PHOTOS / MALLORY TURNER
STORY / ANGIE PICCIRILLO
A few years ago, Bea Miller was known mostly as the sassy teen with the big voice from X-Factor, but she’s come a long way since then… Today, she’s still just as sassy as she’s always been, but she’s here with new music and whole lot of positivity. “I’ve gone through significant changes,” Bea says, “A lot of that has to do with my age, but it’s also been a matter of writing and expressing so much, and being able to share that with other people.”
Her new album, “Aurora” was released recently — but what’s different from these songs than what we’ve seen from her before? Bea has gotten to write on them herself this time.
This particular night, Bea was invited to perform at LA’s Grammy Museum. Grammy Museum has been inviting artists to perform in their cozy Clive Davis theatre, inviting both outside fans and museum members to experience hour-long talks with cool artists, and followed by a live intimate set in the small theatre. Artists have ranged from well-known artists like John Prine, to BØRNS, all the way to nineteen-year-old Bea Miller.
Outside the museum, the line was long and the fans were loud. And during her hour-long talk, we’d soon see the layers of Bea peeled back one by one — though you’d think she was just another pop starlet, this talk would prove she is so much more than that.
For a nineteen year old the concepts behind Bea’s several chaptered “dream project,” an anthology of EP releases featuring themes tied to a different primary color: chapter one: blue (sadness); chapter two: red, (redemption); chapter three: yellow, (self-discovery); seem almost too sophisticated for someone so young. Each release is said to represent a chapter of Bea’s life over the last year and the build-up to the final chapter, aurora, the full-length sophomore album which was released in February.
With the creation of “Aurora,” a word that references different colors — Bea explained that she had suddenly realized that all the voices about not being good enough were just in her head, and after finding co-writers and producers who she felt were her “tribe,” sat down and penned the album straight from the heart.
She explained that she has synesthesia — a perceptual phenomenon that many musicians have that relates colors to music. This discovery is what led Bea to naming and organizing each of the chapters of her album based on the colors she would see when writing/listening to them.
Along with her new found confidence in songwriting, Bea has found that her songs are a sort of “time capsule” of the events that have occurred in her own life, and mentioned she hopes that these are songs that fans can relate to. She also stood and gave an impromptu speech to her fans on positivity and being themselves — something that other pop starlets don’t do, and something Bea herself, doesn’t have to.
Most artists at this particular Grammy event, a series called “The Drop”, play stripped down acoustic sets — but not Bea. The small theatre full of fans were on their feet as Bea broke into her first song, and the museum floor rumbled and shook as she left them wanting more. There’s no doubt that with her new found confidence, sultry and honest tunes, and inventive beats — the future is bright for Bea who promises more music this fall.
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