Two girls desperately want a future together, but fit together like a sepsis to a wound.

A woman discovers her husband has been hiding weapons in their bedroom. A love-starved loner starts dating their AI chatbot – If a picture is worth a thousand words, Madds Buckley’s music could be worth entire novels.

They say write about what you love, and Buckley is an artist who lives and breathes those words through a fusion of alternative and folk rock. This singer/songwriter from Nashville has a strong penchant for telling love stories that feature darker elements, inspired by her favorite anime. In the age of social media where millions compete for attention, she has gone viral several times on TikTok with hits such as “Big Brother I’m Just Like You,” based on the show Haikyu!! and “The Red Means I Love You,” based on the show My Hero Academia.

Madds Buckley © 2026 — Madds Buckley © Jess Gruneisen

Her recent works take inspiration from her own experience being in lesbian relationships, adding a layer of vulnerability and catharsis to the usual nerdy charm of her music. 2023’s My Love Is Sick follows the love story of the characters Dog and Bird from start to end. The album feels like an ode to listeners who have experienced heartbreak and hope to find love again.

Along with making music for the girls and the geeks, her new single “Human To You” and her upcoming album raise a huge middle finger towards AI.

In a conversation with Atwood Magazine, Buckley discusses how queer yearning, Catholic guilt, and geek culture influence her past and future works.

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:: stream/purchase Sitting Pretty here ::

:: connect with Madds Buckley here ::

:: stream/purchase Simple Binary and a Complex Phrase here ::

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A CONVERSATION WITH MADDS BUCKLEY

Atwood Magazine: You’ve gone viral several times now. Have you noticed a pattern to the madness of what goes viral? Or does it still feel random?

Madds Buckley: As for what goes viral, I couldn’t tell you before things blew up. With “The Red Means I Love You,” I sincerely think it was just kind of the right place at the right time. And now I have a song that pays my bills so I can go make other music, and it’s awesome.

You said before that the album My Love Is Sick is based on your real life relationships, and in that way, was the album a way to find closure and explore, or did it serve a different purpose?

Madds Buckley: Oh gosh, some of these songs are ridiculously embarrassing looking back on it. Mostly because of the relationship that I started right before this album came out, a lot of these songs are based on me being Catholic guilt-ridden.

For example, “Love After You,” the opener, I sent that to my crush before it came out, because they’re a friend of mine. I said, “hey, here’s this new song that I want you to listen to.” And they told me, after we started dating, they heard that song, and they said, “so what does that mean? Why did that get sent to me of all people? What’s going on here? What? What’s happening?”

In the My Love Is Sick saga, do you relate more to Dog or Bird?

Madds Buckley: That’s the question! The metaphor that I kept going back to with Dog was a shelter animal. A lot of people will get a dog from a shelter and then say, “Oh my god, this breed’s aggressive.” And actually, that animal has been abused, and an abused dog does not make a patient dog. It doesn’t make a quiet dog. It makes a dog that lashes out because it’s in panic mode, hence this character.

And my reasoning for Bird was partially from an embarrassing end. One of my other guilts was that my partner, before we were dating, had a bird and I had a cat, and I thought, “Oh my god, this is a metaphor for how the relationship is going to go. My cat’s going to kill her bird and I’m going to ruin her life.” Neurotic. But that was the start for the idea, and then going into it more, I’ve only been in one other relationship, and it was not a good relationship. It was very bad. And I was a doormat. I let a lot of things slide, and that is kind of what built Bird. It’s almost this perfect storm of “I think I can help and I can fix you, and I do not understand that I need help.”

Even though it ended with them breaking up, Dog and Bird’s story spoke to a lot of people in their own relationships. Do you have any more plans for them moving forward?

Madds Buckley: I do, actually! We are still working on the next music video. In a perfect world, this next album would have just been more Dogbird, but my brain took a very “Ooh, I’m interested in singing about technology” route. There are still two songs that fit within the themes of the album, but they are a part of Dogbird’s story. One is “Concept Without Proof,” and the other is “Sitting Pretty,” which goes back to Dog’s perspective. I finished the song two months before Chappell Roan’s, “Good Luck, Babe” came out, and the second I heard that song, I thought, “Oh fuck, I wrote the other person’s perspective.”

Musically, your single, “Garden Party” feels distinct from your other works, especially with the violin at the end. I'm curious what inspired “Garden Party”?

Madds Buckley: I think “Garden Party” was inspired by a lot of frustration and a lot of fun, honestly. And I think what is really cool about that song to me is, the second I showed it to my usual artist at @orbitalmoonrat – their art’s really good. You should follow them – they basically, through a discord call, grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “let me make a music video.” And I said, “we have a month.” And they said, “I will do it.” And they did. They churned that thing out in a month. All of the little extra story beats that you might find in that video that is not directly talked about in the song? Completely their idea. I have never been happier to say, “spread your wings. Go fly, be free.” I was having a lot of fun with it.

And what is your creative process usually like?

Madds Buckley: I usually start with a melody and lyrics at the same time, and then if I can make it sound good with just me and a guitar I usually move forward.

Do you have any favorite piece of media you’re inspired by currently? “]

Madds Buckley: One of my major inspirations for a lot of the technology side of this album is Serial Experiments Lain. When we were recording a few of the songs at my house, I put up a short looping video of one of the scenes from that anime where Lain is just sitting amongst all the computers and it’s just flickering light. And I thought, “Cool, that’s your inspiration. Hit record.”

Are there any themes from Lain and other ideas that you want to explore in your next work? Anything you want to pull from your experiences?

Madds Buckley: When it comes to catharsis, I do think this album does separate a bit from that. The opening track is literally from the perspective of AI, if that makes sense. And I’d like to make this statement – not a fan. AI? Don’t like it. This album is not nice to people who think, “I’m dating my chat bot.” And if people interpret it as such, I will be depressed.

The album is in half, it’s interspersed, but six of the songs are about human experiences. I’m hoping, hoping that people will feel very seen on the human side of it, and then if they listen to the tech side, they can potentially feel seen, but there is also, I guess, room for reflection, if that makes sense.

Is there a certain kind of emotion that you feel listening back to your music, that you want your listeners to feel when they hear it?

Madds Buckley: I don’t know if just emotion is the right word for what I want people to feel when they listen to my music. Maybe scene is a good way of putting it as well. If I was an NPC, after my show, and if you were to talk to me, there would just be a few key phrases that pop up like I’m in Skyrim or something. One of them would legitimately be “I’m sad you relate to it. I’m glad that it helped. I’m glad you feel seen. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

I get told from a lot of people, “I really like that I can listen to your songs, and they can be for anybody, but I know they were made to be queer, if that makes sense.” I can have a lot of fans who are straight couples that say, “Oh my god, this is like, our favorite song. This is our song.” But everyone is of the agreement and understands that there is a small gay person who definitely made that.

Are there any artists that you admire?

Madds Buckley: Definitely Eggtan. JamieP. Oh my goodness, I’ve been listening to a lot of pop. This 2025, I think Sabrina Carpenter was my number one artist, which there is a part of me that thinks, “music is my career. I’m supposed to have an unknown, ‘civilized’ taste. I’m disappointed.” But as someone who likes to have fun, Sabrina, drop another song about men who suck and my life is yours.