Maddie & Tae made major waves in country music with the release of their debut single, “Girl in a Country Song,” which poked fun at a host of the genre’s lyrical cliches. The duo, comprising Maddie Font and Tae Dye, has since proven to be more than just a pair of good-natured country critics through more recent hits, like “Die From a Broken Heart” and “Friends Don’t.” On Vol. 1 of their third album, Through the Madness, Font and Dye find the sweet spot between the sass and swagger of “Girl in a Country Song” (“Woman You Got,” “Grown Man Cry”) and the heartache of “Die From a Broken Heart” (“Madness,” “The Other Side”) for an eight-song collection that sonically builds atop what the pair does best and lyrically seeks to uplift listeners experiencing hard times. “We wrote through the madness of the still-ongoing pandemic, but I think that there are a lot of songs on there that feel hopeful,” Font tells Apple Music. “There’s also still those sassy, tongue-in-cheek moments from us on the project. So, it’s classic Maddie & Tae, with a little bit of a new flair to it. But I really hope that people just find comfort and joy and hope in this project.” Below, Font tells Apple Music about each track on Through the Madness, Vol. 1. “What It’s Like Loving You” “‘What It’s Like Loving You’ is the first song that Tae and I have sung the lead melody together. We both are singing the lead melody, but she’s an octave down. And Tae was like, ‘I sound like a dude. I don’t want to do that.’ I’m like, ‘But it sounds so cool.’ Just singing in unison, we’ve never done that—we’re a harmony band, so we typically do harmonies.” “Woman You Got” “We really wanted the song to show the quirkier, fun side of us but still have some meat on its bones. I feel like ‘Woman You Got’ was a great first single from this project because there’s just a newfound personal confidence and self-awareness that Tae and I have stepped into going into our later twenties that we just didn’t have before, and we didn’t have in our other music. She’s a quirky little song and I love her—I always refer to our songs as girls, I don’t know why. I feel like with ‘Woman You Got,’ you really understand where we are mentally in our lives right now. I love that we were able to capture that all lyrically.” “Don’t Make Her Look Dumb” (feat. Morgane Stapleton) “Our head of A&R at Universal, Stephanie Wright, was like, ‘Hey, what if I could get Morgane Stapleton on this song?’ I was like, ‘I will sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” I don’t care what we sing. I just want to sing with her.’ Between her and Lori McKenna being our collaborators on this album—oh, my gosh, I can die now. I’m like, ‘OK, cool. I already crossed off all the bucket-list things.’” “Grown Man Cry” “I was on vacation with my husband and his family, and my sister-in-law and I were talking about someone’s breakup. I said, ‘Man, that girl must really be special because she made that grown man cry.’ We actually got to write this one in person, and it was one of the last songs to go on the project. I loved creating this badass chick character that I always wanted to be but never was. I’m totally the heart-on-my-sleeve kind of girl, not the cool-leather-jacket-badass chick. But I would love to be her. Sometimes, in these songs, we get to bring characters to life that we wish we could be.” “Madness” “The song starts with ‘You’re my North Star,’ but ‘Madness’ was also our North Star for this whole project, ironically enough. ‘Madness’ was Tae’s title, and we wrote it with Jessie Jo Dillon and Zach Kale. Tae had a harder time than I did during the pandemic, not touring and everything. So, we wanted to capture that whole feeling, and that just having a safe place with your person is such a gift. There’s so many moments that truly depict what has been going on for the past couple of years and how crazy and heavy the world has felt. So, we wanted to use that song to say that even through the chaos, even through the madness, there’s still love and there’s still hope and there’s still people there for you.” “The Other Side” (feat. Lori McKenna) “We were talking and Tae’s husband, Josh [Kerr], had watched our documentary, Reframed, that we did with our last album. Tae was talking about what it was like for her watching me walk through a really hard season of depression after we had our label shut down—basically, the rug was just completely pulled out from under us. Josh said, ‘I loved whenever Tae said. I know that she’s having a hard time, but she’s going to make it to the other side. She always does, every time.’ And so, we took that really sweet sentiment and turned it into this beautiful lyric of meeting someone in their pain and saying, ‘I know this is rough. I know exactly what you’re feeling. But I just want to give you a little bit of encouragement until you get to the other side.’ I use it as a song for myself sometimes, which is a little vain, but sometimes I need to hear that song, too.” “Wish You the Best” “We got to tap into our tongue-in-cheek side—the earlier Maddie & Tae. It’s approached with a little more of a wiser outlook because we are older, and we have learned so much and gone through so much. I feel like it’s the sweetest middle finger to an ex. It’s the classiest way to do that.” “Strangers” “Me and my husband were talking one night. We grew up in the same hometown, so we were driving around and just like, ‘Oh, I used to go here. I used to get ice cream from here.’ So, it’s so weird that our paths never crossed until high school. We were complete strangers—had no idea that the other one existed. We were thinking about our lives without each other and how impossible that feels now. So, he was just being so sweet in talking about that whole perspective.”