Q+A: MADELEINE MAYI
Santa Barbara-raised and L.A.-based Madeleine Mayi's intention with her music is simple: “I like to give people enough but not too much. I give you a house and then you furnish it.” Closing out 2020 with her final single of the year, “ITRL,” the 23-year-old gives us the last teaser for the story she’s been dying to tell. She chronicles the experience of grief in her first full-length album, 2/14, out Valentine’s Day 2021. During an in-depth conversation with the singer-songwriter, we discuss her music origins, inspirations of all mediums, and the agency of art.
Can we start off with an introduction?
My name is Madeleine Mayi (it is actually my name, Mayi is my middle name), and I am a singer-songwriter based in L.A. I usually end up in the indie pop/indie rock genre. I’m 23, and I just released my latest single, “ITRL.”
How did you get into making music?
I started singing in choir when I was four and then all throughout high school. Outside of school, I was always singing in random duo bands, and just doing anything that I could do musically. There’s not tons of venues in Santa Barbara, so you have to find ways to be creative to do things. So I would throw house shows at my grandma’s and invite random friends. And then, when I was applying to college, I was like, “I don’t know what I should do, maybe I’ll just go study art history or something like that.” And my mom was like, “What are you talking about? You need to go study music. That's what you do with literally all of your time.” And I was like, “That makes sense!” I’m not one of those people that was like, “I wanted to be a rock star ever since I was six.” That's not how it worked for me. Basically, I went to college and started making music with my friends and falling in love with the art scene in L.A. After the first year of college, I had ruled out every career option except doing what I do now, which is make my own music and have my own voice, message, and platform. It was kind of a serendipitous thing when I started making music; it wasn’t super serious. And then it just was. I just fell into the deep end in love with it, and have been doing it now for about two years as my job and three years as my hobby.
Your playlist for your new single, “ITRL,” has a lot of well-known artists such as Clairo, Bon Iver, and Phoebe Bridgers. Aside from other musicians, do you find inspiration from other art mediums as well?
One hundred percent. And that’s something that I’ve started to incorporate slowly into my platform. Normally, I would go out to art galleries, or I’ll go see a play or a movie. I love all art, and that obviously has been so much more difficult this year, so I started doing this monthly art page on Instagram where I create, like, a pretty, temporary website where I just feature art that I loved that month. It’ll be painters, jewelry makers, musicians, clothing designers, just anything that I find inspirational in any way, shape, or form.
In a more serious way though, I have directly gained inspiration for songs that I’ve written from other art forms. One thing that is really important to me as an artist in developing my platform and voice is that I want to lift other art forms up for the rest of time, just because I think it’s cool to see how art can symbiotically exist, and how different forms can inform each other and play off each other.
From “love me” to “friendly fires” to “ITRL”: How did you go about choosing the singles and what do they tell us about the upcoming album?
I think “love me” was the most obvious choice for the first single, just because it’s like a nutshell of what the album will be. “friendly fires” captures a more cinematic nature that I wanted to bring out; it’s very visually evocative. I thought “friendly fires” would be a good expansion on what “love me” set out to the world. Honestly, the hardest choice was doing “ITRL” or another one, because “ITRL” plays a very specific role in the album and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to give that now. But I thought it would be cool to give people a view of it now, and then everyone can see how the meaning of it shifts when it’s in context. I’m very, very pleased with my single choices.
Is there a reason you chose Valentine’s Day for the release date?
There definitely is. The record title is going to be 2/14. “love me” came out on Valentine's Day of 2020, and every release that I’ve done has either been on a day with a 2 or a 14. The deeper meaning though, is that the record is about grief and loss. For the past two Valentine’s days, 2019, and 2018, we experienced the loss of close family friends. It was kind of crazy because Valentine’s Day is supposed to be this really cutesy, fun, romantic day. On Valentine’s Day in 2019, I remember going to a funeral and then playing a show the same day. It was just the weirdest day ever because, first of all, how do you go from something so heartbreaking to then having to talk to 100 people on stage, much less, sing? There was that aspect of it, but the show ended up being one of the first shows that I played where a lot more people than I expected showed up. It was just this weird day that went from here to here of emotions. That’s what inspired the idea for the record: it’s all about juxtaposing those dark feelings of grief or loss with your typical Valentine’s Day things that come to mind.
One thing that I am really excited about is that the record is not just a story—there's redemption at the end. It’s not just sad to be sad. The record is supposed to capture a specific time frame of someone’s experience with grief, and it goes from anger to where they start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And so, it kind of cuts off there, before they really get out of it, but you start feeling the hope at the end of it. That’s why I decided to put it out on Valentine’s Day because it’s a very bittersweet record. I thought it was kind of perfect, both personally and to everyone else who may not know all of those things.
I’m going to give people enough to be able to grasp onto the narrative but not too much to where it’s just my experience. I want people to be able to put their own experience into the situation as well.
Having written such intimate music, how do you deal with the reception of strangers to your personal story? How does that affect your creative process?
I think it’s something that you need to be really thoughtful about and intentional about as an artist. This might sound weird but I approached this artist thing at the very beginning with a very logical mind. I was like, “Do I have the emotional strength that it takes to be able to pursue this for the rest of my life?” If you fall into it without asking yourself these hard questions, you can get into situations where you feel like people are taking advantage of your experience or they're commodifing you, and then you are unable to sort of experience reality anymore. Then you feel like you need to get into this vicious cycle of being the troubled artist by causing negative things to happen. For me, it's important to remind myself that when I release something, it’s not mine anymore. That's why after I write a song, I sit down with myself and say, “Am I willing to let this go into other people’s hands? Do I think it’s worth it enough as a message to get put out there? Is it going to be too painful for me for this message to belong to other people?” I think that you need to ask yourself those questions as an artist or else you're going to get yourself in really uncomfortable situations.
How was the process of making the album? Did you collaborate with any new people?
Definitely rough. It’s a longer body of work than I’ve ever worked on and there’s a lot more editing that’s had to go into it, because it’s not trying to make four songs work together, it’s trying to make eight. But also with COVID-19, I only worked with two people in the studio. I am collaborating with a new producer this year, Cole Mitchell. He is a genius. And everyone else is pretty much consistent from the past—I like to work with the same people when it comes to the big stuff. But the only song that I co-wrote with someone was “love me”; I wrote it with my friend Matt DiMona. That’s the only song I’ve ever released that was not fully written by me.
The thing is, “ITRL” was the song I wrote the longest ago, and that was written, like, a year and a half ago. None of these songs were written this year. They were all written in 2019 or 2018. So all the stuff I have been working on this year has been working with new people via Zoom sessions and stuff like that. But you’ll be hearing that in 2021. All this stuff, thankfully, was all pretty much written and arranged before the pandemic hit, so it was just recording that was affected. I don’t have a big team when it comes to my recording. I have probably five people working on the music ends of things, so it makes things easier just because we are in the digital age so you can just send things back and forth until you get it right. But it was fun, it was fun to experiment.
Who are some artists you're listening to right now?
My friend syd B. She’s sick, she released this soul-crushing song called “RITF”, and it’s just so good. The two obvious records that I've been listening to this year are Taylor Swift’s folklore and Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher. I loved all the production on Punisher. I love Ray LeMontagne! I feel like people our age don’t really listen to Ray LeMontagne that much, but I think he’s an insanely talented songwriter. Recently though, I’ve been trying to up my mood, so I’ve been listening to a ton of Earth, Wind & Fire, Chaka Khan, Prince, and Stevie Wonder.