Ohio native Michael Marcagi has spent the past year putting his full self into his songs – tracing his roots, reckoning with home, and letting listeners see exactly who he is on his captivatingly intimate sophomore EP ‘Midwest Kid.’ As the fast-rising folk rock singer/songwriter prepares to release his debut album, those songs stand as proof that Marcagi isn’t searching for his voice – he’s already claimed it.
Stream: “Midwest Kid” – Michael Marcagi
Everything I thought I buried / Everything I thought I killed, it just grows / In my head and every hallway / Yeah it’s in my blood, it’s in my bones…
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Michael Marcagi writes like someone who knows exactly where he’s from – and exactly how complicated that knowing can be.
His songs don’t romanticize home so much as reckon with it: The pride, the guilt, the tenderness, the parts you carry with you long after you’ve left. There’s a clarity to his voice that feels increasingly rare in a moment obsessed with reinvention – a steadiness rooted in memory, place, and emotional truth. Marcagi doesn’t posture or obscure; he opens the door and lets the mess show. That honesty is what gives his music its quiet power, and why it lingers long after the song ends.
Raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Marcagi came up playing in rock bands before stepping into his own as a solo artist – a move that initially felt more vulnerable than visionary. Writing sparer, acoustic-leaning songs influenced by folk, Americana, and heartland rock, he gravitated toward storytelling that prized specificity over spectacle. Working closely with producer David Baron at Sun Mountain Studios in upstate New York – a creative partnership that would become foundational – Marcagi began shaping a sound built on warm instrumentation, lived-in melodies, and lyrics that feel less written than confessed. It’s music that favors emotional immediacy over polish, and connection over persona.
That approach resonated quickly. Early singles like “Scared to Start” and “The Other Side” found a massive audience online, pushing Marcagi’s voice into millions of ears almost overnight and leading to a deal with Warner Records with just a handful of songs released. Yet even as the momentum accelerated, what made his music stick wasn’t virality – it was vulnerability. Critics and listeners alike were drawn to the way Marcagi framed coming-of-age not as triumph, but as uncertainty; not as escape, but as negotiation. His songs offered refuge for anyone caught between who they were and who they’re becoming.
Released on April 18, 2025, Midwest Kid marked a crucial turning point – not a debut, but a grounding. Following 2024’s debut EP American Romance, Marcagi’s sophomore extended player arrived as an earnest and unguarded self-portrait – a document of his own past and present, history and identity. Across its five songs, Marcagi traced the emotional terrain that shaped him – growing up in Ohio, feeling the pull of a larger world, grappling with the fear that leaving might look like abandonment, and learning how to carry home without being confined by it. The title track, “Midwest Kid,” crystallized that tension into an anthem of belonging and self-acceptance, while songs like “Flyover State,” “Follows You,” and “Stick Around” deepened the portrait, wrestling with self-worth, restlessness, and the relationships that tether us even as we move.
“Midwest Kid includes five songs with a very similar theme,” Marcagi tells Atwood Magazine. “It’s about the place I was born, raised, and still call home. It’s about starting this crazy new chapter of my life while navigating and maintaining the relationships I have with friends and family in my hometown. I’m very proud of where I’m from and I hope to carry that with me forever.” If these songs feel personal in a way that lingers, it’s because Marcagi was never trying to be anything but himself. They’re his way of putting the pieces of his story into plain view. The emphasis isn’t on escape, but on continuity – how to move forward without severing the ties that shaped you.
That intention guided the entire creative process. Reflecting on the EP’s creative vision, Marcagi is clear that the goal never shifted. “I wanted this EP to tell the story of what’s gotten me to this point in my life and career,” he says. “I wanted to give people a chance to peak behind the curtain and see my genuine self. I’ve always wanted to write honest lyrics and that definitely did not change over the course of making this record.” There’s no concept to hide behind here, no character being played. The songs function as an open ledger – moments of doubt, pride, longing, and self-recognition laid out without ornament.
This clarity extends to how Marcagi understands the record as a whole. When pressed to sum it up, he doesn’t reach for abstraction. “Honest, raw, proud,” he says – three words that mirror both the emotional tone of the songs and the posture he’s taken as an artist. Pride, in particular, becomes a throughline across the EP – not as bravado, but as self-acceptance. It’s the pride of claiming your past without pretending it was easy, and of acknowledging the contradictions that come with growth.
