- So, the inspiration behind the title
of my new album, 'Life Support,' was the fact
that I was going through a really tough time mentally.
And as I was creating it,
I made a song called "Emotional Bruises,"
and within that song,
there's a line that says, "You've got me on life support,"
and then I kind of teetered back
and forth with the idea of naming that song, "Life Support."
And then the more I spoke about it,
I felt like it was really fitting for the album title,
because I felt like creating the album
and actually having a reason to get out of bed,
and having to push myself, actually ended up keeping me
alive and giving me motivation,
so it served as my life support,
which is why I named it that.
I would say the biggest difference in me as an artist now,
versus when I first started, would be my confidence
and my bravery.
I think I was much more prone to, kind of, being,
like, this turtle in a shell,
that if I felt scared or intimidated,
I would just crawl back into it,
and I wouldn't feel the need to push for my opinion,
and if somebody had more "experience"
or more "knowledge," quote-unquote than me,
I would kind of just back down, and be like,
"Oh, they know better." But that wasn't always true.
And I feel like now I have a lot
of confidence and a lot of bravery to say no,
and to speak up when I feel like it's appropriate.
It's my career.
It's my voice.
It's my life,
and so, I kind of have chosen the path
of not letting anybody else dictate what I am.
Hi, I'm Madison Beer,
and these are the top five things I've learned
about myself throughout my career.
The first thing that I learned about myself
in my career was that my voice mattered,
and that I had a voice that should be used.
And when I started impacting people,
and I started being approached, and they would come up to
me, and be like, "Hey, I heard your song,"
or "I heard your record,
and it really made me feel like X, Y, and Z."
That's when I started realizing,
"OK, hold on a second,
I have the power to impact people."
And that was something I hadn't understood prior,
so it was a really awesome thing to learn.
I went into it with the mindset of
this is gonna impact people,
so, I hope it does it positively.
I hope it provides healing
and is helpful in any way to somebody.
I think the song on the album that would kind
of encapsulate that idea would probably be "Effortlessly."
That was the first song that I wrote when I was
in the peak of my mental health journey, I would say,
and it was the song that was really powerful lyrically.
I talk about a lot of topics,
like going through the pharmaceutical industry,
and being prescribed medication,
and being diagnosed with mental health disorders or whatnot.
It was a really scary time for me.
It can be really intimidating,
especially when you get a diagnosis.
It can be a mixed feeling thing,
and you can be like, "OK, do I have clarity?"
"Am I feeling confused?"
"Is this a good thing?"
And it was just, for a while, a very confusing thing,
and "Effortlessly" is kind of my song that touches
on all of those things.
Another thing I've learned
about myself is that practice makes perfect,
and for a long time, I was really discouraged vocally,
and I felt like I was never gonna be able
to hit certain notes, or do certain runs,
and never gonna be able to perform
on a stage a certain size. And every year,
I've been able to defeat those landmarks,
and I've been able to actually be like,
"OK, now I can hit that note,
"and I can do that run, and I can play that stage,"
and it's been really affirming for me
to actually rework that voice in my head
that was so much self-doubt,
and so much confusion, and constant,
like, an inner saboteur that was always talking to me.
But it was really awesome for me to begin
to, kind of, silence that voice
with those things I was so doubtful of.
I was actually able to realize that
you can do what you put your mind to,
if you just continue to try, and practice makes perfect,
and if you keep on doing something,
it'll probably work out for you.
I think that a song that showcases
a moment I was really proud of is probably "Selfish."
I do a big run at the end of "Selfish,"
and I was really intimidated by it.
I remember we did a few takes of it,
and then finally we got that one,
and I was like, "Was that right?"
And me and my producer kind of looked
at each other like, "That was good,"
and it was such an awesome moment,
and then it went kind of viral on TikTok,
and there were so many people redoing the riff,
and it was just really honorable and really exciting for me,
and it means so much.
Growing as a vocalist is really exciting.
Another thing I learned about myself is
that I can actually write songs,
and that was a really intimidating thing for me.
I was really scared of writing lyrics,
and thinking that the things I wrote were weird.
I used to write a lot of poetry,
and then when I started to make music professionally, I -
I say professionally because I was 12,
so it feels weird saying actually professionally,
but when I started making music professionally,
I was intimidated to song-write,
because there were so many people who did this
for a living, who were really talented and skillful,
and I was like, "I don't know what I'm saying,
"and I say weird things, and I don't know if they're good."
Then, when I started actually using my voice,
and realizing that I had things to say that were meaningful,
it worked out pretty well.
And so now I love writing music,
and songwriting is just another thing
on my list of things that I absolutely love to do,
and couldn't live without.
Again, to bounce back to "Effortlessly,"
I think that "Effortlessly" is my favorite song lyrically
on the entire album.
It's really beautiful, or "Blue."
It was written like a poem,
and so I love singing that song.
So, another thing I learned
about myself is that I actually don't have two left feet.
I have always been conditioned to thinking
that I was, like, some terrible dancer, which, by the way,
I'm not a good dancer by any means at all,
but like I said before, practice makes perfect.
So, if I had a bit of choreo, even if it was very slight,
I was kind of able to build this facade of confidence,
which then made my dancing look a little bit better,
and I really want to put emphasis on I'm not a good dancer,
but I'm not completely uncoordinated either,
which is a step in the right direction for me,
considering I thought that I was.
One of the first times I realized
that I wasn't completely tone-deaf
in the dancing department
was on my music video for "Baby," which never came out.
We shot an entire video for "Baby" that never dropped,
but we had full choreo in it,
and I had like seven, eight days of rehearsal.
By the sixth day, I was like,
"I can do this, and I can be confident,
"and I feel sexy, and I feel good."
That was a big hurdle for me.
And the last thing I learned about myself
through my career is
that growing and healing is a continuous process,
and I've felt like because I was signed so young,
and because I started doing this
at such an early age,
I thought that by the time I was sitting here
in front of you at 22 years old,
I was gonna be all figured out,
and have everything aligned, and be, like, whatever,
and I am still figuring it out to this day, and that's OK,
and I think that that has really shown itself
throughout my career, and being so young,
and having to feel like I wanted to put myself
into a mold that I didn't fit into,
and then being unsure of who I was as a person.
It's just a continuous process,
and I think that that's something I've learned
through my career, and also just through growing up.