Labubu this, Sonny Angel that - 2025 was the year of the trinket girl. But while most were clipping little teddies to their bag handles, Madison Beer was about a thousand steps ahead. As a lifelong trinket trawler, she's filled her home with a spectacular array of vintage knick-knacks and memorabilia.

"People come over, and they're like, where did you get all this stuff?" says Madison from her home in Los Angeles. "I have a lot of lockets. I have a lot of really awesome antique jewellery. I have some antique armoires and furniture pieces at my house. I love collecting antique dresses and really old, early 1900s gowns and lingerie; that stuff is what I'm constantly on the hunt for. Almost everything that you'll find in my house is an antique of some kind. It's very endless. Anyone who's been to my house will attest that it's quite the collection."

It's not a collection we get to see (Madison's camera is off), but as she reels off the treasures she's adopted from other people's lives, it's one of the few glimpses we properly get into her own.

There are similarities to be drawn between the locket and the album: both serve as a means of capturing something personal and passing it along to someone else, and on Madison Beer's new album, named after the keepsake, it's clear that everything she wants to say is locked tight in those eleven tracks and kept close to her chest.

"I feel like so much [was happening] that was transformative in my personal life, so much that was happening behind the scenes, career-wise, whatever. If you listen to it, you'll definitely hear a lot of what I was going through," she says. "I have an issue where I don't have a filter, and I write very honestly, so a lot of the things you hear me talk about are just very real moments in my actual life."

It isn't that Madison has a hard time opening up; she's just more particular about how she does it now. Having found fame before she'd even hit her teens after uploading covers to YouTube, by the time she was 13, she'd been 'discovered' by Justin Bieber and signed to Island Records. Now 26, two albums and a memoir later, and having spent half her life in the spotlight, she seems more cautious when it comes to sharing stories.

"I'm pivoting a little bit in my career, kind of taking a step back in some ways, and sort of wanting to feel like there's more to life than my career and music and what that means, really. So after [the last] tour, that was kind of a big thing for me, how can I take a step back? Then, what do I feel like once I do? I'm not 15 anymore. I want to think about the rest of my life, and I also don't want to look back and be like, all I did was, you know, career stuff, and not so much care for myself or things that feel nourishing outside of that. So I think I've just been trying to find a balance with that, and now I feel like I have, which is really nice and really rewarding."

We ask about 'locket'. "I mean, what do you want to know?" she responds, not giving the game away. "I think it is very me, whatever that means. I think it's a beautiful body of work. There are a lot of highs and lows to it. It's fun, sexy, emotional - I'm just really proud of it."

She began working on 'locket' before she even knew she was working on an album. Ahead of her 2024 'Spinnin" tour, Madison wanted a big dance pop moment in the set list. The trouble was, the album she was touring, 'Silence Between Songs', was a retro, psychedelic pop record, so she needed something new. The result was 'Make You Mine', a Euro-house thumping club track, now one of her most successful singles yet, as it also earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Dance Pop Recording.

It was a dramatic sonic shift, but one she stuck with for the follow-up. 'Yes Baby' doubled down on the electronic sound, this time pushing for a 2000s club vibe a la 'Brat', complete with a video recalling Eric Prydz's 'Call On Me'.

"I get really into certain genres and vibes," explains Madison. "My music taste is really all over the place, and I love a lot of different things. It's not really a decision I make where I'm like, 'This time I want to do this' - it just is what feels natural to me at the moment. I'm not the kind of person that's going to be like, 'I can't do that, because my last album was this', so I have to speak to it. I'm such a believer in just doing whatever you want and whatever feels right to you. So that's been really fun, and I'm pumped about the more poppy music that I made."

That said, the rest of 'locket' – or rather the further four tracks we're given a preview of – aren't in the dance-pop realm at all. 'bad enough' and 'you're still everything' are synth ballads, 'complexity' is a glitchy UKG tune, while the catchiest of the bunch, 'angel wings', has a 90s R&B groove. In order to prep fans for the variety on 'locket', she dropped 'bittersweet', the modern-80s hazy pop single. "I wanted to release something that wasn't a dance song, but was just like a pop record before the album came out, so people weren't really blindsided by that," she says.

"I feel very fondly towards 'bad enough' because I wrote that in a very pivotal time in my personal life, and when I was really needing to make a lot of very hard, very serious decisions and have real conversations with myself about my future and whatnot. I look back on when we wrote that, and I was like, 'Wow'. That was a very eye-opening studio session.

