Essentials: The Top 10 Madi Diaz Songs

Madi Diaz has always known she wanted to be a musician. Growing up in a Quaker household in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, her parents rejected a mainstream education for her and her brother, instead home schooling them, with Diaz learning guitar and piano at a young age and spending her high school years “playing the Dixie Chicks on the lawn” for the entertainment of friends. This passion for music led her to studying at the Berklee College of Music in Boston in the early-00s and, at the same time, travelling back and forward from New York to play gigs. Somewhat inevitably, Music City called to her and she finally went to Nashville in 2008, where she then signed her first record deal and started releasing music.

But despite her professional career spanning almost 20 years, in some way it feels like she only really hit her stride with the release of 2021’s History of a Feeling. The raw and deeply personal album is clear in vision, the hints of experimentation with a poppier, more electronic sound banished as she delivers instead an album that’s as fine an example of Americana as can be. She’s released another two albums since then – 2024’s Weird Faith and 2025’s Fatal Optimist – and was even set to do her first headline UK tour earlier this year, but sadly the majority of the dates were cancelled due to low ticket sales. Still, here is my roundup of what I believe are 10 of her most quintessential tracks, and they might even win over some new listeners and help boost future ticket sales.

Number 10: Worst Case Scenario from Weird Faith (2024)
One of Diaz’s greatest gifts is to pen lyrics that feel both conversational and confessional at the same time; the sort of chat you could realistically envisage overhearing at a coffee shop, but still, could have been ripped straight from a page of a diary after a session with a therapist. “I’m talking to your sister in a parking lot / I tell her that I miss her, I know that’s a lot / Then we talk around in circles ’til I find a way to bring you up / Then I’m crying to your sister in some random parking lot,” she opens directly and simply, but incredibly impactfully, but it’s the bait and switch that comes next that really hits the hardest: “Okay, so that hasn’t happened / It’s preventative to imagine / They say nothing ever goes the way you think it’s gonna go / So I’m gonna think of the worst-case scenario”.

Number 9: If Time Does What It’s Supposed To from Fatal Optimist (2025)
The notion of never getting over a past relationship is a well used one as far as song tropes go, but as with most things Diaz does, she executes it in her own particular way with her own brand of fire and heartache and produces the sort of song that only she can. “If time does what it’s supposed to / Then I won’t need to love you anymore / And I’ll finally see the sky for all its blue / I’ll remember what the clock is ticking for,” she laments on the chorus of the song she penned alongside Aaron Raitiere, accompanied by nothing but an acoustic guitar and some soft harmonies, her vulnerability completely exposed, just like the fresh wound of her heartbreak.

Number 8: Same Risk from Weird Faith (2024)
Candid, sharp and unflinching, “What the fuck do you want? / ‘Cause I’ll give you all that I’ve got / I’ll let you clean out my closet / I’ll let you try on all of my dirty thoughts”, are surely the greatest opening lines Diaz has sung in her career so far. This is a woman who is done with the games played early in a young relationship, a woman who knows what she’s about and is done with wasting anymore time pretending. “Do you think this could ruin your life? / ‘Cause I could see it ruinin’ mine”, she asks a prospective partner on the chorus as she wonders “Are we taking the same risk?”, but the honesty comes to a real head on the bridge: “’Cause I’m standin’ here naked / Sayin’ you could have it all / It’s all out on the table / And I’m feelin’ unstable / Will you catch me if I fall?”

Number 7: Ashes from Phantom (2014)
“Don’t, don’t you let me down / Fall, fall to the battleground / No, I won’t stand to keep watching you stay / Go, soon, the sun will be turning away”, Diaz opens, surprisingly urging a partner to leave instead of fighting to keep them. With its haunting synths, Ashes definitely stands out when contrasted with Diaz’s post-pandemic work, but her impressive vocals and clever lyrical prowess are all there as she tells a lover to go and let the relationship go back to the nothing it once was, or rather “Ashes to ashes”.

Number 6: Burn from We Threw Our Hearts in the Fire (2012)
In 2023, when Diaz was recruited to be part of Harry Styles’s band, she got a chance to also perform as an opening act for the pop superstar, and this was a song she decided to include in her short showcase. It stood out as an outlier alongside the other post-2021 material on the setlist, but it’s clear to see why she chose it. The building, throbbing new wave thrum may feel different on the surface to a lot of what she released more recently, but it showcases a brand of intensity that remains unique to her to this day as she summons for love to “Come out, come out wherever you are”.

