CMAT – Country at the Fringes
With humour, heartbreak and theatrical defiance, CMAT has built a cult following at the edge of country-pop — and now, the world is finally catching on.
At Glastonbury 2025, CMAT arrived dressed like a rodeo pop star from another planet—sequins blazing, fringe flying, boots planted, and voice unwavering. The Pyramid Stage crowd didn’t just watch her—they leaned in.
It was the kind of moment that feels inevitable only after it happens: Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, known to fans simply as CMAT, commanding the biggest platform in British music, still singing about heartbreak, hangovers, and the strange ache of being alive.
She didn’t explode onto the scene so much as orbit it, waiting for the industry to catch up. And now, with her third album on the way and her live show fast becoming legend, CMAT stands precisely where she’s always said she belonged: on the edge of things, shining.
CMAT’s story is too winding for tidy mythology, but that’s part of the point. Raised in Dunboyne, County Meath, she grew up with a head full of melodies, a love for pop drama, and a taste for country melancholy.
There was no musical dynasty or overnight discovery. Instead, there was a brief, bruising stint in Manchester with a now-defunct duo, a detour into retail, and a creative collapse that sent her back to Dublin.
Her turning point wasn’t an audition or a co-sign. It was a slow return to herself, often documented on social media, where she blended vulnerable songwriting with grandiose humour.
CMAT began uploading songs with titles that read like punchlines but landed like confessions. Her debut album, If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, became a cult classic on release in 2022. Beneath its camp and chaotic veneer was an artist meticulously crafting a voice that could hold both sorrow and absurdity. C<MA
CMAT is often called a country artist, but the label doesn’t quite fit—and she knows it. She’s described her sound as “Euro-country” not just to signal its Irishness, but to reflect the genre’s displacement. Her country isn’t the dustbowl or the truck stop; it’s a karaoke bar at closing time, a night bus through Dublin’s outskirts, a voice memo at 3 a.m. trying to make sense of something already lost.
The musical references range wide: Tammy Wynette, Charli XCX, Magnetic Fields, Meat Loaf. And while she’s drawn to Americana’s emotional directness, she delivers it with European surrealism. On stage and record, she’s melodramatic without irony, sincere without sentimentality.
That contradiction is her power. Her lyrics feel like diary entries written in eyeliner, full of exes, epiphanies and the desperate attempts to make sense of feelings that won’t behave. If her voice occasionally cracks under the weight of what she’s singing, it only underscores her ability to make spectacle feel strangely intimate.
To read the full article, see our last issue here.
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