Nashville singer/songwriter Madi Diaz released her latest single “New Person, Old Place” on Tuesday. The new track is Diaz’s second single since her signing to ANTI- and arrives with a new music video.
Diaz is resolute and triumphant on “New Person, Old Place,” which finds her moving past the uglier feelings that come with a breakup. The singer reflects on her progress in her emotional journey as she emphatically sings, “I used to stay up on the off chance that you might call me back / I used to go shopping for pain, go through pictures, it’s all I had / I’d sift through our memories and live there even when I wasn’t sad / I used to, I used to, but now I don’t do that.” The video, directed by $eck, was filmed in Diaz’s pickup truck as she drives through Nashville.
Diaz said of the song in a statement:
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.
Watch the video for “New Person, Old Place” below. Keep scrolling to revisit Diaz’s Daytrotter session from 2011.
