Locket Review

Content Guide

Madison Beer’s third studio album is her most confident artistic release yet, a dance-inflected pop record that chronicles the complete arc of an intense relationship while showcasing her most technically demanding vocal performances to date. The 11-track “Locket” (stylized in lowercase) releases January 16, 2026, following a groundbreaking year that brought Beer her first Grammy nomination, her first Billboard Hot 100 entry, and her highest-charting single ever. Written during a tumultuous breakup, the album balances euphoric dance production with emotionally weighty lyrics, continuing Beer’s trajectory from YouTube discovery to legitimate pop auteur.

Three singles mapped the album’s auditory territory (Locket Review)

The rollout for “Locket” began nearly two years before the album’s release with “Make You Mine,” which dropped February 9, 2024. Produced by Beer and longtime collaborator Leroy Clampitt, the track fuses house music with EDM-pop and lo-fi beats, wrapping Beer’s breathy vocals around an airy melody that Rolling Stone called “provocative” and fans described as “desire in sonic form.”

The production, built on programming, bass, drums, guitar, keyboards, and percussion, earned Beer a Grammy nomination for Best Dance Pop Recording at the 67th Annual Awards and became her first #1 on Billboard’s Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart while peaking at #10 on Pop Airplay, surpassing her previous high of #22 with “Home with You.” Beer created the track specifically for her Spinnin Tour after recognizing that Silence Between Songs was ballad-heavy and needed danceable material. The Jennifer’s Body-inspired music video, co-directed by Beer and Aerin Moreno, further cemented the single’s dark, obsessive aesthetic.

“Yes Baby” arrived September 19, 2025, closing what Beer called “an unintentional trilogy” with “Make You Mine” and the 2024 single “15 Minutes.” Co-produced with LOSTBOY (Peter Rycroft), a British producer known for work with Tate McRae and Kylie Minogue, the track represents the album’s hardest electronic sound, featuring pounding tech house beats, thrumming synths, and tight drum programming that never lets up.

Billboard noted that “Beer understands how to follow through on a fun, flirty electropop banger.” The song went through 10 different versions before finalization and surpassed one million Spotify streams within its first 24 hours. Its music video, shot on film for the first time in Beer’s career, drew heavy inspiration from 1980s aerobics videos and the horror parody Scary Movie, with Beer portraying Anna Faris’s character Cindy Campbell in its closing scenes.

The third single, “Bittersweet,” shifted the album’s emotional register when it dropped October 10, 2025. A mid-tempo synth-pop track opening with fluttery arpeggiated keyboards before building to dramatic chords and a four-on-the-floor beat, it explores the contradictory feelings following a breakup. Co-produced with Tim “One Love” Sommers, Beer’s collaborator since her 2018 debut EP, the track features synthesizer moments Beer likened to the video game Super Mario Galaxy, noting she wanted “anything that’s distorted and kind of weird sounding.”

The song became Beer’s fastest to enter Top 40 radio and marked her first career entry on the Billboard Hot 100. Its cinematic music video, starring Sean Kaufman from The Summer I Turned Pretty, depicts a breakup that culminates in a parade celebrating Beer’s newfound singlehood, complete with marching band, before ending on a tear-streaked close-up of her clutching a golden locket.

The production blends pop accessibility with sonic experimentation (Locket Review)

Beer co-produced every track on “Locket” alongside her core team of Tim “One Love” Sommers, Leroy Clampitt, and LOSTBOY, collaborators she’s worked with since her earliest releases. The production approach emphasizes what Beer calls “duality,” upbeat songs that maintain emotional depth. Unlike her psychedelic-rock-inflected previous album, “Locket” returns to pop roots while incorporating dance elements, 90s R&B textures, and UK garage influences.

The music draws from Ariana Grande, SZA, and Gwen Stefani, artists Beer cites as key inspirations for the project’s nostalgic pop sound. Individual tracks showcase distinct production signatures: “Angel Wings” features ghostly 90s R&B textures, “Complexity” employs vocoder-wrapped UK-garage-spiked production, and “You’re Still Everything” strips back to pared-down piano elements. Beer specifically requested “interesting noises that maybe you haven’t heard a lot in music,” resulting in video game-inspired sounds and fluttering harmonic textures throughout.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQIni8ljbbj

The vocal performances mark a deliberate evolution. “A lot of [fans] have said, ‘Girl, when we see you live you are singing, mama, so why are you not singing on your albums?'” Beer told RTÉ Ireland. In response, she incorporated significantly more ad-libs and technically demanding vocal runs, with one track she described as “very vocally challenging,” enough that she tweeted about potentially losing her voice for a week after recording. The production team cultivated a shared creative language; as Beer explained to Variety, “I can say, ‘Make that weirder,’ which isn’t a technical thing to say, and [One Love] knows exactly what I mean.”

