In a world where new musicians go viral everyday, pop star Madison Beer stands out for how long she’s been working to stand out. Her debut EP in 2018 featured the R&B stylings of the 2000s, while her introspective lyricism about mental health shined as the centerpiece of her work during the pandemic. Beer’s recent experimentation with psychedelic rock and immersive audio shows this continued search for her signature sound.
After over a decade of releasing music, Beer has finally succeeded in finding her voice. On her third studio album “locket,” Beer showcases her artistic vision with new clarity, finding the delicate balance between emotional ruminations and club bops.
Beer explained the album’s title in an interview with Vogue: “Lockets are very delicate and beautiful, and feminine, and they hold important things, and memories, and people, and places, and it just felt [right].” The music itself certainly lives up to this motif — the sonic arrangements of tracks like “locket theme” and “complexity” are tinged with a lightness that aligns perfectly with Beer’s coquette and bow-filled aesthetic.
This lightness magnifies Beer’s existing strengths. Her impressive vocal range comes through the angelic high notes on the album that display the emotional resonance of the subject matter.
My personal favorites on “locket” include prerelease single “bittersweet,” which was Beer’s first-ever appearance on the Billboard Hot 100, and melancholy ballad “you’re still everything,” which details Beer’s struggle to heal from an apathetic ex. The latter track especially stands out because it uses the live demo version as the final song we hear on the album, allowing Beer to showcase her raw emotions about her breakup. As I heard her voice crack through the syllables, I truly felt her pain.
Singles like “yes baby” and “make you mine” energize the album, cleverly placed throughout the tracklist to break up the ballads and add a darker twist to the music. The pulsating beats of these types of EDM-style tracks make me itch to hear them resonate around a stadium. In fact, I wouldn’t be opposed to hearing a fully EDM-style album from Beer in the future, if that’s where this genre exploration takes her.
The album’s weakest point, however, is its redundancy. Numerous songs focus on Beer’s inability to select healthy romantic partners without a new angle to differentiate one song from the next. Much of the album blurs together, and as a listener, I sometimes found myself forgetting which song had which lyrics.
Beer does show her ability to branch out lyrically with “angel wings,” a standout track for its novel approach to a breakup. In the song, Beer sings about pretending that an ex has passed away over an Ariana Grande-esque beat: “Thought that you and I might’ve had everything / It’s easier pretending you have angel wings.” This premise is an original form of expression of a common avoidance coping mechanism for heartbreak, and Beer’s exploration of this mindset allows her to be honest about her own unhealthy behaviors — while still making me want to dance.
That said, as a whole, “locket” expands on Beer’s past musical output while staying true to her roots. Her exploration through genre has resulted in this perfect combination of beautiful instrumental arrangements and club-ready beats. The ethereal, dreamy sound works for her, and I constantly found myself wanting to hear the album’s magical arrangements live. With a little more lyrical fine-tuning, she’ll soon find just what makes her work click. But even without, Beer is certainly on her way to becoming a “main pop girl.”
