First things first: Madison Hughes possesses a grainy voice that’s cottony, comfortable and warm, somewhat akin to—and I’m about to springboard into a silly metaphor here—a favorite flannel shirt, aka the frayed one worn on weekends in the late fall, winter and early spring. It’s not just that it holds out the cold, though that’s a plus, or that it fits right, but that the soft texture of the fabric feels good against the skin. So it is with her voice. There’s no stiffness, no awkward newness. It feels lived-in and real.
There are additional layers to All That I Am, the official debut album from the country-flavored song slinger—who briefly made waves on The Voice in 2022—that make it worth many listens even now, two months after its release. Co-produced by Lera Lynn and Todd Lombardo, it’s an album-long treatise, conveying the spilled beer and tears of heartache one song while, in the next, exploring the life illusions we embrace in order to keep moving on. It’s a moody delight, perfect for both late nights and early mornings, not to mention—as yesterday for me—afternoons stuck in stop-and-go traffic.
The title cut, which kicks off the 34-minute set, lays the foundation for all that follows, with Americana accents framing a relationship conundrum. She explained to Atwood Magazine that it’s “a true story about how my anxious attachment style affected my relationships—the push and pull of wanting something real but struggling to walk away from someone emotionally unavailable.” “Losing the Grip,” which follows, focuses on the common mistake found in many a relationship’s blueprint: “We say we want love, but we’re never gonna get it/Looking’ outside for what can only be within.” (It reminds me of an array of songs, but this morning it’s the similarly themed “Know You Got to Run” from Stephen Stills: “You expect for me to love you/when you hate yourself, my friend.”)
“Wild & Free,” on the other hand, finds Hughes seeking solace in the arms of another; it has the feel of an old Bonnie Raitt tune—or, perhaps, my memory of the same. Her cover of Blind Melon’s “No Rain,” which was way overplayed on MTV and ‘DRE back in the day, gave me pause up until I heard it; she captures the song’s quest to escape life’s doldrums. The low-key “Mystery Highway” is another gem. It finds her running on empty while chasing her dreams and questioning whether the sacrifices have been worth it: “Riding by a river shining in the morning sun/Seems there’s nothing better than to make another highway run/But when I’m on some lonesome road at midnight/I find myself remembering all that I’ve left behind.” As with the other songs, it would’ve been at home on the rock radio of the 1970s.
“So Real” finds her hoping infatuation flowers into something more, but content if it doesn’t, while the duet with Brent Cobb, “Nobody Knows Your Love,” radiates with the pleasant ache of ‘90s-era country music. As with “Mystery Highway,” both songs are low-key and stirring. The touching “So Close to Forever,” for its part, excavates a failed relationship with the precision of a surgeon. “Waiting on You” returns to the mystery highway: “We all want what we’re used to/What we used to be/Chasin’ heroes in our dreams/Now I’m headed as far as I can/No brakes, no plates/High road, high stakes.” The album closes in fine fashion with “Gypsy Winds,” another song about chasing one’s dreams.
The constant release of new music in today’s world means that it’s become routine to miss quality songs and albums; there’s just too much—and no algorithm can counteract that. Long before the deluge, however, we fans faced different issues. Finding new tunes meant listening to the radio, reading music magazines, and spending hours in record/CD shops, where a new/old release played on the store’s sound system sometimes found its way into that day’s purchases. Madison Hughes’ All That I Am, I think, would have been one of those.
The track list:
The Old Grey Cat 
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