YouTube is still the top streaming platform out there for content creators of all disciplines, including musicians. Like Justin Bieber, who has grown larger than life due to his discovery on the site, Madison Beer may have the platform to thank for giving the world a glimpse of her musical talent. It took some time after Bieber shared a cover she uploaded on YouTube, but she finally released an EP in 2018 and now, has just released her debut feature album Life Support. The artist delivers seventeen tracks in just over forty-five minutes of listening time that could just be her real ticket to the big time.
Life Support is definitely in the pop genre.
Life Support is definitely in the pop genre. Madison Beer’s debut is strongly comparable to artists like Ariana Grande and Lana Del Rey, the album similar to Rey’s production style and mirroring more closely to the sound of Grande’s vocals. The influence is clearly there, but Beer does well enough to make this album her own. There are some tracks that read more as standard pop songs and others that bode better as ballads. There’s a typical, conventional structure concerning the pop tracks though there is a sincere truth that rings out in her songs that come off as more personal. This aside, it is very evident that Beer put in the work to make her debut album as distinguishable as she possibly could.
The downsides are that there’re a few too many songs where her production team put entirely too many FX on her voice. Beer can sing, so unless there’s a burning need to do this for the sake of the song’s style, maybe it would be wise to rethink that decision down the line. There are more upsides than downsides thankfully. Songs like Homesick and Selfish are produced with more simplicity, focusing more on the song’s content and Beer’s seasoned vocal ability and less on the electronics or voice enhancements. Emotional Bruises is interesting in that it’s almost a mix between pop and blues. It has a steady pace, the tempo doesn’t deviate that much, and the song as a whole sounds more like ‘Madison Beer’ as an individual artist, making her less comparable to other singers. Everything Happens For A Reason is a soft track towards the end that winds the album down. It’s produced very guitar and string heavy with just a touch of electro amplification, and it’s a vocal performance highlight of the album seeing her showcase a range of different tones throughout the track.
So, not bad for album number one. There’s enough pop in the record to jam out to in a car ride and enough soul thrown in to relate to it on a more intimate level. Madison Beer at long last, finally appears to be finding her sound and hopefully it won’t be the last chance she gets to show it. As usual, the whole album can be found on YouTube where it all began, and on Spotify where everything has now headed.
