Matthew Ryan is a singer/songwriter and fingerstyle guitarist working in many styles who will be releasing his debut album, A Little Imperfect, on March 27th, 2026. He began songwriting in his late teens and early 20’s, once opening for Christine Lavin.

However, he then spent the next 35 years as a professional chef before returning to music over a decade ago. Now he worked on the craft of songwriting and and looks towards Folk, Blues , Jazz, Americana and Modern Celtic for musical inspiration.

Today, we’re very pleased to premier his track “Through Your Life”, which arrives this Friday on February 20th, 2026, here on Wildfire Music + News. It’s a song whose title carries extra meaning in that it spans back to some of Matthew Ryan’s earliest songwriting, so has a longevity of its own.

“Through Your Life” could be described as a wedding song, and indeed, that was part of the song’s inception, but it’s a very singular kind of wedding song. It goes in for drama, for energy, and for light and shadow, rather than the gentle sentimentality you might expect from a song inspired by a wedding. For that reason, it’s quite a sprightly take on what a wedding might represent for Matthew Ryan, and the diversity of perspectives we all bring to such a major social and emotional event.

Firstly, the song has a jazzy swing to it, plenty of horns, and feels like something that you wouldn’t find out of place in a New Orleans club or street parade. There’s also the strident nature of the lyrics, and the room the song leaves for instrument irruptions of jubilant emotion. The recurrent line, “Make them always happy through your life,” has that emphatic command, “make”, which suggests that the power lies with us to bring happiness to our partners. It recommends energetically pursuing that cause if, at first, we don’t succeed. Weddings, of course, are about commitment, and the song also takes the long view, impressing through repetition that this little responsibility is, in fact, a life-long pursuit. The more you think about the lyrics of this song, the simpler and more weighty they seem.

Matthew Ryan also uses other lyrical images to bring a naturalistic, multi-cultural, and relatable feel to the song, such as comparing tears to rain, fights to storm clouds, and reconciliation to rainbows. It’s a message anyone can easily receive, and a directive that feels like both a wedding blessing and a kind of homily. The music is always there beneath the lyrics, and unfurls during instrumental segments as a kind of dancing march, which brings to mind the long procession of hours and days that lie ahead for a couple taking a major step in life together. However, under the weight of the command in the song, there’s also the sense of opportunity, of possibility, and the way that life carries us onwards to new adventures, like variations on a theme.

Matthew Ryan shares about the song:

For a friend’s wedding when I was in my early 20’s. This was the song that made me believe that I could be a songwriter.

Sadly the song has had a longer life than the marriage.

This song is what I always imagined this song could be when we finished recording.

Matthew Ryan’s album, A Little Imperfect, was recorded at Silvertone Studios in  Ardmore, PA, Produced by Alfred Goodrich and Matthew Ryan, engineered by Alfred Goodrich, and also mixed and mastered by Alfred Goodrich. Additional recording took place at Tom Naglee Studio in Cape May, New Jersey.

Matthew Ryan also plays live, and that includes performances at The Bitter End and The Blue Bird Café.