Review Summary: No Baby
The hype was there. A perpetually bubbling under pop girl releasing a pair of surprisingly strong singles, thereby polishing and somewhat re-inventing her sound to draw the intrigue of even the most vicious terminally online stans. We recently saw it with Zara Larsson and “Midnight Sun”, as well as Sabrina Carpenter and everything she’s done since “Espresso”. When Madison Beer released “Make You Mine” and “Yes Baby” last year, she was primed to have her own breakout moment, long overdue in the eyes of many fans.
So, will
Locket be her ticket out of the Khia Asylum? My answer is unfortunately a resounding “No Baby”.
While the album’s singles promised an exciting career turn into icy-cool, resting-bitch-faced dance pop, the rest of
Locket yanks the steering wheel veers back towards mediocrity. To be blunt, most tracks sound like rejects from forgotten Ariana Grande eras. Madison sounds pretty throughout, but the melodies and her vocal tone on songs such as “Angel Wings” and “Bittersweet” are incredibly similar to Ariana’s, and contribute to an identity crisis faced by both the album as well as Madison Beer’s entire career.
Are there other highlights? Maybe – the synth-heavy “Complexity” could be the unreleased third single to the electropop album
Locket never was. Overwhelmingly though, thanks to the bait-and-switch executed by Madison and her team on
Locket, a sense of major disappointment is what pervades.
