One For Jackie is a hard listen. It covers a suicide driven in part by childhood sexual trauma and the guilt and pain a surviving daughter is left with. It’s the type of raw and brave album few songwriters even have the opportunity to write. Unfortunately for Rett Madison, the material was all there for her to make the most of.
Make the most of it she did. Madison’s writing gives flashes of what her mother was like in life, shadowy glimpses at a villain that may have been the primary contributor to her mother’s death, and an extraordinarily honest look at her own guilt and heartache. The fact that the stories are so well written and performed makes them all the more touching. For Madison, it was a unique form of therapy.
“After I lost my mom, as you can imagine, it was a really complicated grieving process,” Madison said. “My mom had struggled for a long time with addiction, with mental illness, and I think some PTSD from some trauma she had survived. I really leaned into songwriting as one of the most instinctive ways I process my emotions.”
Jackie was, according to Madison, a diva in sunglasses and leopard print, chain smoking and laughing her way through life. One of the most relatable moments on the album involves Madison seeing a leopard print shirt at a “Flea Market” and wanting to purchase it for her mother who at that point had passed.
A less common but equally understandable song is “One For Jackie, One For Crystal,” in which Madison dreams of traveling back in time and killing her mother’s abuser. The violence is graphic and justified. The decision to put out such an intimate and heartbreaking track came down to Madison’s desire to support her mother even though she was no longer alive.
“I think after I unearthed that information I felt a lot of pain for her,” said Madison. “I felt a lot more compassion for her and the struggles that she went through even just raising me. I think less about my extended family when I write those songs and put them out. I think more of giving a voice to my mom’s truth and her story. I don’t want my mom to be silenced. Even though I have my own rage about that situation it’s more about giving power to my mom through performing those songs.”
Almost the entire album focuses on Jackie’s life story or Madison’s reaction to her loss. “Ballet” is the one exception. It’s a joyful tale of falling in love and flourishing under that gaze.
“The experience of grieving my mom but also falling in love for the very first time happened to be happening simultaneously,” Madison said. “And also my partner played a massive role in helping me work through that grief and also healing me in a lot of ways just with their love.”
A feeling of guilt is often mentioned, although Madison realizes now that she was not responsible for her mother’s death. Ironically, it was the discovery of her mother’s abuse in old medical records that both brought on a fresh wave of pain and set her free from an existing one.
“I would say to anyone who’s lost a loved one that way: it isn’t your fault,” said Madison “I think a lot of us are left with no closure or no answers and the thing we do in the moment is turn the pain inwards. Unearthing that information that she was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse released a lot of guilt from my shoulders because I finally realized that my mother’s pain began much earlier than my arrival of her daughter. Obviously it was painful learning that my mother went through that but also having that information freed me in a lot of ways.”
There’s really no easy way to explain or understand what Rett and Jackie went through unless you’ve experienced some form of it yourself. But for those of us who have, One For Jackie is an essential listen that can help provide closure in a way that few other works of art can.
Above is the full episode as aired on WUSB’s Country Pocket, including both my interview with Rett Madison and the songs we discussed, starting with Flea Market, which might tell the story of the most emotion anyone’s ever experienced over an ugly shirt. The interview begins with the second video in the playlist. You can hear the show live every Monday at 11am on WUSB 90.1 FM or check the blog to watch it as a YouTube playlist. Visit http://www.WUSB.fm and https://www.rettmadison.com for more.
Country Pocket 