After releasing her debut album last year, American pop star Madison Beer is finally back on the road.

She’s halfway through the European leg of her Life Support tour, visiting 22 cities in 14 different countries. Just more than two years since the pandemic began, which disrupted the music industry and halted tours globally, Madison is glad to be performing live again.

“It’s really crazy to be back, I’m really, really happy,” she says of the tour. “I love my European fans so it’s good to be back in front of them. And I think we’re all really happy to be back together after so long.”

The 23-year-old is set to perform in Manchester on Good Friday, for the first time in four years. “I remember you guys have a funny nickname for yourselves, right?” she recalls, referring to ‘Mancunians’ and ‘Mancs.’ “It’s definitely a fun place to be and I’m excited to come back!”

Madison’s debut album Life Support and its subsequent tour have been a long time coming. Barely a teenager, the New Yorker signed a record deal after Justin Bieber shared a YouTube video of her singing a Bruno Mars mash-up to his 20 million Twitter followers.

But by age 16 she was dropped, before having the chance to release an album. Nowadays she’s making the music she’s passionate about and is ‘very grateful’ for the path she went on.

In 2018 she independently released her EP As She Pleases, which garnered 700 million streams globally. Soon after she featured on Jax Jones’ and Martin Solveig’s track All Day and Night which peaked at number 10 in the UK charts.

“Every step of the way has been crucial to where I am now so I wouldn’t change anything,” Madison affirms. She went on to sign with Epic Records in 2019, teasing singles ‘Good in Goodbye’, ‘Selfish,’ ‘Baby’ and ‘Boys**t’ before unveiling her album in February last year.

“My relationship with my fans is the most important thing to me and it’s really been able to flourish over the past couple of years,” she tells the Manchester Evening News. “Having music out that I’m really proud of and feel really passionate about, they finally get to really enjoy that with me.”

The ‘Dear Society’ singer often makes time to chat with her fans online (even with her colossal 30-million-strong Instagram following) and says she has maintained ‘genuine, true friendships’ with ‘so many’ of them. “It’s really special, I don’t know that every artist can say that they’re so close with their fans and have such genuine, true friendships with so many of them.”

The Life Support tour has allowed her to resume meeting them in person. “I met a lot of them… who I’ve known since we were literally 12 or 13 so it’s pretty crazy. Even some of them, who I just met, tell me, ‘oh I was at your very first show,’ which I played at a tiny, tiny 150-cap venue in London like five years ago.

“It’s definitely really emotional and cool to see them grow with me.”

Madison also revealed that new music is ‘on its way’ with her next album ‘coming together really nicely.’ She tells the Manchester Evening News: “I wanted to be pretty much done with the album before I drop anything new because I want it to come out in a cohesive way and I want everything to feel super connected – so I just want to be strategic when I drop the next few things.

“I have tonnes of songs that I’ve finished and in the works – and an album coming together really nicely. So it shouldn’t be too much longer.”