Madi Diaz was sure she’d do something eventually with the blue toilet, sink and bathtub that now sit idle in her driveway.
“I bought them off Facebook Marketplace at 1 a.m. in a van somewhere in Montana, I think,” the singer and songwriter said, seated at a picnic table in her yard wearing a white tank top and jeans on a muggy, late-summer day. Or maybe it was Ireland while touring with Kacey Musgraves, or Italy while playing as a member of Harry Styles’s band? The past few years have been such a blur, but she had every intention of installing the pieces at her cream-colored cottage when things settled down. Because in Diaz’s world, there’s always a vision, even if it doesn’t work out.
The Nashville-based musician has been trying to make this house a home, though it hasn’t been easy: Between her relentless touring schedule and writing songs for her new album, “Fatal Optimist” (out Friday), she’s barely been here long enough to take care of her lawn. “I’ll probably power wash this house and stay forever,” Diaz said, sipping coffee from a ceramic mug made by her mother. “Make it look a bit less like a haunted woman lives here.”
Diaz hasn’t always been this sure that her roots belong in Nashville, but for well over a decade the city has embraced her as a vital, connective force, managing to thread the needle between the country and pop worlds without really belonging to either. Her vocals have appeared on songs by Musgraves, Miranda Lambert and Charlie Worsham, her songs cut by Maren Morris and Kesha, praised for their emotional qualities. She’s toured with Waxahatchee, My Morning Jacket and Little Big Town, and her 2024 album, “Weird Faith,” was nominated for two Grammys.
“Madi has one of my favorite voices in this world, but it’s matched equally by her pen game,” Morris said, praising her “brilliant poetic lens.”
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