Get ready to have your heart broken in the most intimate way possible. One for Jackie, the latest by Rett Madison, is a heart-wrenchingly gorgeous tribute to her late mother. It is an emotionally-charged look into her mother’s struggle with substance abuse, childhood nostalgia, and guilt over feeling like you’re too late to save someone you love.
It’s hard to pick a favorite from the record. It starts off strong, with the first track, “Jacqueline,” opening with sombre piano as Madison recites an apparent eulogy for her mother, the implied Jacqueline. Lyrics ask questions that can never be answered: “Bright and young at twenty-two, everybody says I’m just like you/ Was that one of many days you suffered through?” The track ends at just over four and a half minutes, as Madison’s voice is echoed by that of a backing choir, reminiscent of something you might hear in a church.
Madison couldn’t have picked a better song to start off the album. This is a record best appreciated chronologically. While the first track, “Jacqueline,” is Madison looking back at the issues brought on by her mother, the second song, “How it All Began,” is quite explicitly recounting exactly what the title suggests: “Tell me one more time how it all began/Got the shakes between shifts, With one last hit burning right through my pocket.”
Nostalgia appears thematically as a dual-edged sword throughout the record. As the songs continue, Madison explores the way substance abuse coming from her mother warped her childhood. On one hand, tracks explore anger as Madison, upon browsing a flea market, sees a shirt that her deceased mother would’ve worn. Guilt and confusion are also present: should Madison have put aside her frustration to try and save her mother? At the same time, isn’t it a mother’s job to make sure her daughter is taken care of?
One for Jackie is a reminder to anyone who has lost a family member that grief is complex in the way that it demands to take up space, no matter how much anger we had in childhood. We can (and often do) hold opposing thoughts when a loved one passes away. Exasperation exists in the same breath as sorrow, knowing that time never really stops: in “Lipstick,” Madison feels endlessly guilty about starting to fall in love just months after her mother’s passing.
This isn’t an album with a full-circle moment: questions are still unanswered as Madison struggles to formulate her grief in a single thought. But maybe that’s the point: the mourning process evolves and changes over time, but when you lose your parent, do you ever stop missing them? Do you miss them more in the future, as you come to see that they will never see their grandchild take their first steps? Above all, this is an album full of raw emotional complexities. It allows room for growth throughout grief, serving as a reminder to the listener that death affects our lives in ways we never consider until we’re face-to-face with the loss of someone we never thought would die.
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