Maddie & Tae

When Maddie & Tae unleashed their 2014 debut single, “Girl In a Country Song,” during the apex of mid-’00s bro-country, the song was a balm for many seeking increased representation for voices like theirs on honky-tonk radio. It provided a refreshing, woman-positive perspective at a time when hit songs were celebrating cold ones and jacked-up trucks, and the voices behind it—born Madison Marlow and Taylor Dye, both in 1995—have been saturating the airwaves with their catchy country-pop ever since. Teaming up first in secondary school near Dallas, Texas as Sweet Alina, Marlow and Dye’s songwriting partnership became a therapeutic exercise. Those curative properties shine through in the vulnerable narratives of songs like “Fly”—their Top 10 single about perseverance from first album, Start Here—and 2019’s “Die From A Broken Heart”, sung from the perspective of a daughter speaking to her mother over the phone in search of comfort. “I’m holding on to trusting in the healing properties music has,” Dye told Apple Music upon the release of The Way It Feels in spring 2020. “Music is so healing, and people need healing right now.” The pair host Mood Ring Radio on Apple Music Country.