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Madison Beer felt suicidal when she was ripped off by her record label at age 16.
The musician, 23, rose to fame in her early teens when her YouTube covers caught the eye of Justin Bieber in 2012, before signing with Island Records.
The singer was released by her label just a few years later, leaving her feeling like an “embarrassed failure” and “such a dark place” for a period of three years.
Speaking on the Reign with Josh Smith podcast, Madison explained, “To be completely transparent… I was so suicidal. Every inconvenience in my life, my first thought was really suicide.
Honest: Madison Beer has shared how she felt suicidal when she was dropped by her record label at age 16 (pictured last week)
“I was in such a dark place in my life that I was so hopeless. I felt like such a failure. I felt ashamed. I felt like no one liked me. There were so many components, I really just wanted out.
“And I remember it was probably only in 2018, 2019 and I was about 19 years old – 19 was probably one of the worst years of my life – but when I was 19 it all caught up with me eventually.
“From dropping out at 16 and getting a contract at 12 and mourning the loss of those primitive years and so many other things that happened behind the scenes have caught up with me. And then I felt these ways of I don’t want to be here anymore.’
Madison admitted she had “so many layers of self-loathing coming out,” which made her feel “deeply insecure” — while revealing she’s still going through “a fair amount of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and trauma.”
Teen sensation: The musician, 23, rose to fame in her early teens when her YouTube covers caught Justin Bieber’s attention in 2012 (pictured in 2014)
She explained: ‘I made a choice. I was like, “Are you just going to do it or are you going to get better? And are you going to try to live life in a different way? And are you going to use your experiences as a resource and hopefully be able to help others and go there and talk to people and have connections?”
“And of course I chose that path, which I’m so grateful for and I’ve had great help over those years and during that time, but I think that’s when I really started to look at things and have a lot of empathy for myself.
“I think I used to be very, very hard on myself and I was super, super mean. I used to be very angry with everyone. I was upset for so long that I couldn’t understand why I felt like I had failed.
“I didn’t understand why my label dropped me and why people who promised to stay in my life forever never spoke to me again. It was really hard and it manifested itself in a lot of anger, which made me hate myself.
Moving on: The singer was released just a few years later, leaving her feeling like an “embarrassed failure” and in “such a dark place” for three years (pictured in 2021)
“It made me starve myself. There were so many layers of just self-loathing coming out, I was so deeply insecure and it’s so crazy because I’m so different now and I’m so grateful.
‘But it was a choice and it is not a linear choice. There is nothing in the healing world and I think it is still a journey I take to this day.
“Of course I still have my dark moments, my dark days, my episodes, whatever it is. I have a fair amount of PTSD and trauma that I am still dealing with.”
Madison also insisted on being labeled a “diva” on the tell-all Reign podcast, stressing that she’s “just trying to chase my dreams the way they deserve to be pursued.”
She said: ‘I recently had a very eye-opening conversation with someone where this person had been telling me for years that I was difficult. I think they realize now that I was trying to stand up for myself creatively.
“Now it kind of changes where they think, “All those times I thought you were just trying hard to be hard, I realize you were just trying to drive home what you believe in.”
A tough time: Madison admitted she had ‘so many layers of self-loathing coming out’ that left her feeling ‘deeply insecure’ (pictured in 2020)
“That means a lot and it always has been and it always will be. So if I come across as a diva or hard to just try to pursue my dreams the way I think they deserve to be pursued, that’s fine with me.”
Madison spoke to Josh about her experience with social media since she came on the scene when she was just 12, admitting that she has now “developed a really beautiful relationship with myself” after receiving “consistent hate” online.
She told Josh: ‘I don’t think my internal criticism is as harsh as it used to be. I think I’m a lot easier on myself, I’ve developed a really nice relationship with myself that I’m really lucky with.
“I’ve been on the internet for over 10 years now and I’ve been getting hatred all the time since I joined when I was 12.
“So I guess at some point I had to make a decision, am I going to leave social media altogether and stop participating because it’s not good for me? Or am I going to change the way I maneuver it?
“Am I going to make that promise to myself that we won’t get into holes of reading comments for hours on end and that we won’t engage in negativity?
“I’ve really had to set boundaries that look after my own well-being, and I think for a long time I put the well-being of others above myself, my fans for example, I’d say, ‘Oh, I have to go on Twitter and I have to be with everyone talk because they want to.”‘
Madison added: ‘I think for me, setting those boundaries hey, not now. And that’s okay. And I can close and not be present on social media.
“I think that has worked wonders for me and I really have to say that I am very, very lucky to also have a fan base and friends online who understand and are empathetic about it.”
Listen to the full interview with Madison Beer on Reign with Josh Smith now.
No diva here: Madison also pushed back on the ‘diva’ label on the all-encompassing Reign podcast, insisting she was ‘just trying to chase my dreams’ (pictured in 2021)