Hello and welcome to the Madds Buckley shrine! I've been thinking about this one
for a while now, but this is my first time making a shrine in a bit, so bear with me!

I first found Madds on TikTok, as I'm sure many people did. I specifically found her through this tiktok, though it's not really representative of her content overall. She came across my FYP a good few times after this, and when I watched the YouTube video for "The Red Means I Love You", her most popular song, I really liked it. Still, it took a while after that for me to really start paying attention to her and her music.

When Sunset on Summerville dropped in 2022, I came across by chance and loved it. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I became instantly attached to not only the songs, but the songwriter. I watched all her YouTube videos from the beginning, watched all of her TikToks and saved most of them, and started watching her Twitch streams. Through those, I found out a lot of things about her. Little things, like her favorite color (brown/orange/teal) and favorite animal (painted dog) sure, but also things such as her personal music taste, her talent for voice acting, her sense of humor, and interests of hers that I share.

While it's certainly less surprising from me (someone who makes websites as a hobby) than it could be for someone who's never made a website before, I once got stuck in such an intense fixation regarding her that I threw together a Carrd about her, which I actually showed to her once! It later evolved into a full-on fansite, which I still run and update whenever something new comes up.

Without a doubt, she's my favorite artist and my biggest inspiration. That's honestly a huge part of why I spend so much time and brain power on her. If I hadn't found her when I had, I can say with full certainty that I wouldn't be a songwriter anymore. I was 15 and starting college, overall just tired, left somehow emotional and numb at the same time. I had no motivation left in my songwriting, and I was barely playing guitar. I started really listening to her music and looking at her socials, and suddenly, I loved music again. I was back to writing, and even started recording, thanks to her. Not only did she bring back my motivation, but she also taught me things that improved my songwriting at a fundamental level.

When I joined her Discord, there was a channel called "Professor Madds", with odd screenshots of procreate and a link to an unlisted YouTube video of a Twitch VOD. She was teaching what she'd learned about songwriting while in Berklee, and that video single-handedly changed my entire writing style for the better. Fundamentals in lyricism and music theory that I had never even heard of, and she cemented them into my brain in the span of two hours. Beyond that video, she has a few tutorials up across her accounts, and I learned a lot from those, as well.

Trying to explain the level of influnce she's had on me and my writing feels nearly impossible. Any guitar tuning besides standard tuning? Any sort of fingerpicking? Harmony stacks? Starting a chorus on a IV chord? A bridge on a vi? Referring to chords with numbers at all? Understanding scansion, internal rhymes, object writing, so much more - and I wouldn't know any of it if I didn't know about her. I genuinely don't know where or what I'd be if I'd never heard of her, and I don't think there will ever be a music artist who will have a stronger impact on me, especially one that I've never even met.

All of this is to say, Madds Buckley is an amazing songwriter and, from what I can tell over the internet, an amazing person. She's made music that I actually connect with, inspired me to make my own, and changed the direction of my life without even knowing it. Because of that, she and her music will always mean a lot to me ♡