Madison McFerrin is on stage in stocking feet, schooling her sound tech. Her monitor is giving off a lot of feedback; the tech seems a bit frazzled, but McFerrin has it figured out. From her post at the mic stand, she sips a matcha latte and calmly explains which levels need to be adjusted.
We’re at a posh members-only club on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where McFerrin is booked for a set later on. Miniature palm trees and velvet couches are strewn about the lounge space, where, in these early evening hours, a handful of well-dressed creative types are engrossed in their laptops. In a while, the furniture will be cleared to make room for well-dressed creative types with cocktails in hand, gathered to see McFerrin perform songs that she builds from the ground up largely using just her voice and a looping pedal.
McFerrin’s vibe is warm and open. When we first meet, and I hold out my hand to shake hers, she rolls her eyes just a little and hugs me instead. Her shoes remain off for the duration of soundcheck, and later, her performance. What she does onstage is inherently risky—being a one-woman band requires a tricky combination of rigorous technique and showmanship. But she’s so eager to befriend her audience, to confide in them, that she willingly makes herself even more vulnerable.
Before launching into her first song, she opens up about a now-infamous incident that might have grounded her career from the outset: a bungled rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a televised Hillary Clinton rally in 2016, which was received rather unkindly by the media (sample headline: “This Rendition of the National Anthem at Hillary’s Rally Will Make Your Ears Bleed”).
Such internet derision would have stopped many young singers in their tracks, but it left McFerrin with a fierce desire to prove her critics wrong. That same year, she booked her first solo show, then recorded and released her debut EP, Finding Foundations: Vol. I. She couldn’t have taken a more extreme approach to show that she can, in fact, sing—the songs on both that EP and its sequel, this year’s Vol. II, are performed entirely a cappella.
As a writer, Madison tends toward the personal, alternately ripping on shitty exes and basking in new love. But she also demonstrates keen sensitivity to the world around her, like on “Can You See?,” where she sings “Stop, stand back/Hands up, look down/But that won’t keep you out the ground”—loaded words in this era of endemic police violence.
Acting as her own rhythm section, backup, and lead, McFerrin leaves her voice exposed from all angles. On paper, it might sound a little gimmicky—for years, a cappella music’s reputation has been marred by association with overzealous undergrads and corny film franchises—but McFerrin’s take is an understated, compelling testament to the power and dexterity of the human voice.
Good genes might have something to do with her skill. Madison’s grandfather was Robert McFerrin Sr., the first black man to sing with the Metropolitan Opera; Bobby McFerrin, her father, is the Grammy-winning jazz vocalist who hit No. 1 with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” in 1988. Unsurprisingly, Madison was a singer from the very start. Her dad tells me about what he calls “The Maddie Show,” his daughter’s nightly singing routine that she began as a six-month-old, and her early affinity for the limelight. “Whenever we found ourselves in a situation where some kind of stage was involved, Maddie always took charge,” he says.
For her part, Madison remembers deciding that she was meant to be a singer at age 5. Growing up in Minneapolis, she organized living room revues with her friends, who she consistently pushed into background roles. “I was the Beyoncé of Destiny’s Child,” she says, laughing at herself. “But none of those friends are musicians now, so I don’t feel all that bad about it.” At 26, Madison has yet to waver in her commitment to a life of music. As we talk, she’s quick to respond and crack a joke, but takes a beat to reflect on the decision she made more than two decades ago. “I just stuck with it, and didn’t explore any other options,” she says. “But it’s what makes me happiest, and I figure I’m lucky to do what makes me happy.”
Madison McFerrin: My parents were always playing Stevie Wonder and James Brown, but I was a total millennial and listened to pop radio all the time. I definitely loved me some Britney and *NSYNC. I didn’t really get into listening to albums until I was older.
College. I knew that older people knew who he was, but “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” came out before I was born, so I wasn’t alive for the mayhem of all of that. But when I got to college, everybody all of the sudden was really weird, and they would ask me about how he was doing before they would ask me about how I was doing. He was the center of everybody’s conversation with me, in a way.
A little of both. I was unaware of the extent of the pressure I would feel. A lot of people regard my father as the premier vocalist in the world, so to be a singer, and to be his daughter, is kind of nuts. It definitely hindered me in the beginning of college, but then I kind of shed that pressure. If anything, there’s a lot of doors that it opens, so I’m really grateful for that.
Freshman year in college, I had a moment where I went back to my dorm room and listened to my dad’s album, The Voice, which is supposed to be his “masterpiece.” It was the first time I listened to him as a musician, and not as his daughter. I started weeping and had this moment of, like, “It’s OK that you’re not him, he’s not you. You can’t do what he does, but he can’t do what you do.”
There are pros and cons, for sure. It’s really fun to have other people’s energy to bounce off of onstage, but a pro of just doing stuff by myself is I only have to deal with my own ego, and that’s big enough. And also, if something goes wrong, it’s on me. I really have to hold myself accountable for my art in a way that I haven’t had to, and that really appeals to me.
Oh, absolutely. Big time. It was definitely the case in high school and even leading up into college, where my body would betray me, my heart would be pounding really fast, and it would make my voice quiver. That was one of the other really beautiful things about being in Cosmodrome in college—we played a lot over the course of the two and a half years that we were together, and that really helped calm my nerves. But my body still betrays me, in certain ways.
No, it was a general mood. It happened really organically, it just flowed out. The chorus just came to me. It was really powerful that my mind just naturally went there in that moment—which I think is important given the context of the song.
Yeah, exactly.
I don’t want to not be thought of as one. If I were to become famous, I think one of the only benefits would be that I would have the platform to speak on certain things. It’s important as an artist to speak on what’s happening in your world in that moment in time—and not just your world, but the world. I think it’s a little selfish if you’re only writing about yourself. As much as I cried when 45 got elected, it makes everybody that much more emboldened to really speak truth. And if me speaking truth makes me a political artist then, sure, I’ll take it.
I’m really looking forward to becoming my true artist self. I’m definitely getting closer and closer every day, every performance. But I’m still working out the aesthetic of it all. I know that I’m on my way there, and I feel more like myself than I ever have. But the beautiful thing about being an artist is you can always change. Maybe I’ll meet myself one day and then be like, “OK, nice meeting you.”
