Nick Rich Defies Industry Expectations With His Debut Album, ‘Mad’
The album is out today.
Music industry executives told Nick Rich not to release an album this early in his career.
He did anyway.
“I really just tried to tune out all the noise. I knew that I would be more proud of myself to just put out the album and not try to wait for the perfect opportunity,” Rich says.
The independent singer-songwriter’s debut album, Mad, was released today.
The album builds on the raw storytelling that Rich has shown in his singles, but perhaps this time, he looks inward more than ever before.
“I went through another terrible relationship, and that really inspired me to write about my own flaws,” Rich says. “When you’re with friends and you talk about your exes, of course you always bash them and then you always omit the parts where you also screwed up. I wanted to talk about the parts that I feel like I screwed up.”
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The album’s lyrics — most of which were written in early 2024 — now serve as a cautionary tale.
“I’m trying not to fall into the same habits of self-destruction that I usually do,” Rich says.
Rich has never been afraid to be vulnerable in his music, but he usually kept one thing hidden: his face. Many of his past single covers left him literally in the shadows.
With Mad, that changes.
The album cover — photographed by Mark Anthony Williams — shows Rich in a three-quarter profile. His fair skin and red hair stand out against a dark background.
This decision didn’t just mark a visual shift; it ended up shaping the album’s tracklist, Rich says. Once the album cover was finalized, he would ask himself if a song matched the visual.
He cut several songs to finalize the tracklist, which includes a cover of George Michael’s 1996 song “Spinning the Wheel.” The song confronts the fear of transmitting or catching sexual diseases, especially within the LGBTQ+ community.
“In the ‘80s and ‘90s, there were so many artists who were so focused on bringing up the things that were really important to talk about within their own communities,” Rich says. He references Madonna, Freddie Mercury, and, of course, George Michael. “And now, for some reason, we’ve lost that.”
“Mad,” to Rich, is both insanity and anger.
“We need to be talking about the things that are killing us," he says.
At the time he was making the album, Rich was listening to projects like George Michael’s 1996 Older — which features “Spinning the Wheel” — and Sade’s 1992 Love Deluxe.
“My album definitely has a throwback to the ‘90s in a lot of ways, with a modern production twist,” Rich says.
He also notes Radiohead’s Amnesiac and Adele’s 25. Similar to her album, Mad “has more of that open and airy feeling to it.”
Like his predecessors, Rich says the goal of Mad was to create songs that feel timeless.
To achieve that, he collaborated again with producer Cameron Bortz, who previously worked with him on the song “Hot Mess.” Producer Romain Drouet was a first-time collaborator.
His artistic collaborators are Rich’s only form of a team. As a completely independent artist with no manager or label, he defied industry advice by releasing an album.
“I just feel like whatever is waiting for me, the next step in my career is waiting for me after I put this out,” Rich says. “Nothing is going to come along because I’m waiting.”
There’s no more waiting. Mad is out now.