There’s an adage that bad times make good music. If that’s true, thank god for Last Good Thing, a project by Chicago musician Madison Regan that marries the sharpness of pop-punk with Madison’s confessional-style songwriting, often from the perspective of an unreliable narrator. 

For Madison, music has never been a choice. She’s been finding melody in chaos since she was 14 when she first started songwriting. In 2020, as she wrote her way through lockdowns, moves, and more, the first songs that would become Last Good Thing were born. In an era of glossy songs that feel more like they’re written to trend than to tell any truth, Madison approaches songwriting as an excavatory process. It has right and wrong answers, and she will chip away at finding the right answer until the song tells her it’s done. Even if she’s not the song’s narrator, that doesn’t mean it’s not honest.

Though Madison is the sole songwriter of Last Good Thing, she’s never felt like a solo artist. The point of Last Good Thing is the camaraderie and collaboration of being in a team. The band name, Last Good Thing, is somewhat a reaction to a false sense of humility and self-deprecation she finds in the music industry. Why make music if you don’t think you’re the Last Good Thing that will come out of a label, a subgenre, a town, or anything else? 

“You have to think of yourself as that talented, that special,” Madison says. “You have to know you have a right to be there, and you have to try and beat the standard set by other bands you admire. It’s the motivator, and also the hope that the people you surround yourself with consider themselves the last good thing too.”

Last Good Thing makes music that’s passionate and firm in the belief that nobody is coming to save us, so we have to save each other. It wants for a better world, for a better society, and for us to treat each other better. That said, Madison is okay if her music doesn’t inspire hope. If you just need the outlet to rage, there’s plenty of material.

Last Good Thing’s first single, “Wish You Were,” is out January 14th.