Ahead of her performances as part of C2C, we caught up with Madeline Edwards in London to discuss her debut album, the evolution of her sound, being part of C2C and more. Stream her debut album here now.
Your debut album was extraordinary. I remember from the first lines it really captured me, when you spoke about ‘Cars like spaceships, flyin’ down the highway / People underneath, treated like strays.’ We don’t often hear people talking like that in country songs, yet alone music generally, so you saying that in the first line was just mesmerizing. Can you talk a little bit about that song and what it meant to you?
Of course, so not to get too personal off the bat, that song when I first wrote it, it was supposed to talk about division and how that makes us feel alone and all of us feeling alienated anyway. It was kind of ironic because, after that album came out, my brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He has had a very hard time finding communities to be a part of. It’s been the most difficult thing. He has chosen homelessness, and now the song has taken on even more new meanings, because it’s now my responsibility, as a sister – how do I care for my brother as best as I can? Now, I’m seeing the government in America doesn’t really support people with mental illness and most of the people out on the streets, that are struggling with homelessness – about 80% of them have a mental illness. That line, in particular, has taken on an even greater new meaning, because I pass cars all the time – brand new Teslas and the like – and how many of those people’s times are taken up thinking about this, and I’m not pointing any fingers, I’m guilty of it as well.
Well, it’s an extraordinary song. There’s so much pain there, but sonically it feels very empowered. Was that a conscious decision?
Yes, it definitely was. There’s a lot of songs on the album that have a lot of hurt behind them, I mean I can’t write without putting pain in it – that’s probably why my voice is so soulful, and why the music is so soulful. It will always have that thread in it and that’s mostly because I’ve just been through a lot of s**t. I can’t not be honest about that. I don’t mind telling anyone about the stuff that I’ve been through in my life.
I think there’s been a movement in music generally, over the past few years, to be more honest. It’s not just love songs any more, there’s less fear to talk about deeper issues and that’s the throughline that came through in the record.
I have a theory on that. So, I completely agree with you and I think that’s why we’re now seeing artists like Billie Eilish, Phoebe Bridgers and Noel Kahn who are talking about these really painstaking issues, whether it’s in their own personal lives or whatever. I think post-COVID, we were all in such survival mode that it was just ‘give me the party music, something to drown out this world event that’s happening’ and now that we’re two to three years past all of that, now it’s hitting us. Like what the f**k did we all just go through? Now, we’re all just having this delayed reaction to this really traumatic thing that we all went through and now we have a badge of honour to show for it and I don’t want to listen to another song about going to a bar and partying. I want to hear something that’s going to help me process this pain that we’re all going through.
It’s like in ‘Port City’ where you talk about needing to sink in order to swim… There’s so many influences in your music and I hate that we even feel the need to pigeon hole by genre, but can you talk about the evolution of your music to now be relating to the country genre. It’s been through a proper journey over the past several years.
It has, and you know because it sounds like you know my catalogues, but I started in jazz and then went into soul and RnB. I started writing in pop for a little bit, and now I’m in country and Americana. You hear all of that in the record, you hear rock on the record with ‘Spurs’ and even ‘Crashlanded’ has some rock elements.
I love that transition from ‘Crashlanded’ to ‘Spurs,’ feeling increasingly empowered.
It’s sonically and lyrically supposed to do that. I think ‘Crashlanded’ was supposed to tell the listener, right out of the gate, that we’re going to be really vulnerable on this record and then ‘Spurs’ was an encouragement to tell it like it is. I wanted the listener to hear that.
Obviously, this was the debut album, did you feel the weight of that behind you and how did that sit with you when you went in to write and record the songs?
There were a lot of songs that didn’t make the record that I wanted to. I’m a true believer in the record, I don’t like these 30+ song records. At the end of the day, you’re trying to tell a story – cover to cover, and sometimes that can get overindulgent. For an artist like me, because I’m newer in the country music space, if I put out a record like that, no one’s going to listen to it. I think 12 to 14 is the perfect number of songs to put out, everything that needs to be said can be said across those songs. That’s my theory. It also makes you more strategic about what you’re picking – there might be some songs that don’t make the record that you save for the next one.
You’re so open about the faith as well on the record, which is so refreshing – people don’t really share that any more. Again, was that a very conscious thing you wanted to share?
I don’t know what it’s like here in the UK, but the American church has a very bad reputation. I’ve been very burned by the church and Christian culture, multiple times and it keeps stinging. I wanted to talk about my faith, but I also wanted to show that the Christian culture can be different than what the media has portrayed it to be. A lot of church culture in the US is very homophobic, it’s very divisive and there’s a lot of judgement there. Jesus at the end of the day was about exclusivity, I believe that. I just wanted people to see a Christian that didn’t believe that and believed in how Jesus actually walked when he was here.
I was very conscious in listening to the record that you took listeners on an intentional journey – can you talk me through that process?
It took a few months, I took the order that I thought and then I’d run it past artists and people that I trusted, and then people would send back their notes. I don’t mind taking notes from people, I still want their opinion though it’s my decision at the end of the day. It would keep switching and it was a process, it had to be perfect because as much as the songs are a story, so is the album a story from front to back. I wanted to tell a story of my life, and someone else’s life that they can insert their story into.
I think one of my favourite songs on the record is ‘How Strong I Am,’ can you talk me through the evolution of that song?
Man, that one was a sneaky one. That song gets overshone a lot, because of ‘Mama, Dolly’ and ‘Spurs’… that song is kind of the theme of the record though, my belief system is that we have so many things in society distracting us from going through really dark sh*t, whether they know it or not, it’s just bypassing you from growth. It just gets deeper down inside of you, masking little traumas. The day I decided that the only out of this is through it, going to therapy, building a community and being honest with them, asking them to call me out. Now, I have this system set up where I go through the pain, I don’t do it perfectly but I always get better results when I go through that. It’s so simple.
It was so lovely to talk to you today.