A relationship’s full arc structures the narrative (Locket Review)

Beer has described “Locket” as unintentionally chronicling a relationship from beginning to end, moving from fun and sensual opening tracks through recognition of red flags to ultimate dissolution. “I was going through a break-up when I wrote this album, and a pretty up and down relationship that was quite intense,” she told Vogue. “I had to write about the intensity… It was such a part of my every waking moment, the good days, the bad days, the break-up, so a lot of it really wrote itself.”

The track sequencing reflects this emotional journey. The 90-second “Locket Theme” opens the album before launching into the confident desire of “Yes Baby.” Middle tracks like “Bad Enough” and “Healthy Habit” suggest relationship complications, while “You’re Still Everything,” which Beer identifies as the album’s saddest track, leads into the processing of “Bittersweet.” The album closes with “Nothing at All,” described as deeply personal and disconnected from anyone but Beer herself.

The album’s title emerged from Beer’s notes app, where she spent “weeks on end just writing words I related to.” As she explained to RANGE Magazine: “A locket is something that you keep close to your heart. It’s sacred.” She chose the name before writing most of the songs, using it as a creative north star: “We would listen to songs or exchange ideas and say things like ‘This is so Locket’ or ‘Locket-core.'”

@applemusic
@madison beer stops by The @travismills Show to celebrate the announcement of her new album, locket.
♬ original sound – Apple Music

In press materials, Beer elaborated: “After writing the album, it feels like each song lives within this metaphorical locket for safekeeping. Each album feels like an era and once the albums are out in the world, the chapter for me, usually with what I wrote about, is closed.”

The album represents a marked departure from “Silence Between Songs” (Locket Review)

Beer’s 2023 sophomore album took a dramatically different creative direction, wistful orchestration, mellow guitar, psychedelic-rock textures influenced by Tame Impala and the Beach Boys, with themes exploring lost youth and Beer’s difficult experiences from ages 17-21. That album earned a Grammy nomination for Best Immersive Audio Album and Metacritic score of 70/100, with NME praising its “clear nod to Tame Impala’s psych-rock” and The Telegraph calling it “vastly superior” to her debut.

“Locket” pivots toward accessibility while maintaining emotional weight. “With Silence Between Songs, I just wanted to tell my story… I was in this mindset of telling the stories I haven’t told and showing my deep side and introspective side,” Beer told RTÉ Ireland. “With this one, I was like, ‘I did that and I feel like I can be more free now.’ There are songs that are super deep, but Locket feels like a really fun version.”

Crucially, Beer pushed back against expectations to create a full dance album following “Make You Mine”‘s success. “My album isn’t really a dance album it’s a straightforward pop record,” she told PAPER Magazine. “If I were chasing the trend, I’d make a full dance album, but that would feel alienating. I like too many different genres.” This creative independence reflects Beer’s growing confidence: “I feel so different today than I did when I started this project. Making Locket definitely pushed me into a new direction of my life. It opened a portal for me in many ways.”

Track-by-track breakdown reveals deliberate sequencing (Locket Review)

The standard edition contains 11 tracks spanning approximately 34 minutes, deliberately concise compared to the 17-song Life Support and following the tighter structure of Silence Between Songs. Beer kept the tracklist short to “preserve the emotional impact of each moment and avoid the dilution she often sees in longer projects.”

Track	Title	Length	Notable Elements
1	Locket Theme	1:28	Album introduction
2	Yes Baby	2:55	Tech house, electropop single
3	Angel Wings	4:04	90s R&B textures; Beer’s predicted fan favorite
4	For the Night	3:08	One of Beer’s personal favorites
5	Bad Enough	3:42	Acoustic version available as Target bonus
6	Healthy Habit	1:56	Shortest full track
7	You’re Still Everything	3:29	Saddest track per Beer; piano-driven
8	Bittersweet	3:22	Mid-tempo synth-pop single
9	Complexity	2:37	Vocoder, UK garage influences
10	Make You Mine	3:41	House-EDM lead single; Grammy-nominated
11	Nothing at All	3:08	Closing track; deeply personal

Two songs are reportedly inspired by television shows, possibly Severance, Murphy’s Law, or Adventure Time, while “Angel Wings” received its title from a fan suggestion at the 2025 Variety Hitmakers Brunch. A Target-exclusive edition includes acoustic versions of “Bad Enough” and “Bittersweet,” and Beer confirmed a deluxe edition with additional unreleased songs will follow.