"Most of the songs are breakup-y and relationship-related. I was going through an intense relationship that I pulled a lot of inspo from, and I feel thankful for it, because it really helped me write this album. Then also just a lot of personal stuff. The last track, 'nothing at all', is very personal to me and no one else. It's a pretty accurate representation of where I was at with how I was viewing things, I guess, regarding my career. I don't want to give all of it away, but it's really just about my own journey with all this stuff and the bizarreness of this world."

Some of the stepping back Madison speaks of included a big social media break. In July 2025, she deleted her X (formerly Twitter) account and made her TikTok private; the constant criticism and unpacking of her career were taking their toll on her mental health, and subsequently, her creativity. When it came to making 'locket', she did it with her most trusted partners (namely Leroy Clampitt, who she's worked on all three albums with, and who recently popped up in the credits of Lily Allen's 'West End Girl') and the extra voices shut out.

"I was really sitting online and reading what a lot of people were saying about me, and I think it just got to the point where it didn't feel healthy anymore," she explains. "I just had to decide what was best for me and not what was best for my career. That's a thing that I was taught very young, you know, you've got to decide, is it good for you or good for your career? And I think that that's really messed up. I think you should be able to do things that, like, well, first of all, should be good for you. What's the point of having a career if you're not happy or not feeling good? So it was definitely the right choice for me. I don't read that stuff anymore. I don't see it anymore. I never go on Twitter unless it's to sign into this other account, this Madison Beer HQ account, just to pop in and say hi to my fans, very sporadically, but distancing myself from lots of opinions about me has helped me see clearer. I make my music in a clearer mindset, because I'm not making it for anyone based on their opinions. I'm really making it for me, and I'm making stuff that I really, really enjoy."

You get the impression that it must've been, at times, legitimately hard for Madison. It's perplexing that she isn't a total superstar already; vocally, she's about as good as a Grande or an Eilish, with her dreamy, airy voice and impressive control (those who attend her live shows remark that she's a true vocalist; they'll be surprised by the runs on 'locket' too), she's obviously very beautiful (she walked the Victoria's Secret runway!), and yet she still possesses an unexpected coolness when you scratch off the top layer.

She's often positioned alongside artists like Zara Larsson and Tate McRae as underrated Gen Z pop stars who should be bigger, or whose talent goes under the radar. Currently, we're in an era where it just takes one song to take a pop girl into the major leagues, but it still feels like Madison is waiting for her big moment. We ask how she feels about being knowingly underrated, and it's obviously something that's been playing on her mind.

"That's something I had struggled with for a while. It was a difficult pill to swallow that people were like, she's an influencer, and she's this, and she's that, and then there was a lot of discourse about just who I am, and at a certain point it's like, I gotta let that go," she says of the criticism she's faced. "It's not really something that I can control. At this point, I'm like, I don't know what more I can really do, and I'm sorry, I just don't really care to change people's minds at this stage. If you don't like me, or if you think I'm something that I'm not, or if you want to judge me based on my social media, or whatever you want to do, that's not my issue, to be honest. I'm gonna keep doing my thing, and I'm gonna keep doing things how I think is cool. People can like it or not, but it's like, I've come to the point where I'm living my life, and I can't let every waking moment of it be controlled by opinions of other people, and because you're never gonna appease everyone."

Despite this, she seems at peace with where she's currently at, embracing her position in the pop rankings and trying to stay in the present.

"I'm never gonna get everyone's co-sign, and at the end of the day, I do feel like, sure, yeah, I understand when people say I'm underrated, and I appreciate that. It's coming from a really sweet place. Whoever's saying that is, I would assume, wanting me to get more recognition, and that means that they support me, and that's very, very kind. But I'm also pretty satisfied with the community that I have, and I'm really grateful for where I'm at. I know that if my 12-year-old self saw how far I've come, I would be very, very proud. I wouldn't be like, 'Oh, you could be bigger and better'. I would be super stoked. I think that sometimes we are always looking to the future and looking to what's next, instead of just enjoying the moments that are in between. Because I do believe that my fan base will continue to grow. I'm hoping, after this album, more people listen to my music, whatever, but I'm also enjoying where I'm at now. I think where I'm at today is a really cool place to be, and I don't want to spend too much time focusing on the next thing and hoping for more, because I'm very thankful for what I already have."

As much as 'locket' is about tucking away the intense personal stuff, for Madison Beer, this was equally a process of learning to let go.

Taken from the February 2026 issue of Dork. Madison Beer's album 'locket' is out 16th January.