Madison Beer spoke with NME about her new era of dance-pop music, telling us how she's “listening and trusting” herself more when it comes to music, as well as her thoughts on living in “parasocial times” – and how that relates to the recent conversation around Chappell Roan addresses his fans.
Right after her second album 2023 “Silence Between Songs”Beer has released two new singles this year – “Make You Mine” and “15 Minutes” – which dabble in dark, sultry dance-pop. The singer told NME that it's a sound fans “can expect more of” in the future.
“I think I've always loved that vibe and always wanted to get into it,” she said. “I just didn't know if I could do that kind of music because it felt so out of my league. But then I was like, 'Why do I feel like this? We could just give it a go.' And we got into it and gave it a chance and people really liked it.”
Beer said that after two albums, she's now actively “listening and trusting myself more.” “Sometimes when I'm making music, I'm like, 'Is this catchy enough? Are people going to get it? Are people going to get the references?' I just try to strip all that away and just make music that I think is literally just good,” she told us.
The singer noted that as part of this process, it is extremely important to “set boundaries and stand up for your rights when possible.”
“Sometimes in this industry, a lot of people can feel taken advantage of or put under a lot of pressure and stuff like that,” she continued. “I've been doing this for so long that I have no problem saying no.”
Beer spoke about how “there’s a huge amount of guilt” that comes with turning down opportunities she doesn’t like. “People are like, ‘Oh, someone else is going to take your place,’ and it’s not a competition. Someone else can take my place. I’m always going to be me,” she said. “And I think that’s really helped my mental health because I don’t look at it as a competition.”
“Especially when we were young, we were all taught that you have to be the best, you have to be number one, and I think that's wrong,” she added. Recalling a time when she “was really hard on myself” early in her career, Beer said that “a lot of people say that if you're not the biggest, you're not successful, and I don't think that's true. That's something I have to remind myself of.”
The “Reckless” singer then looked back at how fame and the social media landscape have changed since she began her career more than a decade ago. “When I started making music, I was 12 years old. There was no such thing as TikTok. There was no real Instagram craze. Social media was a new thing,” she said, adding that now “we live in a parasocial time.”
When asked about this new “parasocial world” of pop music and celebrity culture, Beer linked it to Chappelle Roan’s recent TikTok posts, where “Good Luck, Babe!” singer accuses fans of being “arrogant”On this point, Beer said that she believes that “a lot of people have accepted that [Roan] said it wrong.”
“I realized she was talking about people doing things that are inherently wrong, like sitting outside her house or following her home from an event,” Beer said. “You can't do that to people, you have to let people be people. And I think we forget that people, like our favorite artists, are people at the end of the day.”
For Beer, it also brought her back to the idea of setting boundaries as an artist. “I don’t think she’s ungrateful to her fans,” she said. “People were like, ‘You signed up for this. You’re going to have to deal with it.’ And I don’t think that’s true. Just because she makes music and people might like it doesn’t mean she signed up for it.”
She also noted how Roan has “become famous so quickly” in the last few months, and how “people forget that it’s probably fucking overwhelming for her, too.” “She’s a human being, and now she suddenly has the biggest crowd at Lollapalooza. And that can’t always be positive, even if it’s always what you dreamed of and always what you wanted,” she said. “I think we just have more empathy for people and more love in our hearts.”
At the same time, Beer also expressed excitement about Roan and his fellow pop star's “great moment” Sabrina Carpenter have experienced in recent months, after years of hard work and underrated releases from both artists. “I’m proud to be a girl who’s happy for other girls,” she said, commenting that it feels like “pop music is finally cool to listen to again.”
Concluding her thoughts on where she sees herself in this modern wave of pop music, the singer said she is content to move at her own pace.
“I certainly hope to always grow and I hope my shows will always be bigger, but I don't mind being more of a turtle. It makes me proud,” she said. “And I feel like I have a real core, a real fan base that's growing with me.”
At the same time, she admitted that she doesn’t know if she can “cope” with this level of popularity.
“The amount of stuff that happens when you're Number One – whatever that means – is pretty intense, and I'm quite happy with where I am.”
Madison Beer's New Singles “Make You Mine” and “15 Minutes” Are Now Available on Spotify, Apple Music and much more.