Madison Cunningham

Depending on the game, an Ace can be the highest or lowest card, zero or infinity. A breakup feels similar—one path crumbles, while all others remain infinitely possible. How do you write about heartbreak when you’re going through it? Ace, Grammy award-winner Madison Cunningham’s third record for Verve Forecast, tracks every part of it: falling out of love, having your heart broken, and then falling in love again. It’s about betrayal and betraying yourself. It is a stunning record and some of Cunningham’s best songwriting to date. It showcases her at the height of her powers.

Ace had to simmer. It follows Revealer, a darkly funny portrait of an artist that won Cunningham her Grammy. Cunningham has long been an artist’s artist, having been working as a songwriter for over a decade. “Early on, I was advised against going to college and going straight to where the music was happening,” says Cunningham, “Instead, I learned by listening and observing some of my favorite artists at work.” On Revealer, she cemented herself as not only a favorite musician of collaborators like John Mayer and Robin Pecknold, but also as a critically lauded artist with a deep fan base.

Ace builds off of the success of Revealer, but itis a different record. A slow burn until it wasn’t. It follows a period of writer’s block. Of not knowing how to quite put feelings into words. And the way to put feelings into words was to wait. On Revealer and her debut album Who Are You Now, Cunningham says that she was writing songs about heartbreak, but they weren’t about her heartbreak. They were sketches, observations. Cunningham wanted Ace to be emotions first. Heartbreaking and lush and bold. She wanted it to be candid but to also maintain autonomy over her story, for it to always feel like it belonged to her and no one else. It felt scary to write music like that, almost impossible. And it took months for it to click. But then it did. “I shattered and became a new shape,” she says. She moved apartments. The summer was ending. She sat down and writing suddenly felt easy again. She wrote almost every song on Ace in the month of August, 2024.

Each song on Ace is a direct address. It is non linear, but it does have a clear beginning and end, as breakups do. “You think you’re on the verge of true healing but something scares you,” she says, “And you have to start all over.” So the songs are love letters and goodbyes. They ask questions that are impossible to answer. “How do I forgive myself, liberate myself, love myself?” Cunningham shares. It is fitting that one of those songs is called “My Full Name.” It is one of the first songs she wrote for the record, initially written for someone Cunningham was falling in love with. But then it morphed. It became its own little world. “I love it when you say my full name,” sings Cunningham in the song’s opening moments. Then the lyrics grow more impressionistic. Water leaks are compared to the city Berlin. Images of wildflowers and a plane crash. The composition is sparse: it’s Cunningham and her piano. Woodwinds and soft brushes of percussion.

Cunningham rose to fame as a songwriter and a guitarist. She’s collaborated as a guitarist and as a vocalist with countless artists: Lucy Dacus, Remi Wolf, Mumford & Sons, and Andrew Bird, among others. Her guitar is perhaps what she is best known for. On Ace, which Cunningham serves as co-producer,she wanted to ever so slightly move away from that notion. Sonically, the piano is in the foreground. And Cunningham’s piano playing here is beautiful. Look no further than opener “Shatter Into Form,” and how it unspools so gently into “Shore.” The piano here is soft and searching. It feels like swimming in the sea in August. Like looking out the window of a train in June. “Nervous girl / In the third person / How words escape her,” sings Cunningham. It’s a line that is as playful as it is reflective. All of it swirls together, creating a stunningly intimate portrait of a woman growing and rebuilding.

The record also features a collaboration from Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, who lends his vocals to “Wake.” Pecknold sings alongside Cunningham, as she plays intricate finger picked guitar. Her bandmates are musicians she has worked with for years, and they help sharpen her vision. They follow her lead with upright bass and stomps. It is wooly and warm. “Wake,” like the rest of Ace, is anensemble effort, produced alongside Robbie Lackritz (Feist, Rilo Kiley, Bahamas, Peach Pit). “She’s a force of nature,” says Lackritz of their collaboration, “An unreal musical talent. When we worked, we would work all day. We would start a song and finish it that evening. We fueled off of each other’s energy. It felt like a snowball of energy and creativity.”

