In some respects, the “era” attitude towards pop is bad for the music. After all, what would culture sound like if Madonna had been expected to pivot to country pop after catching the world’s imagination with “Like a Virgin”? What if Britney Spears had switched to industrial metal after “Hit Me, Baby One More Time” made her a global superstar? Sure, a good re-invention is always exciting, proving our pop favourites are more than one-trick ponies.
Beyoncé proved she can convincingly pull off country on Cowboy Carter. Lady Gaga is enjoying success as a new age jazz singer. Many of our favourite pop girlies have essentially made careers out of shapeshifting to varying degrees of success. At best, switching things up can yield some interesting and exciting results. At worst, it can prevent musicians from growing fully into their own style and sound and, just as importantly, reduce female artists to a visual aesthetic and a new set of must-have accessories for the season.
In a certain respect, Locket is just Beer doing what she’s done since she first started putting out music in 2013: releasing super high-quality R&B-inflected pop focused on love, romance, heartbreak, and seduction. That’s not to say that Madison Beer’s music has always sounded the same, far from it. Her first full record, 2021’s Life Support, had her leaning heavily into the R&B slow jams, revealing a pretty, powerful voice that could, at times, sound a little too much like Ariana Grande for chart supremacy.
The widely-praised Silence Between Songs (2023) sped things up a bit, retooling her candlelit romantic slow jam seductions for glittering dancefloors. While not universally revered, Silence Between Songs was widely praised by nearly everyone who heard it, with the consensus that sexy dance-pop was a good look for Beer.
The fact that Madison Beer draws back from the dancefloor says a lot about her as a pop artist. It takes guts to go against the grain and give the people less of what they want, for one thing. It reveals a commitment to her artistic vision, as well as perhaps a wider understanding of the pop landscape than your average listener. Either Beer knows better where pop music’s heading better than your average pophead, or she simply doesn’t care and is doing what she wants. Either way is a recipe for success, although it’s bound to lose some listeners along the way. Instead of simply skipping forward into whatever the current trend is, Beer backpedals ever so slightly, producing a tasty R&B/club-pop hybrid that shows off her assets to stunning effect.
The 1-2 punch of “Yes Baby” and “Angel Wings” are standout bangers that start the album off swinging. “Yes Baby” gives the people what they want, with a steady, solid thumpthump club beat made gorgeous with toe-curling vocals that sound like a femme version of FKA Twigs’ Eusexua. “Angel Wings” is straight-up R&B, though, with its Snoop Dogg organ and minimalist hip-hop beat coming straight outta 1995, while Beer sings about pretending a lover is dead to make it easier to get over them, until it melts down into a puddle of springs, coils, and vocal ooze.
With that being said, Locket definitely leans more towards the seductive R&B slow jams at the expense of club bangers. That’s somewhat unfortunate, as the ‘popheads aren’t wrong; uptempo club-pop is a stunning look for Beer. “Bittersweet” and “Complexity” are amongLocket‘s finest moments, pairing her flawless vocals with infectious beats, perfect for crying on the dancefloor and then forgetting everything. “Complexity,” in particular, reimagines Beer as a big-room rave diva, belting satin-smooth vocals over pummeling disco-house beats, breaks, and a quicksand of deconstructed club noise.
The R&B/club ratio also means that many of the record’s most euphoric moments are backloaded, making the first half of Locket slightly sleepy and better suited to seductive bedroom mixtapes than dancefloor hedonism. It can also leave some moments feeling underwhelming if you’re looking for pure pop spectacle. In the right light, these moments of quiet reflection are a sign of what Locket‘s got going for it. With its simple acoustic guitar pulse and double-tracked vocal, “For the Night” could just as easily come from someone’s bedroom four-track as a Grammy-nominated artist.
“Bad Enough” is stark and stripped-down enough that it could be on Hyperdub instead of Epic, which makes its stately slo-mo breakbeat all that much more thrilling, like a peacock unfurling its tail in half-time. Instead of sounding undercooked, Beer and associates sound like they’re making the best artistic decisions for each moment, which may be the mark of a true pop masterpiece.
Given its commercial status and its ability to move units, people often mistake pop music for a product. That’s backwards. Pop music is commercial because it sells, not the other way around. Instead of rolling out a bunch of unnecessary bells and whistles and unwanted features, Madison Beer opts to retrench, falling back on solid ground and continuing to hone her skills to a diamond’s edge, taking one more high-heeled step towards becoming a true mistress of pop.