Number 5: Don’t Do Me Good (feat. Kacey Musgraves) from Weird Faith (2024)
Getting Grammy-winning, mainstream country crossover Kacey Musgraves to feature on the first single from Diaz’s 2024 album wasn’t just some canny publicity stunt, because with Musgraves coming off an album that chronicled her divorce, it really worked to add an extra layer to the song to hear her sing the lines, “Without the make-believe, the “what will be” will be / What gives me the right to keep dreamin’? / Without the dark, maybe there will be no stars / Just broken floating parts for us to believe in”. The original demo of the song, with Diaz only vocals, can be heard on the deluxe version of Weird Faith, but it lacks the extra sense of melancholy provided by the finished product.

Number 4:  God Person from Weird Faith (2024)
There are a lot of songs out there about God, the large majority of them either being very pro or strictly against, but God Person, written with Jordyn Shellhart and Michael J. Ade, finds Diaz taking a more nuanced approach towards the whole religion thing as she sits at the back of a church to try and discover what the other parishioners might find in God. “They sing their songs closin’ their eyes / Seein’ the light in a different light / How does that happen? Why is it beautiful?” she puzzles before coming to a beautifully profound realisation on the chorus: “I’m not a God person, but I’m never not searchin’ / Lookin’ at the sky, starin’ at the ocean / If there’s somethin’ to know, then I want to know it / I want to hold it, I want to feel it / And maybe I can’t say that I’m not a God person”.

Number 3: For Months Now (III) (feat. Lizzy McAlpine) from Weird Faith [Deluxe Edition] (2024)
Breakups aren’t always sudden, in fact if For Months Now is anything to go by, they can be so slow and gradual that they’re more akin to the boiling frog apologue than ripping off a plaster. “That night you left me with your friends / I left you, a little bit then / It happens again and again, have you noticed?” Diaz asks, her shame hanging heavy when she admits on the chorus that she’s been “Keepin’ a secret” that she’s “not proud” of as she’s been secretly leaving “for months now”. Co-written alongside Jamie Floyd and Wrabel, a rough demo version of the track, still with Diaz on lead, was originally released as part of the trios’ side project, The Three of Us, in 2019, and for the deluxe release of Weird Faith, Diaz also recorded another version featuring Lizzie McAlpine, her fragile vocals giving extra heft to the all-pervading heavy feeling of guilt.

Number 2: Resentment from History of a Feeling (2021)
Resentment holds the unusual distinction of being the only song on this list not originally released by Diaz; written by her, with her The Three of Us bandmates and popstar Kesha Sebert, it was Sebert who got a headstart on Diaz when she released the song as a single in late 2019. Sebert surely gained herself some Americana brownie points by including Sturgill Simpson on harmonies alongside Brian Wilson and Wrabel, but her take on it still lacks the intimacy provided by Diaz’s own release in 2021. “I don’t hate you, babe, it’s worse than that / ‘Cause you hurt me and I don’t react / I’ve been building up this thing for months / Oh, resentment”, she sings on the chorus, her voice wavering and rising in a way that makes every word hurt that much more.

Number 1: Crying in Public from History of a Feeling (2021)
Another collaboration with Wrabel and Jamie Floyd, Crying in Public takes all the best elements of Diaz as an artist and distils them into a perfect four minutes. “I could be sittin’ on the M train goin’ back to Brooklyn / I could be crossin’ a street somewhere and not lookin’ / I could be drunk at a party, laughin’ out loud / I could be anywhere / I could be right here, right now”, she admits with a casual familiarity, knowing that grief – be it over the end a relationship or otherwise – rarely picks a convenient time to attack. “I don’t wanna be cryin’ in public / But here I am cryin’ in public”, she exclaims with barely concealed rage leaking from every pore on the chorus, but it might just be the hard-gained acceptance that hurts more: “Even on the days where I think it’ll miss me / Like it or not, it’s still gonna hit me / Oh, even on the days where I pray it’ll miss me / Like it or not, it’ll never be easy”.