Madison Beer is getting vulnerable about her past.
In a new interview for the infinite scroll podcast, the singer-songwriter opened up about her relationship with her brother, Ryder, and why she felt it was time to “give him a little song” on her new album.
Silence Between Songs, Madison’s sophomore album, was released on September 15th. The album features 14 songs, all co-written by Madison herself, with sounds inspired by Tame Impala, The Beach Boys, and Lana Del Rey.
Track five, titled ‘Ryder’, is a heart-felt ballad dedicated to her younger brother, Ryder Beer.
With lyrics like, “All that’s unspoken / All the years that werе stolen / You were still in that housе/ I shouldn’t have left you behind” Madison apologises to her brother for how her career impacted his childhood and thanks him for sticking by her.
“What inspired me to write it, I would say, was mainly just you know, getting a bit older and being able to have like, these perspectives on our relationship and look at things from his point of view,” she tells infinite scroll co-hosts Lauren Meisner and Jordyn Christensen. “Even though I was also a kid, maybe I did things that hurt him in ways that I wasn’t aware of … just being able to be accountable for some of those things.”
Madison goes on to explain that she started her career so young, which impacted Ryder’s childhood, as well.
“We both have just had like, an interesting life, an interesting dynamic. I think it’s like, been very complex,” she says. “And it’s only been in recent years that I’ve been able to really think about it and be like, I’ve spent a lot of time doing my own work on my mental health and on things that have happened to me and you know, certain experiences that I’ve lived through but it has only been in recent years that I’ve been like well at that same time he was going through a lot as well that I wasn’t even thinking about. And I can admit that now.”
“I could have been more attentive towards [Ryder], I could have cared more, I could have included [him] more, I could have just, yeah, done things differently I guess,” she reflects.
Madison, who was born in New York, started posting covers of songs on YouTube in 2012 when she was 13 years old. That same year, Justin Bieber tweeted a link to one of her covers and Madison shot to viral fame overnight, trending worldwide on Twitter and gaining mainstream media coverage.
Madison was signed to Island Records and released her debut single ‘Melodies’ in 2013, at just 14 years old.
Through it all, Madison calls Ryder her “rock.”
“He’s been like, just such a rock for me and we have a very interesting relationship but it’s only grown closer and closer every year, so I felt it was time to give him a little song and he deserves it,” she says.
On how her younger brother reacted to hearing the ballad ‘Ryder’ for the first time, Madison notes it was emotional.
“We were at our house in New York, where we grew up. He was with a bunch of his friends and usually when I come home from LA, and especially in this time when I was making such a large quantity of music, I always had like 10 songs to play him and his friends,” she explains.
Madison says she asked Ryder to come out to the car with her so she could play him a song, just the two of them.
“When I plugged in my phone, it said ‘Ryder’ on the screen,” she says. “He was like, super weirded out and then the second the song started playing and he heard the first opening lyrics, like ‘Grew up in the house / So I know why you lash out,’ I could tell he was like, ‘oh boy, this is going to be something serious’.”
The singer-songwriter says the memory she has of playing Ryder his song for the first time was “very sweet.”
“I just have one specific memory of him, looking out the window of the car and I could just see, like a tear roll down his face,” she reflects, before saying that writing him a song was the “least awkward way” to communicate all the “deep” things she wanted to tell him.
Listen to the full infinite scroll interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.