For Dublin singer-songwriter CMAT, making music is the purest form of self-expression. Her songs—a glorious fusion of country, pop, and indie—are where Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson channels how she’s feeling. “I’m not one of these writers that sits down every day and thinks, ‘What am I going to write about today?’” she tells Apple Music. “There needs to be something going on. There needs to be something that’s stressing me out or upsetting me or some kind of demon I need to exorcise.” It’s all there on her debut album, If My Wife New I’d Be Dead. On a record that has a warming uplift about it even in its darkest moments, there are songs about breakups and breakdowns, loss and loneliness, mental health and religion. Whether they’re delivered with a synth-pop groove, an Americana sway, or a rock stomp, Thompson is at the center of these songs, her classic melodicism elevating them. “The thing that connects them all is me and whatever I’m going through,” she says. “This collection of songs is specifically about the pitfalls of my personality as opposed to being about an outside source. It’s really introspective and it’s me wreaking havoc through comedy and humor. This record is me trying to cope with the fact that I don’t cope with anything.” CMAT takes us through a debut that defines her, track by track. “Nashville” “This sums up the whole album, a song that I wrote because I have really, really been a very depressed person. I was thinking about the fact that during the times of the most depression, just unable to cope with the world, completely struggling, I’m the most craic—I’m so funny, I’m the best, a good-time gal. I listened to a podcast called You’re Wrong About and there was an episode on the study of suicide. One of the hosts talked about a friend of his who planned his death six months in advance. For those six months, he was the best guy, so much fun, so excited about life. He told everybody that he was moving to California and had all of his friends go to a going-away party, and then took his own life. I remember thinking that that is exactly what I would’ve done if I had got to the point. And it was an instinctive thought of, ‘Oh, if that was me, I would’ve said I was moving to Nashville,’ because everyone knows I wanted to move to Nashville. It’s a really difficult song to play to people because it makes me very self-aware of how bad I have been and how bad I was for a while.” “I Don’t Really Care for You” “This took me a year and a half to finish because I couldn’t figure out what to write the song about. And then, I went through a breakup, and I was like, ‘Well, now I know what the song’s about.’ He broke up with me in March 2020. I got dumped—capital-D Dumped, as in ‘I never want to see you again’—and then I was locked inside my nanny and grandad’s house for COVID. It was just me in my room going, ‘What have I done?’ I think the guy likes to think that he did nothing wrong in his life, ever, but actually he did. But also, so did I and the two of us were as bad as each other. It wasn’t a good relationship.” “Peter Bogdanovich” “Again, this comes from a podcast, one called You Must Remember This. It was a series about the life of Polly Platt, who was the wife of Peter Bogdanovich. The Last Picture Show was the first big film that they made together, and he left her during the middle of filming for Cybill Shepherd, the lead actress. Everyone told Polly to go home, and she was like, ‘No, this is my film. I’m the art director. I scouted it. I adapted the screenplay. I did all the work. I’m not fucking leaving.’ I feel like I’ve been Polly—I’ve been the person that’s been cheated on in such a grotesque and public way. And I’ve also been Cybill, I’ve also been a little shit. I really wanted to write about it and use it as a way for getting to grips with the kind of shit that I’ve been pulling.” “No More Virgos” “As I was putting all the songs together, I realized that all of the songs were really dark or had some level of depth and too much darkness in them, and I just wanted one that was fun and not that deep and not that serious. This is about being a problem person for your friends by constantly going for the same guy over and over again. I used to be a serial monogamist. I’m not anymore, but I used to constantly get with the same kind of guy over and over again. They were like, ‘No, no, please, no, this is so annoying.’” “Lonely” “I wrote this about a time when I was living in Manchester. I lived there for two years, and I think that was the peak of my problem-person period. I worked in the TK Maxx, and I also worked as a sexy shots-lady in a nightclub in Deansgate-Castlefield. On a Friday and Saturday, I would work in TK Maxx and then there’d be two hours before my shift as a sexy shots-lady started. So, I would just stay in the Arndale Food Court and watch everyone just hanging out, being friends, having more money than me because I was really fucking broke, crying into my fucking Taco Bell Crunchwrap.” “Groundhog Day” “A lot of my problems in relationships come from the fact that I care quite a lot about myself over other things, and I’m also a musician. Whenever I get into a relationship, there comes a point where the other person is like, ‘Why are you spending so much time on that and why aren’t you spending time on me?’ I always have to be like, ‘There’s no point in putting any investment into me.’ I just love music. I love doing it. I love working. I love being busy and I don’t love lying in bed, watching YouTube clips and eating takeaway. I don’t like relaxing. It’s not fun. I don’t enjoy it.” “Communion” “This is a really old song. It’s about Catholicism and I recorded a bit of it in New York. I decided to notch up the tempo a little bit to see what happened and the drummer we had, Morgan, was like, ‘I’ve got half an hour left. Do you want me to just record some drum fills?’ She did all these crazy-fast drum fills over this and I was like, ‘Oh, this should be a fast song, this should be a really, really, really, really quick song.’” “Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend)” “This is basically a mission statement. It’s not really about anything other than trying to describe myself. It’s just, ‘This is how I live and it’s not great, but also I’m still proud of myself, so shut up.’ I’m very messy. I love to drink. I love to cause a ruckus. I love to be an agent of chaos. I love to be really bold but, also, you’re not much better than me, so shut up. It’s inspired by the band Television and also Bombay Bicycle Club, who are my favorite band ever. I used to stalk them when I was a teenager.” “2 Wrecked 2 Care” “Before I launched myself really as an artist, I started renting a yoga studio because it was cheaper than renting a musical studio. I’d go in for four hours on a Wednesday after work and I’d write the song in the first two hours and then I’d record the song on video and then I’d post it on YouTube on Friday. This was one of the songs. At the time, I was working at a UPS as an admin assistant, and because of this song specifically, I was really late to work the next day and I got sacked. So, thanks, ‘2 Wrecked 2 Care’—I’m grateful. I didn’t want to work in a UPS.” “Geography Teacher” “My producer had a banjo and I started playing it and he was like, ‘I didn’t know you could play the banjo.’ All of the songs off of the second Laura Marling album are in G, and I learned how to play every single song off of that record when I was 15. So, I was like, ‘I know how to play in G.’ At the time, I was playing ‘Geography Teacher’ like a lot of other songs on the record, and he was like, ‘Should we not just do “Geography Teacher” on that?’ We tried it and it was perfect.” “I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!” “Those two years that I had in Manchester, I didn’t really know who I was. I was really confused, and I was super-drinking as well, and the whole time I was in this bad relationship. Two days after he moved out, I got this urge: I can’t really go to the pub by myself because I don’t have a boyfriend anymore, and if people know that I’m single and I’m going to the pub, then I’ll get in trouble—someone will follow me home or someone will beat me up. I was really, really upset about it. I was like, ‘Damn, you really do need to depend on men for safety as a woman out in the world.’ I wrote this song in about a half an hour, and it was the first song that I’d written in two years. It’s the reason that I started writing songs again. I probably would not be doing music right now if I didn’t write this song.” “I’d Want U” “I wrote this when I was 17. I recorded a version and posted it on SoundCloud anonymously and it just took off. It was on all these blogs and there were people in America that were like, ‘Who is this girl?’ I ended up getting a manager and all those kinds of things. I wrote it about a girl that I’d met at a house party who I really liked. It’s a really important song to me and I haven’t ever released it properly, so I was like, ‘I need to give that song the time of day. I need to give her a thank-you.’ Also, country music is the reason that I do music in the first place, and so I needed to close this album with the most country song I have.”