Beer’s artistic journey positions “Locket” as a breakthrough moment (Locket Review)

Madison Beer’s career trajectory, from Justin Bieber tweeting her YouTube cover at age 12 to Grammy-nominated artist at 26, provides essential context for understanding “Locket” as a culminating statement. Her 2021 debut Life Support, a concept album written during a depressive episode following her BPD diagnosis, demonstrated creative ambition but received mixed reviews, with Pitchfork calling it “ambitious yet shallow.” The subsequent Silence Between Songs earned stronger critical reception and proved Beer could sustain a cohesive artistic vision across a full album.

“Locket” arrives amid Beer’s commercial peak: “Make You Mine” became her highest-charting single ever, “Bittersweet” gave her a first Hot 100 entry, and her October 2025 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show performance, which peaked at 2.5 million YouTube viewers and made her the #1 trending person worldwide on Twitter, demonstrated her live performance command. Her personal evolution accompanies this professional success; Beer deleted Twitter during the album’s creation to protect her artistic vision, explaining: “It was negatively impacting my ability to see my artistic direction clearly. I was second-guessing myself constantly.”

The album’s creative team represents refined versions of relationships Beer has maintained since her earliest releases. One Love produced her 2018 EP As She Pleases; Leroy Clampitt worked on Life Support and Silence Between Songs; LOSTBOY joined for specific tracks requiring harder electronic production. “I’ve been working with these people for so long, so it’s been really cool for us all to really grow together,” Beer noted.

Early reception signals Beer’s strongest commercial positioning (Locket Review)

While full album reviews await the January 16 release, the singles campaign has generated significant momentum. “Make You Mine” earned UK Silver and Polish Gold certifications alongside nominations at the Grammy Awards, iHeartRadio Music Awards, and Electronic Dance Music Awards. “Yes Baby” debuted at #1 in Poland and Portugal. “Bittersweet” achieved Beer’s fastest Top 40 radio entry and crossed onto the Hot 100.

Critical commentary on the singles has been largely positive. Billboard praised Beer’s command of “fun, flirty electropop,” Women In Pop predicted the “Yes Baby” video would “surely become one of the most iconic music videos of the 2020s,” and Euphoria Magazine called “Bittersweet” “perfect” while noting Beer “has been perfecting her sound through the years.”

Beer herself has tempered expectations with characteristically grounded perspective: “I think the charts and numbers and all those things are really cool, and I’m always excited when I get them, but it’s not why I do this, it’s really not. I do this for the love of the art and love of performing and connecting with people.” Nevertheless, she’s placed significant weight on the album’s reception: “This is hopefully what solidifies everything for me… There’s a lot of pressure I’m putting on myself.”

Conclusion (Locket Review)

“Locket” arrives as the clearest distillation yet of Madison Beer’s artistic identity, a pop album that refuses to choose between accessibility and emotional substance. The dance-pop trilogy of singles established commercial viability while deeper cuts promise the introspective songwriting that distinguished Silence Between Songs. Beer’s insistence on co-producing every track, her rejection of trend-chasing despite “Make You Mine”‘s success, and her willingness to chronicle personal pain all suggest an artist operating with hard-won creative confidence.

The album’s deliberate concision 11 tracks, 34 minutes signals an artist who trusts her material enough to avoid padding. Its emotional architecture opening with desire, navigating complications, processing loss, and arriving at self-sufficient closure provides listeners a narrative throughline rarely found in contemporary pop. And Beer’s explanation of the title offers perhaps the best framework for understanding the project: each song preserved in a metaphorical locket, safeguarded until release, then closed as a completed chapter.

For an artist who spent years battling perceptions as a social media personality rather than a serious musician, “Locket” represents the most compelling evidence yet that Madison Beer has fully arrived. The question now is whether critics and audiences will recognize what she’s always insisted was there.

Listen To “Locket” By Madison Beer

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George Millington

Editor at Contact Me

George Millington is a music journalist and reviewer situated in central London. He does not write about a single genre but rather the commercial music industry as a whole. His first album was by The Beatles, which he purchased secondhand from a charity shop in his neighbourhood.

He discovered the gem when he was 12 years old and still has it now, claiming it to be why he fell in love with music. He likes to play disc golf when he's not writing about music. He is a one-of-a-kind individual who is always the first to bust out his air guitar on the dance-floor.

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