By Scott T. Sterling
Teenage pop stars: they’re just like us.
Being a talented 15-year-old singer-songwriter like Bea Miller obviously comes with some perks: a Top 10 finish on the second season of The X Factor USA — she came in ninth — and an opening slot on select dates of Demi Lovato‘s Demi World Tour.
Like most other American teenagers, however, Miller still has to hit the books for high school classes and is not rolling in cash or going on lavish shopping sprees.
“These are the two biggest assumptions people make about any young singer: that we’re rich and that we don’t have to go to school, and those are completely false,” she explains during an interview with Radio.com. “We do have to finish high school, and we’re not automatically rich because really the only two things you make money off of as a singer are merch and actually performing onstage, like touring. I think it’s so frustrating that people don’t understand, so I always make sure to remind them, like, ‘Guess what I’m doing? School, because I’m just like you!”
While Miller is busily preparing her debut album, she’s still enjoying the success of her Young Blood EP, which was released earlier this year and boasts a bona fide hit in the title track. While she’s worked with some high profile artists already, including former American Idol judge, Kara DioGuardi, on the single, “Dracula,” the young artist only has eyes for Ed Sheeran.
“I have it all in my head,” she says of her fantasy collab with the British singer-songwriter. “Like, really simple, just Ed on his guitar and the two of us in the booth. No track, nothing. Just the two of us harmonizing.”
Miller’s highest praise is reserved for Kurt Cobain, the late leader of alt-rock icons, Nirvana.
Even though she’s far too young to have experienced the band during their brief, but storied career—she was born five years after Cobain’s death—the power of his words and music has resonated with her.
“They did their own thing, you know,” she says of Nirvana. “A lot of bands at the time were kind of trying to be in the grunge scene, but Nirvana was somehow different, and it’s proven because of how long they’ve lived even after the band wasn’t a band anymore…Whenever I hear those songs, I can just feel every single word he’s saying, even if it has nothing to do with the word in front of it.
“I just think that Kurt Cobain himself was one of the most brilliant people to have ever lived, creatively,” she adds. “I just think that he was too intelligent for this world.”
Watch the video above to see Bea Miller talk about her stance on “slutty” Halloween costumes and her favorite spot to go to in New York City.
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