‘Crazymad, For Me’, CMAT’s sophomore album
“The psychology of a clown is an interesting one”, says Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson in a 2022 Youtube interview. “There’s something very noble about making yourself the biggest fool in the room in order to alleviate everyone else from their anxiety” - she explains. With nobility and foolishness at its core, CMAT’s sophomore album ‘Crazymad, For Me’ started as an attempt to make sense of a past relationship by documenting her emotions, but instead became a benevolent albeit facetious mirror, an invitation to introspection or self-mockery (or both). Offering softer eyes and a “wicked way” of making one Google names of dead celebrities, sometimes a glimpse into self-acceptance and a small chuckle is what transforms a song into a moment.
As a headstrong country music hater, my musical identity faced a mini-crisis after stumbling upon CMAT’s hit song: “I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby”. Who knew all it took to convince me country music was good was a funny little Irish woman? One who loves “God, self-destruction, and a Britney tune”? One who likens herself to Sex And The City’s Miranda Hobbes and to a teenage Frankenstein? With her colourful, highly saturated, maximalist fashion and idiosyncratic maroon mane, the Irish singer defies a Tenessee-native genre with California-titled anthems. Indeed it is the latter that sets the redemptive tone for the album: a revindication of a genre, maybe, but especially a revindication of herself. “I’m heading to California / Don’t say I didn’t warn ya / I’m milking what I can from this grief ”.
While all is big, bright, and funny; under these indie folk-country-pop-blending Soprano vocals, are buried memories of a toxic ex-partner, body dysmorphia, and a cognitive dissonance between a mourning mind in a hedonistic body. “I have a wicked way of hating my own company”, “I hate who I am when I’m horny”, “I’m worth more when I’m in pain”, the (brilliantly poetic and witty) list goes on… One would think we have an Olympic self-hater in our hands. But really, how different are these lines from one’s interior monologue under the shadows of all the grandiosities of our daily performances? To laugh at oneself is to accept that being a clown is less of a punctual ritual and more of a survival mode, a way to ease another’s pain in hopes they’ll ease ours when life gets too serious and there is no more red crayon left on the counter to cover up that frown.
At worst, CMAT’s music is a clear metaphor for a self-aware mind attempting to be less so, and at best, a sonic masterpiece of how beautifully foolish the mishaps towards so can be.
