Madison Cunningham

“Pin It Down” is where Madison Cunningham first really clicked for me. The guitar does not simply accompany the song. It pushes against the vocal, interrupts the expected rhythm and makes the whole arrangement feel slightly unsettled without ever losing its shape. That tension is central to what I like about Cunningham as an artist. Born Madison Cunningham on October 14, 1996, in Escondido, California, and raised in Costa Mesa, she has developed into a songwriter whose music can sit comfortably beside folk and Americana while refusing to behave exactly as either genre expects. Her voice is clear and controlled, but it is the combination of that voice with her unusually personal guitar language that gives her music its identity.

Cunningham started playing guitar young and performed music in church, where her father was a pastor. Her early musical world was therefore quite different from the artists who later changed the way she thought about songwriting. As she grew older, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Jeff Buckley, Fiona Apple and others opened up new possibilities in melody, harmony and structure. Mitchell in particular helped Cunningham see how alternate tunings could create chord shapes that would be difficult or impossible to reach through conventional guitar playing, while she has also named Ry Cooder, Jon Brion and Juana Molina among important guitar influences. What matters to me is that these references are audible without making Cunningham sound like a collection of borrowed ideas. She has taken the freedom of those musicians and developed something more angular and rhythmically restless of her own.

Finding Her Own Guitar Language

Her 2019 Verve Forecast album Who Are You Now was an important breakthrough. It earned a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album, but I think the more interesting achievement is how clearly it established Cunningham’s musical personality. “Pin It Down” is a perfect example. The song feels tightly constructed, yet the guitar accents constantly make me question where the next emphasis will fall. Her vocal stays composed above that movement, creating a fascinating contrast between a melody that feels approachable and an accompaniment that keeps shifting underneath it.

That guitar playing deserves attention because Cunningham does not use complexity simply to demonstrate technique. She works extensively with alternate and lowered tunings, often on electric guitar, and the resulting voicings have unusual gaps, overlaps and resonances. On “Something to Believe In,” also from Who Are You Now, I hear more space. The guitar is less aggressive and the vocal has room to stretch, making the song a useful reminder that Cunningham can be restrained when the material needs it. Her phrasing often has a slight hesitation before resolving a line, and repeated listening reveals how carefully those small pauses interact with the instrumental parts.

Who Are You Now is also a particularly enjoyable recording for me because its arrangements remain easy to separate even when several things are happening at once. On a transparent pair of speakers or headphones, the electric guitar has real texture rather than turning into a generic bright layer, while acoustic instruments and Cunningham’s voice retain their own positions. I would not call it an audiophile demonstration record in the usual sense, but it rewards a system with good midrange transparency and precise stereo imaging. The important detail is not spectacular bass or an enormous soundstage. It is being able to hear how one guitar phrase rubs against another part and then leaves a little pocket of space for the vocal.

Revealer

The bigger artistic step came with Revealer, released by Verve Forecast in September 2022. The album won the 2023 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album, but its value goes much further than the award. Cunningham sounds more willing here to let songs become awkward, exposed and unpredictable. The melodies remain strong, yet the structures and instrumental parts feel less interested in reassuring the listener. I hear an artist becoming more confident in the very things that make her difficult to categorise.

“Hospital” is one of the clearest examples. The guitar figure is immediately recognisable, but it never settles into the comfortable role of a repeating folk-rock pattern. The rhythm has a nervous energy, while Cunningham’s vocal remains remarkably measured. That contrast gives the song its character for me. There is plenty happening in the arrangement, but the recording avoids becoming congested, and on a revealing system the small changes in guitar attack and vocal intensity become part of the emotional movement rather than just production detail.

“Life According to Raechel” shows another side of Revealer. Cunningham wrote the song in response to the death of her grandmother, and the performance is much less concerned with instrumental cleverness. Her voice carries the song, supported rather than challenged by the arrangement. I value it because it proves that the unusual guitar work is not the foundation of everything she does. She can remove much of that complexity and still sound unmistakably herself through the shape of a melody and the way she controls a phrase.

Between Who Are You Now and Revealer, Cunningham also released the Wednesday project, interpreting songs associated with Tom Waits, John Mayer, The Beatles and Radiohead, with later additions including Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright material. Hearing her work with existing songs is useful because it exposes her instincts as an interpreter. She rarely treats a familiar composition as something that must be preserved exactly. Instead she changes the weight of chords, alters the instrumental perspective and makes the vocal line fit her own sense of timing. It is another indication that arrangement is not decoration in her music. It is part of the songwriting process itself.

From Revealer to Ace

Her development did not stop with the Grammy. In 2024 Cunningham released Cunningham Bird, a collaborative project with Andrew Bird built around Buckingham Nicks material, and in October 2025 she followed Revealer with Ace, her third studio album for Verve Forecast. Ace was co-produced by Cunningham with Robbie Lackritz and marked a noticeable shift in emphasis. Piano moves further forward, the emotional writing is more direct, and the album deals closely with the experience of a relationship ending and life being reconstructed afterwards. Most of its songs were written during August 2024 after a period in which Cunningham had struggled to write.

I find Ace particularly interesting because it does not simply repeat the guitar language that made earlier records successful. “My Full Name” still contains the harmonic turns I associate with Cunningham, but the writing feels more exposed and less interested in disguising emotion inside clever construction. “Wake,” featuring Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, brings intricate fingerpicked guitar back into focus, yet the collaboration remains understated. Their voices complement rather than compete with each other, and the arrangement leaves enough air around them for the individual textures to remain audible.

That willingness to move the centre of gravity is important. Cunningham could easily have built a career around being known as the exceptionally inventive guitarist who writes sophisticated folk songs. Instead, Ace suggests that she sees the guitar as one tool rather than her entire identity. I respect that because virtuosity can become a trap when listeners start waiting for the next unusual tuning or clever chord. Cunningham is at her best when I forget to analyse how difficult something might be and simply hear a song whose harmony, rhythm and words could not comfortably have been arranged another way.

For someone discovering Madison Cunningham, I would still begin with Who Are You Now, especially “Pin It Down,” because it introduces the balance of melodic accessibility and rhythmic curiosity that defines so much of her work. I would then move to Revealer, where that language becomes more confident and personal, before hearing how Ace expands the picture through piano, more direct writing and a different kind of emotional openness. Her Grammy recognition has helped establish her importance within contemporary American songwriting, but awards are not what make her distinctive to me. It is the way she can make an unusual chord, an unexpected rhythmic accent or a carefully delayed vocal phrase feel necessary rather than decorative. That sense of musical intention is ultimately what makes Madison Cunningham such a rewarding artist for me.

HiFi’ve, Ronald – Your EarFluencer