Maddie Zahm has never been shy about feeling things loudly, but Everything All The Time might be the first time she's built an entire album around the idea that feeling too much isn't a personality flaw, it's the whole point.
The project's title track came out of an unlikely place: a video that went viral for all the wrong reasons. "I wrote this song after I had a video go viral after I had a bit of anxiety about how overwhelming the world seems right now," Zahm explains. What followed was a pile-on she didn't ask for. "It hit the wrong side of the algorithm and I wound up with a bunch of folks giving me a hard time for being a feeler. The 'snowflake' comment hurt at the time and then I realized how beautiful and wonderful it is to get to feel things ten times over. I also have ADHD so there was that too."
That whiplash is baked directly into the song's structure. "I definitely wanted the music to feel the way it does to experience a large emotion all at once," she says. "That's why it's a fairly simple melody, vocal and piano in the beginning and then hits you with every instrument and vocal packed together." It's a neat trick: a song about being overwhelmed that's engineered to overwhelm you right back. The one thing she was careful to avoid, though, was turning it into a TED Talk. "I also wanted to make sure it didn't seem as though I was virtue signaling or even worse, calling myself an empath, haha."
The song came together with Adam Yaron, and by Zahm's account, neither of them was totally sure what they had. "When Adam Yaron and I wrote this we didn't really know if it was any good," she admits. "But I kept listening over and over again to it and it became quite the important intro." Sometimes the songs you're least sure about turn out to be load-bearing.
If "Everything All The Time" sets the emotional register for the record, the track she's most excited for people to hear operates on a completely different frequency: "'HOMETOWN LETDOWN' 'HOMETOWN LETDOWN!'" Zahm says, not so much answering the question as detonating it. The song was sparked by something almost too specific to make up—stumbling across a Reddit thread dissecting her exit from the church after she came out as gay. "I fear it's hysterical," she says, and it's the kind of line that tells you exactly what kind of songwriter she is: one who can find the punchline inside her own reckoning.
That range—a viral-anxiety ballad sitting next to a Reddit-thread comedy bit—is by design. "This album means a great deal to me," Zahm says. "And I love that it doesn't focus on one topic but lets them all coexist under the blanket of feeling a lot." As for what she wants listeners to walk away with, she's split the assignment in two: "I hope listeners who aren't huge feelers understand what it feels like to be overwhelmed with emotion. And I hope my listeners that are already like that feel seen."
It's a fitting statement from an artist whose career has been built on turning oversharing into a superpower. Zahm has racked up more than 345 million streams worldwide, with "You Might Not Like Her" reaching the Top 5 of Spotify's US Viral Chart, while "Fat Funny Friend" alone pulled in over two billion TikTok views. She's sold out headline tours on both sides of the Atlantic, shared stages with P!nk, and picked up praise from NPR, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and People—all while building an online following of nearly two million people who show up specifically for the mix of vulnerability, humor, and self-awareness she can't seem to help.
As for what's next, don't expect a rebrand. "Touring," Zahm says, "and watching Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season 5, probably." Amen to that.
Everything All The Time is out now, tune in!
Photo credit: Carianne Older
