Madison Cunningham
On Madison Cunningham’s third studio album Ace, out October 10 via Verve Forecast, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter trades her signature guitar lines for piano chords, swapping fretwork for a kind of emotional open-heart surgery.
Depending on the game, an ace can be the highest card in the deck — or the lowest. For Cunningham, it’s both. Ace is the sound of a breakup unfolding in real time: falling out of love, having your heart broken, betraying yourself, and then — maybe — letting someone in again. It’s grief and renewal in the same hand, played with fearless precision.
The lead single, My Full Name, is Cunningham at her most exposed. Backed by a lush, unhurried piano arrangement, she sings, “Love’s a kind of sorrow worth saving,” turning a goodbye into something almost sacred. The track isn’t just a stylistic departure — it’s a statement that Ace won’t hide behind guitar heroics, even though Cunningham’s long been known as one of the sharpest players in the business. She says she wanted to lead with her emotions and follow whatever path they showed her. She says, “Sometimes you think you’re on the verge of healing, but something scares you — and you have to start all over.”
Fresh off touring with Mumford & Sons on their Railroad Revival run, Cunningham returned home with a hunger to make something riskier. She co-produced the record with Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Bahamas, Rilo Kiley, Peach Pit), building 14 tracks that stretch from the intimate to the cinematic. Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold guests on “Wake,” a slow-burning duet he calls “a force and an inspiration” to record.
The album’s sequencing itself tells a story: opening with “Shatter Into Form,” detouring through shadowy tracks like “Skeletree” and “Invisible Chalk,” and closing with the reflective “Best of Us.” It’s a journey through loss, reckoning, and, finally, a fragile kind of hope.
Since her 2019 debut Who Are You Now, Cunningham has been carving out a lane all her own — somewhere between Laurel Canyon classicism and modern indie folk. Her follow-up, 2022’s Revealer, earned a Grammy for Best Folk Album and cemented her rep as an artist’s artist, praised by Hozier as “one of the most talented creative forces of our generation.” She’s backed up Lucy Dacus, Remi Wolf, Mumford & Sons, Lucius, and Andrew Bird, all while building a solo career rooted in emotional clarity and instrumental mastery. But Ace feels like the first time she’s putting the risk at the center of the equation.
Cunningham is clear-eyed about the gamble. She’s making a record about heartbreak while still feeling its sting — a dangerous, sometimes messy creative choice that could backfire in less capable hands. But Ace doesn’t sound like someone hedging their bets. It sounds like someone going all in.
And if she’s right, this hand could be the one that changes the whole game.
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