Haven Madison Is Graduating Excessive College on Her Technique to Stardom (Unique)

• Haven Madison has launched her debut EP, Flip Off All of the Lights
• The American Idol alum, who made the Prime 8 final season, graduated highschool this week
• With a current transfer to Nashville, Madison is able to fly excessive

There’s a buzz surrounding Haven Madison, and she will really feel it. 

“I stroll in these writers’ rooms, and I have been greeted a number of instances by folks saying, ‘Why are so many individuals speaking about you?’ Madison, 18, tells PEOPLE with fun whereas on a current week-long writing go to to Los Angeles. “It has been enjoyable attending to stroll in all these rooms and show why there’s buzz.”

Definitely, there’s a confidence oozing from the pop sensation who hit the big-time final 12 months as a finalist on Season 21 of American Idol, as it’s she who who lately signed her first label deal and lately launched her label-debut EP, Flip Off All of the Lights, a candy assortment of irate songs that every maintain a lyrical punch inside them. 

“All of the songs have some degree of emotional pull to them,” explains the Clarksville, Tennessee, native that moved to Nashville simply final month. “They make you both really feel absolute rage or absolute empowerment or pure heartbreak or pure sarcasm.”

“How You Like Me Now” is an instance of that distinctive sarcasm. 

“It is tremendous enjoyable as a result of it simply scratches the floor of being a pissed-off woman, but it surely’s additionally chill,” says Madison of the bouncing ball of lyrics she wrote alongside songwriters Eric Arjes and Mary Kutter. “It retains it joyful and lighthearted.”

Amongst this seesaw of lyrical feelings is an plain sonic stunner of a singer who appears to have the ability to effortlessly hit notes that some might solely dream of hitting. 

“I feel these had been simply pure selections that got here to be after I go into songwriting classes,” says Madison. “I simply play a chord and begin singing and no matter naturally comes out is normally the melody we go together with, as a result of it is what the track needed. I feel one of the best songs are those the place it is nearly as if the track already existed and I simply needed to discover it.”

She hits a few of these notes within the beautiful “Sky Up.”

“The excessive notes are an ache,” she says of the sounds featured within the track she wrote with Grammy-nominated songwriter/producer Dave Pittenger. “It is what makes you’re feeling a lot. It’s when you may really feel that mojo and that ache in my voice, and I’ve realized what placements make me really feel that probably the most. Your voice is your instrument. So, it is simply studying the methods round that.”

This studying journey started when Madison was only a teenager rising up within the highlight of her dad — Grammy-nominated Constructing 429 lead singer Jason Roy. Madison was additionally homeschooled till she started attending public faculty throughout her freshman 12 months of highschool. “All public faculty taught me how one can do in truth was survive people… and cheat,” she admits with fun.

It’s a life that Madison bonded over with American Idol choose Katy Perry, as the 2 made headlines final 12 months with their collaboration on “Nonetheless Want You,” the poignant ballad Haven wrote about her brother Avery’s battle with despair.

“The second we shared was weak and uncooked,” Madison remembers of the efficiency that had the 2 carrying denims and no footwear. “We actually fought our hair and make-up workforce away. We simply needed to exist right here. I feel it made for such a particular second for the 2 of us, and nonetheless to this present day, it’s one in every of my favourite performances I’ve ever performed.”

It is all been a part of the considerably surreal lifetime of Madison, who lately went house to go to promenade and stroll throughout the stage at Clarksville Excessive College to get her diploma this week. And there to cheer her on will likely be her brother Avery. 

“He was struggling, and he went by an extended depressive section and suicide was one thing he was contemplating,” she says. “Right now, I simply am so pleased with him. And it is wonderful as a result of not solely is he my drummer, however he is an exceptional one. Each evening I get to play a present with him, he does one thing that simply solidifies each purpose why he isn’t solely an incredible drummer, however such a obligatory individual to exist. Each evening we hug one another earlier than we go on and we’re like, ‘Take a look at us. We thought we weren’t going to make it, and right here we’re.'”