Madison Cunningham

Songwriters on Process

"When you have a regimen, it's ok to let up on yourself. Because you know that tomorrow, you'll be doing it again."
Madison Cunningham firmly believes in the writer's regimen. You have to put in the work every day. None of this "waiting for inspiration" stuff. "Words on a page every day, even if it's not songwriting," she says. So she starts each day by writing for ten minutes because everyone can make time for ten minutes. No excuses.
Cunningham also reads voraciously. "Books are one of my favorite wells to draw from," she says in this episode. She draws inspiration from iconic writers like Mary Oliver, Sylvia Plath, Flannery O'Connor, and Kurt Vonnegut. But books are not her only source of inspiration: dishes are too. Cunningham is yet another in the line of songwriters I've interviewed who gets song ideas while washing dishes. "Every time I've put down the guitar and picked up a dish, I've never regretted it," she says.
Of course, it's not that the act of scrubbing food that gives us song ideas; instead, writing happens subconsciously. Writers of any stripe need to understand that the writing process happens when we're eating, sleeping, walking, talking, sitting, staring, whatever--even doing dishes, because the mundane activities allow our minds to wander.
Cunningham is a two-time Grammy nominee (2019, 2022). Her third and latest album is Revealer.