Madi Diaz: Five Essential Albums
Madi Diaz (photo by Muriel Margaret, PR)
With her latest album, Weird Faith, Nashville's Madi Diaz circles around the dynamics of romance, and the highs and lows of a love affair. The prolific songwriter, who has toured with Harry Styles (while playing in his band too), Angel Olsen and Waxahatchee, could count her own career as labyrinthine and unpredictable as the course of true love. She writes with bruised honesty, in uninhibited confessions of what it means to be alive, and what it means to hurt.
Weird Faith, her sixth album, is garnering Diaz a rapturous reception from critics and devoted fans alike, struck by the beauty and lyrical candor of songs like the prickly pop of "Everything Almost" and the brooding "Don't Do Me Good," a duet with Kacey Musgraves.
Diaz is currently on her own headlining tour of the States and then supports Musgraves in Europe and the UK in April and May. Intrigued by what makes a gifted and prolific songwriter like Diaz tick — and as part of this month's "Women We Love" focus — we asked her if she'd write about her "Five Essential Albums" for FUV:
Patty Griffin, Living With Ghosts
This record perfectly illustrates to me how much you can do with so little. I listen to it to remind myself that all you really need is an amazing song and an amazing singer.
blink-182, Enema of the State
There is just so much joy in this record and so much great pop songwriting. It’s playful, it's free, it's nostalgic, it feels so rooted in growing pains and wrestling with wanting to be a lil punk forever while simultaneously diving deeper into human heart stuff.
Bonnie Raitt, Luck of the Draw
Raw and feminine. Fed up and open hearted. This record is a giver. It’s soulfully commanding. It's sensual and each song is so well written, with such visceral storytelling, that combined with Bonnie Raitt's voice, is just transportive. It's like you’re sitting next to her and walking alongside her in every scene drawn from life.
Björk, Homogenic
This record feels like taking a vacation on another distant planet. Everything about this record was sonically unheard of and new to me. The way she stretches words and molds them like clay in her unique phrasing was just off the map entirely and is still so exciting to me every time I listen to it.
Interpol, Our Love To Admire and Turn On the Bright Lights
I know I know... I’m cheating. But both of these records to me are pure elation. I listen to them and I am immediately driving (faster than I mean to) down the highway; it feels like I’m on a jet runway, hurling myself into the clouds. But then some songs feel like I can’t get off this crusty leather couch that smells like cigarettes and in hazy blue light and I don’t care and I actually love it just like this.
- Madi Diaz
March 2024
