'Fatal Optimist' feels it all

Singer-songwriter Madi Diaz lets heartache and renewal take center stage in a new album

- MIKAEL WOOD

"THIS RECORD is me facing myself and going, 'I have to stay in my body for this entire song," " Madi Diaz says of "Fatal Optimist."

A little over a year ago, Madi Diaz lay in bed in an apartment near Dodger Stadium sweating out a gnarly case of COVID-19.

The Nashville-based singer and songwriter had traveled to Los Angeles to record the followup to her album “Weird Faith,” which came out in early 2024 and would go on to earn two Grammy nominations, including one for a beautifully bummed-out duet with her friend Kacey Musgraves. But after three or four days of work in the studio, Diaz became sick just as the Dodgers were battling the Mets in last October's National League Championship Series.

“I could literally see the stadium lights — there were drones everywhere and people honking and lighting things on fire,” she recalls. “I was just like, Why, L.A.—why?”

Her suffering in a city she once called home was worth it: “Fatal Optimist,” the LP that Diaz eventually completed in time to release in October and just ahead of the Dodgers’ second consecutive World Series title, is one of 2025's most gripping — a bravely stripped-down set of songs about heartbreak and renewal arranged for little more than Diaz's confiding voice and her folky acoustic guitar.

In the album’s opener, “Hope Less,” she wonders how far she might be willing to go to accommodate a lover's neglect; “Good Liar” examines the self-deception necessary to keep putting up with it. Yet Diaz also thinks through the harm she's doled out, as in “Flirting” (“I can’t change what happened, the moment was just what it was / Nothing to me, something to you”).

And then there’s the gutting “Heavy Metal,” in which she acknowledges that enduring the pain of a breakup has prepared her to deal with the inevitability of the next one.