I just want to do cool, exciting things!
Indie pop star Madison Beer sang even as a tiny tot – but she refuses to be boxed in just yet
F‘I’m just a little baby, two, maybe three, and I’m singing in the video’
or the uninitiated, Madison Beer is not a brand of alcoholic beverage. She is a 25-year-old Grammy-nominated modern R&B and indie pop singer who is due to play the 3Arena this Sunday. Her platinum-selling hits include Hurts Like Hell, Selfish and Home With You. She received a first Grammy nomination for her second album 2023’s Silence Between Songs.
Justin Bieber is often credited as helping to set the New Yorker on the long road to stardom. He reshared a YouTube video of a 13-year-old Madison singing Etta James’s At Last. She acknowledges that undoubted boost to her career prospects but the former child model says she was singing even before she appeared on the cover of a US magazine aged four.
‘I was always aware that I loved to sing,’ she told me on a Zoom call recently.
‘When I was going through baby videos for my tour (to show on the big screens that bookend the stage) I was watching a video of my mom when I was two, maybe three, filming the baby monitor. She says, ‘Madison, sing that song from Annie; The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow and I immediately start singing “the sun will come out tomorrow…” and I’m just a little baby and she is saying, “You’re always singing, you’re always singing.” That was so crazy to see. Probably around nine or ten, I knew that singing was my favourite thing so I thought, “What can I do?” I wasn’t thinking of it as a career at that age but I started posting videos of me doing covers on YouTube. I will always be grateful for Justin’s support. That’s really how it all started and here we are today.’
Her mother divorced the singer’s father, a real estate developer, when Madison was seven. She gave up her career as an interior designer to help manage her daughter. Madison’s devoted following appreciate her candour in relation to her mental health issues and she has spoken about being sexually abused as a small child. Certain songs reflect those battles and inner turmoil.
‘The song Effortlessly was written when I was in a depressed, suicidal mindset constantly,’ she says. ‘I was going to psychiatrists and doctors and they would prescribe this and this and this and I was like, that’s not going to solve the main issue here.
‘It wasn’t until I went on a kind of spiritual journey and then seeking a therapist that had a similar mindset – and going on a few mental health retreats where I didn’t have my phone – that I started to see a true difference. It’s not to say that medication doesn’t help; I’m on medication to this day. I still take some kind of medication to keep myself happy.’
When she was 15, videos that appeared to show Madison in the nude were leaked online. She equated the emotions that this engendered to the abuse she had suffered years earlier and she contemplated suicide and spoke about this too to her social media followers – which number some 3.2 million on X alone. But she is well aware that not everyone who follows her is a fan.
‘I think that putting anything out there that makes you feel vulnerable is scary because people are just vicious online,’ she says.
‘The things that I’ve shared are the things that I’ve felt ready to. There are other things that I’ve kept to myself that I haven’t
‘I’ve set boundaries with fans on social media. I’m trying to look out for myself.’
shared yet because I think, “You know what? This is for me.” I don’t feel that you have to give 100% to people.
‘I’ve set boundaries with myself, with fans with social media. I’m just trying to look out for myself. I don’t over-extend because I feel that I have to.’
Like other singers of her generation, she has branched out beyond music. She published her memoir The Half of It last year. She has a fashion range with Boohoo and until last year was in business with Vanessa Hudgens in the skincare brand Know Beauty. However, she refutes my suggestion that she was monetising herself as a brand in case her time at the top was fleeting.
‘If I had the mentality that my time at the top is going to be short and I need to do things I would be doing a lot more,’ she laughs. ‘I don’t want to box myself into just doing music I want to continue to do different things that might be as random as it might seem. I just want to do things that feel fun to me and are exciting and cool.’