Madeline Edwards' debut album 'Crashlanded' navigates love, faith and success

Warner Music Nashville-signed performer Madeline Edwards has released her debut country album, "Crashlanded," but she's equally composed and concerned while sitting in the label's offices on a bright Wednesday afternoon.

Composed because she's finally on the top-tier career path she started as a 13-year-old jazz piano prodigy with aspirations to mirror the success achieved by Beyonce?.

Concerned because her life is more about the journey than the destination – there's always better, more significant work to do.

"It's super premature to be thinking about my next record, but of course, I'm sitting here already making those plans," Edwards says in an interview with The Tennessean. "I'm coming in hot, I know what I want, and I have to top what I've already put out there."

The "heat" associated with her rise has opened doors for 2022 highlights, including debuting at the Grand Ole Opry and appearing at Nissan Stadium during CMA Fest.

Edwards sees these moments as setting her up to be more than "a flash in the pan."

Though she achieved great success this year, her November-released "Crashlanded" is as much a debut album as a concept record that offers solace and a genuine sense of guidance to those who feel awkwardly out of place, like an alien on a foreign planet.

Edwards uses that imagery as a metaphor to contextualize her life before the album's release.

She grew up in a mixed household, with an African American father, a white Polish American mother, and an adopted sister. She lived between her mother's home in Fresno, California, and her father's in Houston. When her father was in the picture, it caused "abusive, heartbreaking situations," she recalls.

Her life today informs the lyrics of the album's title song: "Cars like spaceships, flying down the highway / People underneath treated like strays."

Edwards is a label-signed artist who is literally – at the time of the interview – sitting pretty on Music Row. She's also writing with the likes of Laura Veltz and Jimmy Robbins (Maren Morris' "The Bones), Dove and Grammy award winners Seth Mosely and Emily Weisband, plus hit songwriter Ross Copperman.

However, her hardscrabble youth makes her sensitive when driving from her tiny, rented Nashville home and seeing a million dollars worth of Teslas parked at a label's office before a writing session, while blocks away a homeless woman is begging to make ends meet to feed her family.

"My ability to – regardless of how I was raised or my circumstances in life – to both fail and succeed at always wanting to learn how to love people better every day" is how Edwards characterizes her art's most important lesson.

"Crashlanded" advances past her previous career personal highlights like "The Road" and "Other Father" (the latter about how her biological father "abused and abandoned her" and how "God took the place of that role in her life," as she told Genius) with singles like "Hold My Horses" and the current release, "Mama, Dolly, Jesus."

As well, current album cuts like "How Strong I Am," "Spurs" and "The Wolves" showcase her notion that she's addressing "difficult enemies and villains" in her life with undeniable vitriol.

"Try messing with me now," she says with a wry smile. "You're not going to like the outcome."

In particular, "Mama, Dolly, Jesus" is her most profound statement about the positive impact of her strong religiosity in her career rise. It's a "confident and self-explanatory" song that highlights that she "doesn't care about your opinion" if you're not the person who birthed her, an iconic Country Music Hall of Famer, or the man whose humility was so great that he gave his life to atone for the world's sins.

Even deeper, the song's music video adds a diverse, universal sense to her creativity.

"I love Jesus, but I also have a drag queen Dolly Parton in my video," Edwards says. "Christians get a bad rap because many don't believe in inclusivity and loving everyone. I do.

"Modern Christianity is simpler than what we politically and socially believe," Edwards adds. "It's about following what Jesus said when he was here: Love everyone and love them well. Navigating life, especially in America, as a Black woman in country music, too – with my faith at the forefront – shakes up many narratives, but it's important."

What's missing from Edwards' rise is the sort of carefree happiness and picture-perfect social media-driven life that people stereotypically assign to the personas of country music's current rising stars.

"I'm authentically imperfect and vulnerable, so parts of country music are tough for me," she offers. "I'm not younger, shinier or newer. I am also learning how to use Instagram and TikTok and think that these things all often overshadow who I am, simply, as an artist."

For Edwards, her career luckily finds her with an album out and working as tour support or alongside similarly direct and focused creatives who value substance and style in uneasy combination. These include a trio of country radio chart-toppers: Ingrid Andress (for whom she's opening on tour in 2023), Elle King, and Chris Stapleton (with whom she's toured this year).

From that trio, she's learned, and will continue to learn, innumerable lessons about the depth and scope of how well-rooted she needs to remain in herself and her desires to achieve long-term country music success.

From King, peer-to-peer learning about the perils of not achieving a work-life balance amid growing renown was essential.

Edwards says King advised her, "Don't let your star shoot so far that you forget to [reserve enough] time to relax."

Asked about her future, Edwards offers a measured, confident response.

"For my music, I now realize that I'm not going to go to sleep one night and wake up as an overnight sensation," she says. "So my music ages like a fine wine and because it has depth and honesty, will succeed and sustain."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Warner Music Nashville's Madeline Edwards debuts with 'Crashlanded'