Avoiding the musician’s musician trap, Madison Cunningham’s newest album, Ace, uses creative expression as healing and claims her own emotions.
By Kayla Vianna
Ace took a different writing approach than her prior works. Cunningham tells us that previous records had “simulation and observation in other people’s life events.” The new album shifts perspective: from living it through other people vicariously to understanding deep emotions on her own. She highlights how heartaches are experienced rather than observed
The first single from this album, “My Full Name,” challenges her preconceived aesthetics. Associated with guitar and instrumentation, Cunningham sought to assert herself melodically with a piano track. The second single, “Wake,” is a two-way heartbreak exchange featuring Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold as the countermelody. Tracks not yet released include “Beyond that Moon,” “Golden Gate,” and “Take 2.”
Exposing your deepest emotions to the world isn’t as easy it seems. Cunningham shares that she foresaw a great change in her artistry, yet a “real possibility of losing touch with everything” haunted her. After a year-long writer’s block, all the songs came pouring in just two months — some lyrics first. She notes that her process differed dramatically from other records. Prior, her work took over a year to write, and the music always came before the lyrics. The method behind Ace, she tells us, practicing therapy and processing emotions, what she called “the event that changed my life.”
Anger calcified the album into existence. Cunningham explains that “anger is a beautiful illuminator for the things we’re actually trying to say, that we don’t know how to say because we don’t know how to locate them.” Shame stood as her greatest obstacle during that year-long block, and she found that the anger of beating herself down tore down that shame.
The album’s imagery heavily models itself after birds and the metaphors they represent, specifically swans. Regarding the cover art, she notes that they had other plans initially but the picture, once taken, changed that — Cunningham looking back with no determined emotion, her body bird and ballet-like. During the press conference, she tells us that the picture serves as a mood ring; it fits every song’s expression whether angry or melancholy.
Madison Cunningham’s ‘Ace’ will be released on October 10th via Verve Forecast Records.
Leave a Reply