Nashville-based songwriter Madi Diaz has shared a new song, “New Person, Old Place”, and an accompanying video directed $ECK. Watch it below.
Over a sparse acoustic guitar-driven arrangement, Diaz describes the process of moving on from a breakup. “You used to be able to dictate each feeling inside my head / Drag me through every trauma over and over again,” she sings. “Cause if I was crazy then I’d still be yours I’d always come back / You used to be able to, now you don’t do that.”
In a press statement, Diaz elaborated on the process, saying
“This was a moment I realized I wanted to start to learn how to do it not better, not worse, but just different… and then something shifted. Something in my heart finally knocked loose and I was breathing deeper. It’s hard as hell, breaking patterns and unlearning all the old shit, trying to shut all the doors that I used to open to let all the same hurt happen over and over. I’m at least learning to find new doors. ‘New Person, Old Place’ is a mantra. A line that I’m casting into the future so that I have something to guide me forward. It’s something of a reminder that if my heart is the house that I carry with me wherever I go, I can take it somewhere new, or I can do the same old thing I always do but backwards or with a cartwheel, and I can repaint and I can rearrange the furniture. I can clean the mirrors so I see myself true and clear.”
The “New Person, Old Place” visual was shot in Diaz’s pickup truck throughout Nashville and sees her facing different versions of herself over time.
“New Person, Old Place” follows last month’s “Man in Me”, in which Diaz restarted her career by describing the pain from a broken relationship.