After a false start at 13, pop sensation Madison Beer is relaunching herself at 19 with a new EP and a strong message for her millions of online fans, she tells David Smyth

Phone-omenon: Madison Beer sings live for a crowd of her fans in Berlin

It’s obvious why Madison Beer has picked her particular life goal: “I always said that I want to sell out Madison Square Garden before I turn 21,” she tells me. If only the 19-year-old New Yorker had been christened “Islington” she could have ticked off a more manageable namesake gig this weekend, when she arrives at the north London Academy venue on her first tour.

America’s premier arena might not be beyond her reach, however, if her ludicrous Internet numbers are anything to go by: 2.6 million followers on Twitter, 10.7 million on Instagram (significantly more than the biggest new female singer in the UK, Dua Lipa) and 57.3 million Spotify streams for her biggest song to date, Dead.

Beer doesn’t see it as simply as that: “Some people think, ‘She has 10 million followers, of course she could sell out Madison Square Garden’. But they don’t realise it’s a hard thing to translate followers scrolling in their beds on Instagram to people who’ll get up, buy a ticket, get ready and go out. You really have to love somebody.”

She seems to have mixed feelings about her social media success. I catch the second concert of her life, in the Berlin club venue Bi Nuu, and her fans, mostly teenage and female, are clearly major phone enthusiasts.