Tony Cummings reports on MADISON RYANN WARD and her powerful "Mirror" single

Madison Ryann Ward

It's been slow but steady progress for Nashville-based Madison Ryann Ward. Cross Rhythms is now playing her "Mirror" single, originally released in 2018, and with the company Zelda House Records having recently released her long awaited debut album 'A New Thing' things continue to move forward. Now UK Christendom is at last catching up on one of the best singers in modern R&B.

In the US though, Madison has long been in the public eye. Her journey from Lawton, Oklahoma (population 96,000) to becoming a nationally known volleyball star with the University of Oklahoma and then a TV singing star on David Letterman's Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction and a chance to record with top mainstream musicians and producers has been written up in Billboard magazine. The epicentre of all this has been her power ballad "Mirror".

While on a trip to New York, Madison Ryann Ward wrote the melody to "Mirror," a song that would go on to be the first single on her debut album. The idea came to her while at a taping of Jimmy Fallon where she watched her friend James Poyser play in the show's band, The Roots. Eager to work out the chords for the melody that floated around in her head, she ducked into a Guitar Center in Times Square to find a keyboard and recorded a voice note on her phone that same night.

She then worked out the lyrics with writer/producer Rex Rideout back in LA where they recorded a demo and later finished the recording with legendary record producer Rick Rubin in Malibu. "You took my heart and gave it a home," sings Madison in "Mirror"'s opening line. "Sometimes it's hard to see that something just won't be," the song ends.

"It makes me emotional," she says, "because I've seen people close to me go through the difficulties of love and loss. It's more of a testament to what isn't anymore and what could have been, for anyone. But that's just life."