“I wanted it to feel like a mountain peak,” says Cunningham, “I wanted Ace to feel like a mountain we built together.” “Best of Us,” Ace’s final track, might be the summit. It is some of Cunningham’s most exciting writing, her most poetic wordplay. “The kingdom has fallen,” she sings, “two bedroom apartment / holding up the broken arm.” Ace is a record that feels alive and lush in all the ways Cunningham hoped for when she started writing. It is a record of mastery and honesty. Cunningham loves every single song on it. You can tell.

Ken Pomeroy will break your heart. She’ll do it with a single line––sometimes, just one word. The pain begins as an empathetic ache. Then, as Pomeroy sings her stories, you begin to see yourself in her hurt and hope. And you realize: We’re in this together.

Pomeroy’s outstretched hand to the wounded manifests as startlingly good songs. Her soprano is comforting––almost sweet––but perhaps most powerful delivering a devastating line. A deft guitarist, she opts for beds of rootsy strings that can soothe or haunt. But it’s her writing that really shines and stings. “Writing was and is the only way I can fully express an emotion and feel like I got it out,” she says. “I feel like once I get it out into a song, I don’t have to worry about it anymore. If it’s a traumatic thing that happened, I kind of act as if it’s gone.” Pomeroy creates a wild but safe space of her own––a space that, like 22-year-old Pomeroy herself, is brutally honest, proudly Native American, and undeniably brilliant.

People have noticed. Pomeroy’s “Wall of Death” made its way onto the Twisters soundtrack, while Hulu’s Reservation Dogs featured her soul-mining gem, “Cicadas.” Tour dates with Lukas Nelson, Iron & Wine, American Aquarium, John Moreland, Kaitlin Butts, and more followed. “A lot of really cool things are happening, but it hasn’t set in. I haven’t had time to bask in it,” Pomeroy says. “Even when I started playing music, I never thought, ‘I’m a musician. I chose this life.’ I feel like something way above me pointed at me and said, ‘Okay, here’s your path.’ And I’ve just been following it kind of blindly ever since.”

Raised in Moore, Oklahoma, Pomeroy is Cherokee. Her mamaw gave her the name ᎤᏍᏗ ᏀᏯ ᏓᎶᏂᎨ ᎤᏍᏗᎦ, which means “Little Wolf with Yellow Hair.” Pomeroy started writing songs at 11 years old. She remembers why––and in signature Pomeroy fashion, it’s somehow disorienting and charming, all at once. “I think I wanted to be a songwriter because of John Denver,” she says. “I heard ‘Jet Plane” when I was like 6, and I became infatuated with it. My stepmom burned a CD of just that song playing 18 times in a row, and I listened to that for years. That type of music was new to me. I didn’t know you could feel a certain way listening to music. And ever since then, I’ve wanted to do that for other people.”

Pomeroy weaves patterns of self-reflection and self-realization into her writing. “Coyote,” featuring fellow Oklahoma songwriting stalwart John Moreland, is a vulnerable admission that sometimes, she has herself to blame. In Native stories, a coyote can be a troubling omen––and one with which Pomeroy often identifies. The vignettes serve as a moving example of embracing tradition, extending it, and making it personal. “Growing up Native, there are a lot of signs and works that include animals. Most every tale includes an animal somehow,” Pomeroy says. “I think that was just subconsciously ingrained in me.”

That’s the entire point for Pomeroy––and why she’ll keep writing. She is chasing that sublime satisfaction that only comes with capturing a moment or a feeling that otherwise is gone forever. “I want people to hear my songs and think, ‘Wow, I went through something similar, or this line reminds me of something that happened in my life. Someone else feels it, and I’m not alone.’” Pomeroy sighs. “That’s what I want: People not feeling alone.”