Almost exactly five months after the release of Locket, Madison Beer has sought to remind listeners of its goodness by unveiling a deluxe edition of the record featuring three truly new songs, plus “Locket Theme (Extended).” This being the all too brief song that kicks off the album with its themes of self-love and self-acceptance through letting go of the past. Indeed, the tangible symbol of a locket, known for carrying precious memories in photo form, is something Beer advises herself to put down so that she, in turn, can move forward.
So it is that she sings, “I’ve been searching, but the answer’s right in front of me/My protection’s so divine and now I see/Pain on a necklace, set it down, I’m weightless/Everything that I could ever need is within me.” While the original version of the song clocks in at one minute and twenty-nine seconds, she updates the extended version with a few new lyrics that bring it to two minutes and forty-one seconds. And yes, considering that Locket sounds and feels, in many ways, like a “redux” of Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine, there’s a parallel to the fact that, on Grande’s own deluxe edition of that album, she turned her short opening track, “Intro (End of the World)” from one minute and thirty-two seconds to two minutes and forty-one seconds. However, before Beer offers up this “reprise,” she commences Locket Deluxe with “Lovergirl” (not to be confused with Laufey’s “Lover Girl”), which serves as the lead single from this iteration of the album.
And yes, it certainly changes tack from the previous overarching theme of Locket: the simultaneous pain and necessity of moving on from a relationship. Yet, at the same time, the gushing, love-loving nature of “Lovergirl” does tie in with this motif in the sense that, in order to get the rainbow, you have to put up with the rain (to paraphrase Dolly Parton). Beer’s rainbow is being able to fall in love again with someone who treats her better. That someone happens to be L.A. Chargers quarterback Justin Hebert (indeed, Beer’s romantic choice has something of Taylor Swift bent to it). After her on-again, off-again five-year relationship with “internet personality” (a phrase that fundamentally describes everyone whether they’re famous for it or not) Nick Austin, Herbert appears to be a breath of much-needed fresh air. A cleanse from the boy who seemed to inspire tracks like “Angel Wings,” “Bad Enough” and “Bittersweet.” The boy who made her fear the highs of love because she expected inevitable lows to follow. A sentiment that appears on the former final track of Locket, “Nothing At All,” when she expresses, “I’m afraid of getting better/I’m afraid it gets too good/‘Cause it can’t last forever/Even though I wish it could/The higher you rise, the further that you fall/And soon, you’re left with nothin’ at all.”
But “Lovergirl,” all tinged with its R&B-esque sound (the genre that always seems to speak to amorous, lusty emotions), flips the script on that kind of thinking. Even though Beer initially admits she still has her anxieties during the first verse, “I care too much all the time/Love so hard it makes me cry/No, it’s not worth it to deny/‘Cause when it’s good, it’s so good, it’s so nice.” Allowing herself to “fall down the rabbit hole” of l’amour yet again, Beer addresses the hypnotic power of attraction as she continues, in an almost Janet Jackson-like manner, “One look right into your eyes/One touch and I’m yours tonight/I, I just can’t help that I’m a lover girl/Why not embrace a simple pleasure?/Let me hold you close/And we can take off all our clothes.”
Having shed her inhibitions after playing it close to the vest for so long, Beer can finally let down her guard long enough to tell her newfound love, “I thank God I found you in this lonely world/Why would we ever stop ourselves from doing what feels good?/Baby, if we can, we should.” This type of “fuck it” thinking having become increasingly used as a form of “logic” amid the collective feeling that the world is coming to an end (at least the world as it was once known: semi-functional and semi-“civil”). Then again, famous people tend to feel that way all the time amid whatever latest “scandal” or threat of being “cancelled” they face. Which is why Beer seems to be at least partially referring to the scandal that plagued her when she was just fifteen, when nude photos that she had sent to her crush on Snapchat were leaked to the internet. Leaked by the person she trusted enough to send them to in the first place. Hence, “Lovergirl” lyrics like, “I’ve flown too close to the sun/And I’ve been burned far more than once/But it still hasn’t stopped me from/Doing it again, I’m doing it again.”