The title Midwest Kid makes that intention explicit. For Marcagi, it wasn’t just a reference point – it was a declaration. “I’m very lucky that one of the first songs I released as a solo artist became so successful,” he reflects. “This was my chance to tell the world who I am. I’ve never connected with the mysterious rockstar persona. I want everyone to know exactly who I am and that I’m proud of where I’m from.” In rejecting distance and mystique, Marcagi positions himself closer to the listener – not above them, not apart from them, but alongside.
That sense of closeness is deliberate, and it’s central to what he hopes people take away from the music. “I want people to feel like they know me,” Marcagi says – a simple statement, but a radical one in an era that often rewards opacity over openness. On Midwest Kid, knowing him means sitting with the uncertainty of leaving home, the guilt of wanting more, and the quiet resolve it takes to carry your roots forward rather than outrun them. It’s an invitation to listen closely – not just to who Michael Marcagi has been, but to who he’s becoming in real time.
That sense of closeness doesn’t just live in Marcagi’s intentions – it’s embedded in the songs themselves. Midwest Kid unfolds less like a collection of singles than a shared emotional landscape, five songs in conversation with one another about home, movement, self-worth, and the quiet reckoning that follows you no matter how far you go. Each track approaches that tension from a slightly different angle, building a portrait not of escape, but of return – again and again – to the things that shape you.
“Wish I Never Met You” opens the EP on a note of bruised tenderness. Written with Wesley Schultz of The Lumineers – a memory Marcagi says he’ll cherish for life – it’s a song about affection and regret coexisting in the same breath, where love isn’t denied but reframed as something that hurt precisely because it mattered. Lines like “It’s better to love you as I lose you / I don’t miss you / I wish I never met you at all” don’t land as bitterness so much as emotional honesty – the kind that acknowledges how deeply entwined longing and loss can be. There’s restraint here, a willingness to let feeling sit unresolved, setting the tone for an EP that refuses easy closure.
That inward gaze deepens on “Follows You,” a restless, shadow-haunted reckoning with avoidance and self-deception. Marcagi has described it as a reflection of his tendency to outrun discomfort rather than face it head-on, especially while constantly on the road. “It doesn’t matter how far you run away, life’s personal challenges will always catch up,” he explains. That truth echoes through lyrics like “Everything I thought I buried / Everything I thought I killed, oh it just grows,” as the song circles the realization that distance doesn’t erase history – it just sharpens it. “Follows You” feels like the emotional spine of the record, articulating the cost of motion without resolution.
The EP’s center of gravity arrives with the title track, “Midwest Kid,” which crystallizes the album’s central tension into a plainspoken anthem. “It’s about growing up in Ohio and the challenges of wanting to experience more of the world while not abandoning the people and values who made me who I am today,” Marcagi says. That push and pull animates the song’s most resonant lines – “I wanna go back to my front yard / Just laughing like a child” – moments that ache with longing without surrendering to nostalgia. “Midwest Kid” doesn’t ask permission to want more; it asks whether growth has to mean severance. In doing so, it becomes a song for anyone who’s ever loved where they’re from and still felt the need to leave.
“Flyover State” widens that lens, turning personal doubt into something quietly political. Written from the perspective of someone raised in a place often dismissed or overlooked, the song confronts the shame that can accompany ambition. “It’s about being from a place the rest of the country rarely thinks about and might view as insignificant. It’s about knowing your self-worth,” Marcagi explains. “There’s a great big world out there to explore and you shouldn’t feel shame about leaving the place you’re from. Changing where you live shouldn’t change who you are as a person. I’m very proud of where I’m from and I hope to carry that with me forever.” Lyrics like “I look around and this life ain’t mine / I’m in the backseat watching the world pass me by” capture the disorientation of staying still when you know you’re meant to move – and the courage it takes to believe that leaving doesn’t mean erasing yourself.
The EP closes on “Stick Around,” a gentler, more intimate meditation on attachment and fear of loss. Where the earlier songs wrestle with motion and departure, this one lingers in the space between – asking what it means to stay, to grow roots, or simply to ask someone not to leave yet. It’s a quiet ending by design, offering softness rather than resolution, and reinforcing the idea that Midwest Kid isn’t about answers so much as honesty.
Taken together, these five songs don’t just reintroduce Michael Marcagi – they invite you to know him. Not as a finished product, but as someone actively sorting through who he’s been, where he’s from, and what it means to carry both forward.
In the nine months since Midwest Kid’s release, Marcagi’s world has expanded rapidly, but without losing its center.
