Madison Cunningham Looks Inward With Latest Album ‘Ace’

All photography by Sean Stout

An Ace playing card is dialectical. It holds the highest value in a game of Hearts and the lowest in Cribbage. It can also swing to either side of the pendulum during Blackjack. 

In crafting her latest album “Ace,” Madison Cunningham embraced this duality, allowing her emotions to take the lead. 

Cunningham is a 29-year-old folk-rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. She secured the 2023 Grammy for Best Folk Album for her sophomore project “Revealer” and has collaborated with many other talented artists, including Remi Wolf, Lucy Dacus and Andrew Bird. 

She has a knack for poetic, intimate songwriting and dreamy vocals. 

Cunningham leans into soft contemplation on “Ace,” often trading her signature guitar for the piano. It was a slower process and study of the unraveling of a long-term relationship and what comes after.

“When making ‘Revealer,’ I was making big leaps and making ‘Ace’ felt like steady motion forward,” said Cunningham. 

She performed selections from her new album at the Bluebird Theater in Denver on Jan. 17. She sat at an upright piano, bathed in glowing blue lights. Cattails, vines and boulders were scattered across the stage to create a calming natural landscape. 

“Ace” evolved from Cunningham’s divorce from her husband of five years. What followed was a period of professional burnout and personal heartbreak. The project features abstract, intricate compositions reflecting on equal parts guilt and pain and the re-centering required to enter a new phase of life.

“‘Ace’ is, it feels like the veil between my heart and love for life was a lot thinner than it was in previous works,” she said. “I think the major difference I can see was that the earlier records were observing grief, and ‘Ace’ was experiencing it for myself.”

Cunningham explained that the writing process for this album was slower. As she allowed herself to be more vulnerable, the music flowed. 

“It was easier to write once those first few songs were written, but it was definitely a year of picking up the pieces,” she said.

Cunningham abandoned her dizzying synths on “Revealer” in favor of orchestral pop on “Ace.” She followed the natural progression of her songwriting and tried not to judge where it led. 

“It felt like the things I was too afraid to say or to make previously,” she said. “I was too attached to an idea of a sound as opposed to an actual outpouring of emotion.”

Her song “Beyond That Moon” took the longest time to complete. The track explores the need to escape a fracturing relationship. 

“While you bury your head/ I can feel your heart closing,” she sings.

She started the first verse in March of 2024 and finished the song in September. Sometimes clarity can only come with time. 

“ I had the seed of emotion and the chords and kind of knew where I wanted it to go, but I just couldn’t fully put my full weight onto it or something,” she said. “I couldn’t complete that puzzle.”

The finished composition begins as an aching, dissonant lullaby and soars into a sorrow confession with expressive horns. 

“Right on time/ But you were so untrue/ And your heart/ That steep incline/ Is not a mountain I can move,” she sings.  

Cunningham crafts intimate yet relatable stories for listeners who have experienced similar feelings of heartbreak to resonate with. 

“ Human beings can do hard things, and sometimes, in the most devastating part of it, there’s the most beauty and the most revelation,” she said. 

“Ace” is full of contradictions, flowing from general concepts to intimate emotion. Cunningham sits in the liminal space, even when it’s uncomfortable.  

“I like to keep everything in my life in conversation with itself, which means that there are no hard and fast rules. I think that is what duality is, learning that there’s going to be conflicting parts within yourself. That doesn’t mean that you’re dishonest — it just means that you have to constantly reevaluate and adjust to the shifting ground underneath your feet,” she said. “I don’t think I always live inside [the liminality] very gracefully, but I try. I also acknowledge that it’s not always going to be a very flattering process, but it’s important to embrace it.”

Cunningham’s latest project was a learning process. She realized that shaping hurt into art can create something invaluable. 

“I would never probably choose pain, but I would choose it again in order to get close to something that felt like it had that much insight,” she said. “I learned how beautiful breaking apart can actually be.” 

Cunningham’s North American leg of the “Ace” tour runs through April 11 with the final show at the Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul.

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