After years of her music career being in the executioner’s hand of public expectation, Madison Beer’s third studio album Locket arrives as a statement of control. Released at moment when pop is increasingly genre-fluid and emotionally introspective, the album positions Beer not as a reactive figure, but as someone shaping her own artistic space testing the boundaries of what her music, and voice, can be.
Built at the intersection of several production traditions, Locket resists easy categorisation. The production is nothing short of experimental, using arpeggiated synths, layered bass and string to create a cohesive yet genre-blending piece of work. ‘Angel Wings’ embodies the more pop-R&B side of the record, while ‘For The Night’ takes on a more sultry, jazz-inspired production style. Following the evident Beach Boys and The Beatles inspiration with her second album Silence Between Songs, Locket takes on unique electronic influences, most notably with dance tracks ‘Yes Baby’, ‘Make You Mine’ and ‘Complexity’, establishing Beer as an artist unafraid to play with new sound while retaining the emotion within her work.
Locket lyrically hinges on the symbolism of containment and preservation. The idea of a locket (something small, contained and carried close to the heart) becomes a metaphor for guarded affection and self-protection, something she establishes within the record’s entry point ‘Locket Theme’; “all our memories safe in my locket / I carry it”. Her lyricism carries a little less vulnerability then her past projects, major themes in her music consistently being romantic and familial relationships, mental health struggle and her harrowing experience being a child star. However, Locket’s emotional axis is the track ‘You’re Still Everything’, earning itself the label as one of her most emotive songs yet and, further, exemplifying this album’s biggest strengths; a strong, layered vocal performance from Beer, emotionally resonant lyricism and a fresh electronic sound.
Beer has spent much of her career in a liminal pop space, marked by capability and output, but not yet by a fully cemented sense of artistic self. Her technical proficiency and consistent releases have long suggested an artist ready for definition, yet her work has often been deemed as being shaped by prevailing pop aesthetics and over-shadowed by how she presents herself on social media. Locket, however, proves that Beer doesn’t need to compromise, it being a convergence of all the strengths of her previous work; bearing the confidence of As She Pleases, the experimentation of Life Support and vulnerability of Silence Between Songs. The album isn’t an answer to the overwhelming criticism of her career, but a reiteration toward intention over validation.
What Locket ultimately offers is not resolution, but clarity. By embracing hybridity and emotional containment as deliberate choices rather than shortcomings, Beer reframes the terms on which her work is read. Locket operates as a threshold rather than a destination: a record that doesn’t close the question of Madison Beer’s artistic identity, but finally establishes the conditions under which it can be meaningfully developed.
8/10
Featured image via @madisonbeer on Instagram
