Madison Beer review, Locket: Some real depth beneath the pop sheen

You can hear why American lingerie giant Victoria’s Secret chose Madison Beer to perform at their 2025 fashion show. Songs from her third studio album, Locket, throb with dark, sultry sensuality as her siren vocals conjure images of “silky sheets”, luring lovers to “take advantage of my weakness… put an end to my bad day”. It’s a record on which softly seductive keyboard notes offer a satiny bed for the complex yearning, vulnerable or empowered moods of the woman at the heart of this music. Mixing the accessibly sleek, fluting pop of Ariana Grande with the brooding vintage swoosh of Lana Del Ray, it’s a sound that gave an edge of danger to the brand’s mall-friendly pastel pink and paste jewel collection.

Discovered by Justin Bieber in 2012, signed the following year aged just 12 and traumatised when nude photographs were leaked online while she was still a teenager, the New York-born pop star has experienced some of the most damaging fall-out of modern fame. In her 2023 memoir, The Half of It, she revealed that she had been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and struggled with depression and suicidal ideation. Locket, written after the breakup of an “intense” relationship, sees Beer confidently addressing her struggle for emotional stability. Over the fluttering pulse of mid-tempo single “Bittersweet”, her low, liquid voice pours itself into the corners of grief for watching love go “down the drain” while also relishing the release from a romance that might have seen her “forever on my knees”.

Elsewhere we find her trying to move on with a bold sexuality. The German term “notgeil” (desperate lust) feels the best way to sum up the urgent propositioning of the pounding “Yes, Baby” (which strikes me as too repetitive on the first listen, but proves a grower) and “Make You Mine”. The latter builds momentum from a pillow-thumping 4/4 pulse and chunky chords while Beer croons to the object of her desire that she has a “shrine” to them inside her mind: “Got you on my walls… Baby, don't be scared.” Gulp. Against the bossa-tinged strum of “For the Night”, she makes a melancholy booty call after a day of depression: “You should probably cancel your plans/ You should come as fast as you can… maybe you can put me back together?”

This atmosphere, complete with jazzy piano and soft-brushed drums, bleeds into the French-style post-coital “tristesse” of ballad “Nothing at All”, on which she admits “all my dreams have lost all their appeal… I’m afraid of getting better.” There's an elegant, Beatles-indebted twist to the minor chord twists of the melody, balanced by shimmery skitters of percussion and the vocodered distortion of Beer’s voice. Interviewed by Del Ray in 2023, the younger artist said she has “always loved songs where you don’t know where they’re headed. I like to approach songwriting with these weird chord progressions.” It's that sense of unpredictability that keeps you hooked and raises Beer's game.

At times Locket’s sheen can flow rather frictionlessly over your ears, pretty but perhaps a little mass-produced. Yet it’s an album that reveals deeper, more enduring layers and real emotional skin beneath all the shiny fabric and pouty poses.