shortly after, Beer\u2019s label, management, and lawyer all dropped her on the same day, and for the then-16-year-old, it felt like her world had imploded.<\/p>\n
Much of Beer\u2019s output afterward dealt with the trauma of this fallout: her debut album, Life Support, was frank in its exploration of her subsequent BPD and depression diagnoses, while Silence Between Songs\u2019s closing track \u201cKing of Everything\u201d was widely speculated to be about Braun (\u201cBuildin\u2019 a home made up of gold \/ Of people you hurt\u201d). Listening to Beer at the time, it often felt like songwriting was an essential life-raft for her to process her pain and grapple with her mental-health struggles\u2014all necessary work, and a crucial part of what lent her albums such diaristic vulnerability, but also a backstory that obscured how unfinished the arrangements and production actually were.<\/p>\n
Now, though, Beer is perhaps finally ready to cut loose and dance. locket, the singer\u2019s third album, is underscored with a playfulness that\u2019s long been absent from Beer\u2019s work. You can see it in how sonically diverse the album is, with Beer finally stepping away from the sleepy slo-fi pop of Life Support and Silence Between Songs and instead tapping into a wide collage of inspirations to craft pop confection after pop confection. Dark siren synth-pop bangers \u201cyes baby\u201d and \u201cmake you mine\u201d are satellited in from an alternate universe where Depeche Mode was tapped to produce the Jennifer\u2019s Body soundtrack, Beer singing with all the casual sultriness of someone who eats boys for breakfast. Twinkly 90s r&b bedroom hit \u201cangel wings\u201d finds Beer crackling with mordant wit, picturing how she\u2019ll get over someone by pretending they\u2019re dead, complete with angel wings. \u201ccomplexity,\u201d pinging with garage breakbeats and glitchy 8-bit bleeps, nods to Beer\u2019s love for video games and shows like Adventure Time. (Beer has previously worked on music for League of Legends.) And \u201cfor the night\u201d is a booty-call yearner reimagined as a 60s crooner jam. Tell me all this doesn\u2019t just sound like someone having fun in the studio.<\/p>\n
And with more fun comes more focus, too. While Beer\u2019s albums have often suffered in the past from having handfuls of good ideas but not enough concentration to turn those ideas into, well, songs, locket feels far more rigorous and composed. (Compare locket\u2019s 11-song tracklist to Life Support\u2019s 17.) Here, Beer\u2019s music has the space to grow and expand, and it\u2019s satisfying to watch how it builds\u2014take, for example, the way \u201cangel wings\u201d mutates at the end into a distorted, zombified outro, as if the song had been vacuumed into a nocturnal underbelly of desire. locket also finds Beer taking greater advantage of her vocal talents: lush, ambitious layering and harmonizing appear throughout the album, and she has never sounded stronger than on the chorus to \u201cbad enough,\u201d where her powerhouse vocals just slam through the stratosphere as she despairs over being unable to let a toxic relationship go.<\/p>\n
Of course, it\u2019s not like the pain that defined the past has simply shot off and vanished into the ether. \u201cnothing at all,\u201d locket\u2019s closer, feels most like a spiritual sister to Beer\u2019s earlier work: the track begins as a slow ballad about finding one\u2019s way through life\u2019s disappointments (\u201cThe higher you rise, the further that you fall\u201d), until garage breakbeats start whispering under the plaintive piano. Beer soars over the arrangement, yet right at the moment when the chorus flies highest\u2014when redemption from pain, one would hope, is just around the corner, finally on offer\u2014Beer\u2019s voice breaks apart in a shatter of AutoTuned glitches and breakbeats. Salvation is never that straightforward, the track seems to posit. But in the meantime, all you can do is dance.<\/p>\n