The EP’s songs have followed him from listening rooms to packed venues, connecting with audiences who hear their own push-and-pull reflected back at them. Touring relentlessly and releasing new material along the way, Marcagi has spent the better part of the past year living inside the very tensions his songs articulate – motion and memory, ambition and attachment – and finding that they resonate even more loudly when shared in real time. What began as a grounding statement has since become a calling card, one that’s carried him into a new phase of his career with uncommon clarity.
That momentum now leads directly into Marcagi’s debut full-length album, Under The Streetlights, due February 6th via Warner Records. Announcing the record, he framed it not as a leap away from what came before, but as a culmination of everything he’s been building toward. “I am so excited to finally have a complete album, and I have never been more proud and happy with a group of songs in my life,” he shares. After years of steady ascent and a whirlwind stretch of touring and discovery, the album reflects an artist arriving with intention rather than expectation.
“The past few years have been absolutely amazing and unexpected, and it’s taken me to places I never dreamed of,” Marcagi adds. “Thank you to every single person who came to a show and streamed my music and supported me. I owe you guys everything.” With three singles already released and an extensive tour underway, Under The Streetlights doesn’t signal a reinvention – it signals confidence: A widening frame built on the same emotional truth that made Midwest Kid matter in the first place.
What makes Midwest Kid endure – especially now, as Marcagi prepares to release his debut full-length album – is how clearly it defines who he is.
These songs don’t feel like stepping stones; they feel like bedrock still holding weight. They reveal an artist uninterested in mystique, resistant to the “rockstar” distance that so often follows success, and committed instead to being seen as he is – proud of where he’s from, honest about his flaws, and open about the contradictions that live inside both. In hindsight, Midwest Kid reads less like a chapter closed than a foundation laid.
“I hope people relate to the songs and feel like they are hearing honest storytelling,” Marcagi shares. “I have realized that I just need to write songs that mean a lot to me, and that I think are good and let the rest take care of itself.”
At its heart, this EP is about permission – permission to tell the truth, to name your roots without apology, and to believe that sincerity still matters. It’s the moment where Michael Marcagi stops circling the edges of who he might be and says it plainly, in his own voice. And it’s from that place – clear-eyed, grounded, and unguarded – that Michael Marcagi’s 2026 story begins.
Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Midwest Kid with Atwood Magazine as the singer/songwriter goes track-by-track through the music and lyrics of his achingly honest and breathtakingly beautiful EP.
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:: stream/purchase Midwest Kid here ::
:: connect with Michael Marcagi here ::
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Stream: ‘Midwest Kid’ – Michael Marcagi
:: Inside Midwest Kid ::
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Wish I Never Met You
I got to write “Wish I Never Met You” with one of my biggest musical inspirations, Wesley Schultz of The Lumineers. Being in the studio with him was such a special, yet very natural, experience. I learned a lot about songwriting during those sessions but more importantly, about navigating life in this crazy industry.
Follows You
“Follows You” is about growing up in Ohio and the challenges of wanting to experience more of the world while not abandoning the people and values who made me who I am today. A lot of people have a love/hate relationship with the place they’re from and the feeling of guilt for doing something most would consider unconventional. There’s so much diversity the world has to offer and I want to experience all of it.
I’d also say one of my biggest red flags is not dealing with my problems head on. Constantly being on the road and touring can make it very easy for me to brush them aside and ignore the underlying issues. “Follows You” illustrates that it doesn’t matter how far you run away, life’s personal challenges will always catch up. They’re just like your shadow. Sometimes you may not be able to see it, but it’s always following you.
Midwest Kid
The title track, “Midwest Kid” shares a common theme with the rest of the songs on the EP. I know so many other people where I’m from who struggle with feeling the need to leave in order to become “successful” yet still being incredibly proud of where we’re from. This was meant to be an anthem for everyone that feels the same way.
Flyover State
“Flyover State” is about being from a place the rest of the country rarely thinks about and might view as insignificant. It’s about knowing your self worth. There’s a great big world out there to explore and you shouldn’t feel shame about leaving the place you’re from. Changing where you live shouldn’t change who you are as a person. I’m very proud of where I’m from and I hope to carry that with me forever.
Stick Around
“Stick Around” is about the place I was born, raised, and still call home. It’s about starting this crazy new chapter of my life while navigating and maintaining the relationships I have with friends and family in my hometown.
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:: stream/purchase Midwest Kid here ::
:: connect with Michael Marcagi here ::
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© Jimmy Fontaine
© Jimmy FontaineMidwest Kid
an EP by Michael Marcagi
