Following her debut album Who You Are Now  – which earned the singer-songwriter a Grammy nomination – Madison Cunningham paid homage to the artists that shaped her own music via the release of her cover EP Wednesday. For her latest studio album, Revealer, Cunningham returns to her own creative base, drawing  inspiration from intimate and familiar subjects, including conversations with friends and family. Working with producers Mike Elizondo, Tyler Chester, and Tucker Martine (the producer behind Alela Diane’s Looking Glass), this album features Cunningham’s signature staccato guitar playing, evocative and panoramic lyricisms, and a voice that soars to an altitude much higher than her years. Recorded after the unexpected death of her grandmother, Revealer is less a coming of age album and more of a recognition of sentiments that have always existed. Joining smART Magazine from Los Angeles, Cunningham brings us into the realm of her budding discography, her gratitude for family, growing up in a household of five sisters, and balancing that with a tour van filled to the brim with bandmates.

sM | So many of your fans first heard your voice on the album Wednesday. How have some of the artists you cover in this album helped craft your style, and the type of sound that you want to create?

MC ─ All of the songs on Wednesday were chosen carefully for a couple different reasons. It was such a weird time to release music because I was covering all these songs in the middle of a pandemic. It felt like it was so easy to release something that was not in tune with the times. What blew my mind about all these songs is that they were written 10 to 20 to 30 years ago, yet they were all saying what couldn't be said for the very specific moment we were in. It was a perfect example of a timeless batch of songs. From Jeff Buckley to John Mayer, Rufus Wainwright, and The Beatles, all of those artists have shaped me consciously and subconsciously. It was like all of my favourite things in one package.

Some of it is a little bit more guitar-centric and some of it's more about the melody, but all of it is just the best that songwriting could possibly get. It translates into the way that I write myself because they are these living standards of what I would hope that my music would be. It’s what I'm always subconsciously measuring myself against.