Madison Cunningham

Bringing a thoughtful and harmonically intricate style to her fusion of folk and pop, Madison Cunningham has carved out a distinctive voice as a singer and songwriter. Notice first arrived through her performances across Los Angeles in 2017, the same year she released her opening EP, Love, Lose, Remember. Building on her layered and occasionally jazz-tinged indie folk sound, her initial full-length album Who Are You Now reached listeners in 2019 and secured an early Grammy nomination. She later claimed the Best Folk Album Grammy for her widely praised second album Revealer in 2022, then joined Andrew Bird for the 2024 project Cunningham Bird, a tribute to the work of Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham.

Raised in Costa Mesa, California, Cunningham first encountered the guitar at age seven and spent her childhood harmonizing with her four sisters during church services led by her father, a worship pastor. As a teenager she began playing live shows regularly and composing original material, drawing influence from Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Jeff Buckley. In 2017 she tracked her debut EP Love, Lose, Remember alongside producer Tyler Chester, whose credits include Blake Mills and Sara Watkins, and followed it in early 2018 with the EP For the Sake of the Rhyme. These releases, combined with consistent Los Angeles appearances and opening slots alongside Punch Brothers, broadened her reach. She soon joined the Verve Forecast roster and took on a recurring role as a bandmember for the Chris Thile-hosted public radio program Live from Here.

A performance at the Newport Folk Festival set the stage for the August 2019 arrival of her Verve debut, the Chester-produced Who Are You Now, which earned a nomination for Best Americana Album at the 62nd Grammy Awards. The covers EP Wednesday appeared in 2020, showcasing Cunningham’s interpretive approach to material by Tom Waits, Radiohead, John Mayer, and others. An expanded edition of Wednesday landed in January 2022 and received a Grammy nomination for Best Folk Album. That July she issued her second full-length Revealer, shaped by an intimate group of producers that included longtime associate Tyler Chester along with Mike Elizondo and Tucker Martine. The album drew broad critical praise and captured the Grammy for Best Folk Album in early 2023.

Cunningham supplied vocals and guitar to Aurora, the soundtrack to the television series Daisy Jones and the Six, which chronicled a fictional 1970s pop-rock band. She also contributed to projects by several established artists, among them Watkins Family Hour Vol. 2 by the Watkins Family Hour in 2022, Joe Henry’s All The Eye Can See in 2023, Rufus Wainwright’s Folkocracy in 2023, and Jacob Collier’s Djesse, Vol. 4 in 2024, while issuing the 2023 single “Hospital (One Man Down)” recorded with Remi Wolf. In 2024 she embarked on a more ambitious partnership with Andrew Bird under the name Cunningham Bird, reinterpreting all ten tracks from Buckingham Nicks, the rare 1973 album Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks made two years before entering Fleetwood Mac. Their versions preserved the original melodies and rich harmonies while adopting a leaner approach to arrangement and production.