Introducing MAY-A with her latest single ‘Green’
18-year-old Byron Bay-raised, Sydney-based songwriter MAY-A today shares her latest single, ‘Green’. Listen HERE.
Having written music since the age of 12, MAY-A is prolific but patient, sitting on a collection of over 100 demos while also painstakingly crafting tracks which have spent years in development, often over the course of hours spent alone at her piano. Now fresh out of high school, ‘Green’ is the third single to be released from MAY-A’s goldmine, following on from her debut, ‘Fool’s Paradise‘, and her follow-up single, ‘All Girls Aren’t the Same‘, the strength of which scored her a supporting slot on Wafia’s recent national tour. As a result, her music is a compelling document of her adolescence as it unfolds before herself, with the honesty and open-hearted sincerity of the most private journal.
Over the years, she’s honed a brand of songwriting that marries the classic structures and poignant storytelling of parental favourites such as Amy Winehouse that permeated her household growing up, with the post-genre sensibility of contemporary pop iconoclasts Juice WRLD and Billie Eilish. On ‘Green’, MAY-A packages the millennial relatability of BENEE inside the haunting production and suburban melancholy of Lorde and the shimmering indie-pop choruses of Jack River.
Of the track, MAY-A shares that: “Green is an outlook on the way that validation fuels the way we live, especially in green teens. Young, impressionable and desperate to be accepted by people they don’t even like. I wrote it when I was 15 and bored by the hierarchy of high school. It paints a picture of the things that teenagers think are important until they realise they aren’t.”
Lyrically, ‘Green’ builds on the mature social observations about interpersonal relationships displayed on her previous single, ‘All Girls Aren’t the Same’. This time, she turns her gaze towards the superficial sameness of her peers, the disconnect between appearance and reality. With her velvety voice, shifting cadence, reverb-twinkling guitars and a blooming chorus that sounds resplendent yet world-weary at the same time. Like Beabadoobee and Clairo, MAY-A captures the competing feelings of wanting to escape the rush of youth while also longing to throw yourself into it, of choosing not to be anywhere else, even if you’ll regret some of those decisions later on.
‘Green‘by MAY-A is out now, buy/stream it here.
PRAISE FOR MAY-A
“5 stars for a star in the making. may-a’s relatability and understated pop reminds me of early lorde and this one will stay in your head long after it ends.”
Declan Byrne, triple j Unearthed (5 stars)
“Some artists feel the need to make a flashy statement when they burst onto the scene but that’s not the case for MAY-A… A really strong debut”
The Interns