Single Review: Madison Beer - Home to Another One

I am not super up on who’s who in pop these days. But I have heard of Madison Beer. Every time I have seen Madison Beer come up in any conversation, it’s always been in relation to two things. Ariana Grande and there just being nothing to her. And I get it.

Madison’s look is very much what Ariana’s was during Yours Truly and My Everything. (She was once managed by Scooter Braun, who also manages Ariana Grande. So, make of that what you will). But I do find it difficult to see and hear who Madison is, because there is always some comparison I’m able to draw. When I see and hear her in “Dangerous”, I’m reminded of Ariana Grande. When I listen to “Reckless”, I’m reminded of Billie Eilish. And with “Home to Another One”, some may say she’s channelling the sound of Lana Del Rey, with the look of Ariana from “Break Free” and “34+35”. And I know that Ariana is not the originator of these looks, and that it’s all from the 1960s; Barbarella, 1960s go-go dancers, etc. But it is a comparison to be made none-the-less, and one which is probably common.

And do you know another artist who came to mind for me? Janelle Monáe. Back when she was dressing like Colonel Sanders with a pompadour. I could absolutely hear her on a song like this for The ArchAndroid - a tale of Cindi lamenting over Sir Greendown.

Janelle Monáe is not an immediate comparison by any means, although I would absolutely get if they were for some. The vision of Janelle doing this song? I see and hear it clearly.

HENNYWAY.

The one thing Madison has going for her with this melancholic side piece anthem, is that the video and the song are so good, that whilst the aforementioned comparisons do ring true, I also can’t deny that the video and the song are both really good. Great in fact. “Home to Another One” has HUGE hit potential.

A pop girl sampling Tame Impala sure is an inspired choice. And the timing of this couldn’t be better, given that Tame Impala surprisingly features on the Barbie movie soundtrack. But Tame Impala has been on the pop fringes for a minute, with Rihanna covering a Tame Impala song for Anti, and Kevin Parker (the man behind Tame Impala) also being one of the writers and producers of Lady Gaga’s “Perfect Illusion”.

But even if folk know absolutely nothing of Tame Impala, Kevin Parker, Tame Daddy, T. Diddy or whatever, they will find the chorus of “Home to Another One” familiar, because Tame Impala’s “The Less I Know the Better” has been used in so many commercials and memes over the years. If Rihanna wasn’t the introduction to Tame Impala for pop heads, then it was probabaly memes.

It’s also nice to hear a song sampled well in a pop song. These days so many acts are just taking songs, slowing them down and just singing / rapping over the top of them, and it’s lazy. Not only is good sampling an art form which requires a really good ear, but a sample should help elevate a song, and feel like a piece of the puzzle of crafting a song. And as nice as the Tame Impala sample is on “Home to Another One”, it doesn’t define the song. There is enough other musicality in “Home to Another One” to be appreciated alongside how well the sample is used. It took me a minute to even catch the sample, due to how it’s chopped, the key and tempo being different, and everything else going on around it.

Madison Beer - Home to Another One | Epic Records

But unfortunately, “Home to Another One” falls prey to the dreaded 2 and a half minute runtime. I feel like a broken record, because I have said this about so many songs over the past couple of years. But it’s a problem for me when a song is 2 and a half minutes, and so clearly sounds like it needed another 60 seconds of music. “Home to Another One” just comes and goes. The sound of the song does such a great job of drawing you in and eliciting a very specific feeling. But just when you’re on the cusp of getting lost in it, the whole thing just ends. Why as a producer would you go to such effort to create such a cool and beautiful vibe for a song, just to yank listeners out of it so abruptly? “Home to Another One” needed a really great bridge section where the drums drop out and Madison’s vocals are mixed to swell, reverb, and channel hop, to really evoke the feeling of space and allow listeners to get lost in the song. And “Home to Another One” should have ended with a fade out, to further give that sense of space and endlessness. But, nope. Just a 2 minute and 30 second bish-bash-bosh affair. I’m tired.

If 2010 Janelle did this song, they and Deep Cotton woulda ended this song right. And if Tame Impala had produced this song, he also woulda ended it right. And the song would probably also be 6 minutes long.

Madison Beer - Home to Another One | Epic Records

There is definitely something here with “Home to Another One” that Madison can pull from to package herself as herself, and not just this patchwork of other artists who are still very current in the pop zeitgeist. But something we (including myself) need to accept in this day and age, is that there’s nothing truly new under the sun. And that artists who came up a decade ago, such as Ariana Grande, are influences to this generation of young girls coming up in pop now. We’re seeing this across the board. Madison Beer is very clearly playing from the Ariana playbook. Whilst somebody like Olivia Rodriguez is playing from the Taylor Swift playbook. And it’s easier to see comparisons now because of the Internet and social media - where people can tweet comparison photos and edit together videos for TikTok which can be posted out into the world for all to see, including the artists themselves, with the potential to go viral.

I really do feel for these acts coming up now, because it is tough; between rabid fandoms, everybody having access to them in some form and the lack of record label support to help package them. But also due to the frequency that acts seem to be debuting. Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift were some of the last of the pop acts who came up just before social media really took off and became a norm, when record labels helped to develop acts and package them early on before they got thrown to the wolves.

Madison Beer - Home to Another One | Epic Records

There’s nothing wrong with having echoes of another artist. Even some of the biggest artists of the 90s and early 2000s who most would deem icons and legends came out evoking something from another artist who came before. Ariana Grande was constantly compared to Mariah Carey when she dropped “Baby I”. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Taylor Swift was compared to the likes of LeAnn Rimes or Jewel.

Familiarity sells. But once you get that foot in the door, you then have to do the work to become your own thing and really show yourself. I think Madison Beer is at that point now, and that “Home to Another One” provides her more than a chance to do that and turn the corner. Although this will depend on the approach she takes with her upcoming album Silence Between Songs. Hopefully “Home to Another One” will be indicative of the album as a whole, and not the outlier. Hopefully. Because the other singles certainly didn’t make me sit up the way “Home to Another One” did.

Madison is going to have a tough time really establishing who she is an artist between these comparisons. But she seems to have a good enough eye and ear to do it. She just needs to bend things a little more and twist them in a way where she is what we see, and the comparisons aren’t so easy. But then again, having comparisons to Ariana Grande and Lana Del Rey as talking points might be part of the strategy. And as far as strategies go, it’s not a terrible one. But even if the music is good, Madison still needs to convey who she is. And (surprise, surprise) this was a problem Ariana had early in her career too. Her character and who she was did not come through in her music. So Madison needs to be mindful of this. She needs to give people something they can latch onto with her music.

One thing is for sure though, “Home to Another One” is a strong enough song to start a conversation on its own and perhaps make people look twice at her and her music. And this is a win for Madison.