She isn’t just talking about falling in love here, but the act of trusting someone again after having been disappointed so many times by the egregious breaking of that trust. But now that she’s learned to conquer her fear of becoming vulnerable, she’s able to let go of all her remaining reticence on “Free.” A song that starts out with some evocative string arrangements before Beer not only channels Ariana Grande vibes yet again (think: a “Dangerous Woman” aura), but some Lana Del Rey ones, to boot. This due in large part to the lushness and complexity of the backing beat, which recalls elements of “Home to Another One.” A comparison that tracks considering “Free” is also produced by One Love.
The Del Reyness of the song shines through in her “me and my daddy against the world”-type lyrical stylings that include, “He puts the music on the speakers and I sing to the beat/Oh, my pretty baby keeps it cool like the breeze/He’s such a gentleman, for me, he’s a freak” and “He’s gonna drive me to the country/He’s gonna drive me to the forest greens/He’s gonna drive me mad and crazy/He captivates me/And he sets me free.” So, like Del Rey, Beer found salvation through a man as much as she once found pain and heartache in another.
Her reverence for this new romance in her life reaches an apex on “Somehow I Got Lucky,” which switches the dramatic sonic tone of “Free” to one that’s “cuter,” “mellower” and more mid-tempo. With its effusive, bursting-with-love lyrics, there are plenty of moments when it’s likenable to still another Grande song. Namely, “imagine” from thank u, next—a track that similarly paints the picture of being blissfully caught in a “love bubble” that one never wants to burst.
And, as far as Beer can tell, it’s not going to. Not even after the “honeymoon period” (which, technically, is still going on for her with Herbert), as she describes in the opening verse, “But it’s honestly hard to believe/That even after the honeymooning/You’re still perfect to me/I want more than I did when I met you.” She then pivots toward expressing feelings of what Robyn would call “cute aggression” (hear: “Blow My Mind”), adding, “Honestly if it were possible/I’d melt you down and drink up/‘Cause, baby, I can never get enough.” Well, she does at least slightly innovate by changing the phrase “I could just eat you up” to one that relates to drinking someone up instead.
Her sense of having hit the jackpot with this love of hers persists when she sings, “And when I don’t know if it’s possible to get better it does/‘Cause you make sure that it does, oh/Somehow, I got lucky/Somеhow, I got lucky/It’s the understatemеnt of the century/I can’t believe you’re sleeping next to me.” Of course, Herbert should probably know that he’s not so unlucky himself. And then, as if to throw the listener off the scent that it’s a football player she’s talking about, Beer provides a baseball analogy in the form of, “I’m batting a thousand/I’ve been telling everybody, ‘I can’t live without him, I’m lovesick around him’/I couldn’t have dreamed you up better/I wouldn’t know how to” (she probably should have called up the witches of Practical Magic then). The sweet—bordering on treacly—lyrics are then punctuated by a still sweeter, violin-tinged outro. Which paves the way for a transition into “Locket Theme (Extended),” a track that takes on a new meaning after following these three additional songs. Thus, Beer layering on a few new lyrics to make it “extended.”
Among those lyrics are ones that seem to be directly addressing the old love she had to let go of in order to find the new one, telling the former, “Now I see that I can love you from far away/I’ve grown a lot, it seems everything had to change/No matter where we go, just know that I’ll never forget.” Because remembering the person that broke her heart is part of how Beer will avoid it happening again in the future, learning from the mistakes of her past so that she can build a better (and apparently more “lovergirl”) present.
As for the timing of Locket Deluxe’s release, it arrived right before Beer was set to embark on her first arena tour in support of the album, with “Lovergirl” and “Free” both making it into the setlist. As well they should, for these are just as strong as any of the tracks on the original version of the record.
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