Madison Beer Tuned Out the Noise to Make Her Album ‘Silence Between Songs’
Madison Beer sleeps best with the TV on at night. She needs things to be noisy enough that she doesn’t have the space to think. “I don’t like to be in the quiet,” she says. But with her new album, Silence Between Songs, out Sept. 15, Beer chose to do the opposite and really listen to herself.
“Those moments in between the noise is when you’re able to reflect,” she says. “I was able to look at things with a better perspective. That’s where these records came from.”
Beer, 24, says the album came together easily as she thought through moments of growth and difficulty from her life. The LP comes just weeks after she released a memoir, The Half of It, where she opened up about her depression. “There are some serious songs on the album that are about really emotional and personal things to me,” she says. “My fans who have read the book will go into the album with a clearer vision.”
Among the tracks on Silence Between Songs is one that she wrote about her younger brother Ryder, inspired by how her decisions to pursue a career in music have affected his upbringing and their relationship. She’s always wanted to write him a song. “I always left you out, you still loved me somehow,” she sings on the ballad.
“There’s been a lot of emotions and experiences that we’ve shared over the last 12 years of me doing this with my life, which has then affected his life in turn,” she says. “Becoming older and being able to reflect on how my choices impacted him without me even knowing they were going to, because I was also just such a young kid.”
There’s also a track about her father and the “painful” relationship she’s had with him throughout her life. “It’s something I’ve never really spoken about because it’s hard and I don’t want to air him out,” Beer says. “But it’s also something that I feel has shaped me as a person. I do love him for who he is, even if some of the things he does hurts me.”
In addition to reflecting on her family and her journey on the album, she takes a moment to share a sexier side as well. There’s even a “musically intricate and kind of strange” track that was inspired by the Beatles and the Beach Boys. “I just wanted to take a stab at something very ambitious,” she says.
On Friday, she’ll release the album’s lead single, “Home to Another One,” which she says reminds her of a mix of Lana Del Rey and Tame Impala, two of her favorite artists. The song details a meetup with an ex who’s since moved on. “The energy of the song is something like I’ve never done. It’s really true to me,” she says. “And I feel like even though you can hear those influences that I love so much, I do feel like we still really made it [very] Madison.”
It’s not the only track on the album that shows Lana’s influence — there are some Born to Die elements on “Home to Another One” — and Beer even got to share the album with the star for feedback. She says Del Rey told her she’s particularly fond of the LP’s opening track. “She said she listened to it a couple of times back to back, and I can’t believe that,” Beer says. “It’s so awesome to have someone who has been such an idol of mine be so supportive of me and gracious always… She’s definitely someone that makes me believe in goodness.”
Leroy Clampitt, who worked on Beer’s first album, Life Support, executive-produced Silence Between Songs and became the best “partner” to create an honest LP. “He’s not only someone that I can continue to make music with forever, but someone that I really consider one of my closest friends,” she says.
That process also let her look back on how she’s grown since her debut. “It’s hard to think about who I was then and how different my life was. I just feel like a completely different person,” she says. “I feel really proud of the person that I am. I feel proud of the girl that I also was. I’ve been able to absorb so many things in the last couple of years and learn from so many things.”
