Madi Diaz
Weird Faith
ANTI-
ABOVE THE CURRENT
After completing her first solo tour since 2014, collaborating with Angel Olsen and Waxahatchee, and opening for Harry Styles, Madi Diaz is back and stronger than ever. On Weird Faith, she explores her growth since her previous album, 2021’s History of a Feeling, wherein she wrestled with loneliness and heartache. She presents herself in a new relationship here, and despite this new phase of her life, she doesn’t just write love songs but more broadly focuses on specific thoughts and emotions that arise from being in love. There’s so much simplicity to her tone, which juxtaposes perfectly with her brilliant aptitude for complex feelings and intricate storytelling. Even leading up to the album, she hooked the audience with early singles (including the Kacey Musgraves collaboration “Don’t Do Me Good”) as she sang about her anxieties and excitements swirling around a new relationship. Just because something feels incredible doesn’t mean it can’t also be scary.
A major standout on Weird Faith is “Girlfriend,” a ballad uniquely written to address her new boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend. She captures all the feelings that come up when interacting with your partner’s ex—that awkwardness and insecurity that comes with observing their most attractive qualities—as you try to make your love more obvious to show them that your partner has moved on. “Yeah I know I wouldn’t want me to be my ex boyfriend’s new girlfriend,” she sings hauntingly, “So, sorry I’m your ex’s girlfriend.” That last line sums up the whole song: There’s guilt for the uncomfortable situation and there’s empathy for being a former partner—and there’s also a bit of sarcasm to express confidence.
Similarly, on “Get to Know Me” Diaz writes about what it feels like to expose yourself completely to your partner as she considers the fear it brings her to show all of her quirks and insecurities. “How well do you wanna get to know me?” she queries on the track in hopes of figuring out just how emotionally intimate she can be with her partner. In the same way, she sums up all of her anxiety on closer “Obsessive Thoughts,” where she takes you down her mental rabbit hole—all of her questions and insecurities come out, further exemplifying the complexity of her songwriting.
Weird Faith is a wonderful album that picks up where History of a Feeling left off as Madi Diaz’s story continues. It’s not a concept album about breakups, nor is it a narrative about love in a more binary sense, where it’s wholly good or wholly bad. These emotions exist on a spectrum, and Diaz captures the duality of both positive and negative feelings that materialize even when things are at their best. Her songs have long been about these internal reflections on her life and personal growth—on Weird Faith, they just happens to include a love story.
