Spotlight: Maya Delilah Works Catharsis Into Music With Her New EP
SITTING WITH A MUG OF TEA IN HER COLORFUL KITCHEN — 21-year-old musician Maya Delilah has just Ubered home from a rehearsal for an upcoming show. “It's the first gig I’m doing where people are coming to see me and I’m not supporting someone else so there’s an added pressure, but it’s okay! I’m excited!” She seems both apprehensive and incredibly excited about the show. “I'll just have some whiskey before,” she laughs.
With the release of a new EP on the horizon that documents her recent heartbreak, Delilah’s unique blend of jazz, soul, and pop broke through during the pandemic. Since releasing her dreamy debut single, “Tangerine Dream,” just last year, Delilah has honed her craft and established her sound of angelic vocals, relatable lyrics and dazzling guitar licks. Dive into our conversation below, where in between the usual technical difficulties of switching wifi and having the front doorbell ring (“My sister will get that,” Delilah says) we discuss heartbreak, misogyny in the music industry, and Delilah’s views on social media.
Delilah describes her upcoming EP as “a breakup EP … I feel like everyone’s being doing this this year — Olivia Rodrigo did it … and then Billie Eilish’s new song was like, ‘Fuck you’ to an ex. There's obviously something going through the air!” Delilah talks candidly about the breakup which inspired the entire EP. “I actually wrote every song on this EP within the space of a month very soon after the breakup,” she explains. “It was literally the complete journey of my emotions, although one song on it was written just before the break up and ironically the message of the song is, ‘We can be together as long as you treat me well — don’t mess this up!’ And then we broke up.” In discussing the process of creating the EP, Delilah explains that it was cathartic. “Someone recently asked me if I saw my ex on the street what would I say, and I thought to myself, I’d probably say nothing,” she says. “I have so many emotions towards it and giving him just one wouldn’t make me feel any better; it wouldn’t be satisfying, and that’s the beautiful thing about getting to write a five-song EP about one experience: you can actually get every emotion out.”
Musically, Delilah discusses how she went into the studio sessions for the EP driven by her emotional response to the breakup. “It’s really interesting because I never went into the sessions being like, ‘This is my reference for the style of a song,’ which is unusual,” Delilah explains. “Usually I am very on it with references and make playlists of references, but for this — because I was in my emotions — I didn’t even have time to think of how it would fit with someone else’s work; I was just so ‘I FEEL LIKE THIS,’ and then it was more of an ‘Okay, these chords might match that — let’s go!’ And it all just worked out that way.”
On her music inspirations, Delilah notes, ‘Currently I’m listening to a lot of Anderson. Paak, Tyler The Creator, John Mayer, Derek Trucks — I go through phases. Those are the ones who have stuck with me in terms of artists who have shaped my sound from the beginning, because I was definitely referencing those artists in my first EP. Whether or not I got that style across, I’m not sure — I think I’m still developing it. I’m very easily influenced by the tiniest thing, like one change of a chord in one song and then a hip hop beat in another song and then a saxophone in a jazz standard — it’s like a massive jigsaw puzzle, but I like it because I never expect what sound I’m going to come out with next; I try to keep it as consistent as I can so that it’s not a complete mess … Growing up, my parents played so many different styles from old school jazz to Latin music to East African music to hip hop to soul — literally everything. I grew up very much listening to ‘Continuum’ by John Mayer — that was my album growing up. And Jack Johnson [as well] — they are very nostalgic artists for me. And then Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin and all the classics.”
“Thank You,” the latest single to be released by Delilah, serves as the perfect teaser for her upcoming EP. With a timeless melody, bittersweet lyrics, and soothing harmonies, “Thank You” was the last song Delilah wrote for the EP. “I think with ‘Thank You’ there was definitely still an element of pain because it was just a month after, and all of my emotions were so fresh. It was the last song we wrote and I knew I didn’t want it to be bitter or jokey — I wanted it to be incredibly sincere. I’m not in touch with my ex anymore so it was like, ‘I get to say what I want to say now through the song,’ and that in itself is very cathartic because it’s not nice to have things left unsaid.”
Delilah is probably known to most people as an incredibly talented guitar player, her expertise on the instrument earning her just under six million likes on TikTok with videos of her sharing her impressive improvisational skills. But, of course, this skill took years of practice. “I started playing when I was 8, and I was already playing the piano,” she describes. “My piano teacher, Jeremy — as much as I love him — was very much interested in scales and getting ready for exams. Then my sister started playing guitar, which I thought was super cool, so I started playing too. I picked it up relatively fast — it wasn’t a chore — it was, ‘What song do you love — let's play that,’ and that's still what I do to this day … I don't think my mum has ever once told me to go practice my guitar, whereas with piano it was argument after argument! … I’m trying to be more disciplined now because I don't know the scales, I don't know the modes or any theory, which sometimes bites me in the ass a bit!”
And the first song Delilah learned on the guitar? “‘Hey Jude’ by The Beatles.”
As a talented guitarist, Delilah is aware of the misogyny which often surrounds women who play the guitar — particularly the electric guitar. “My main message that I try to portray is to encourage women of all ages to pick up the guitar, because I have definitely experienced sexism, from things as subtle as a sound engineer asking me, ‘Do you need me to tune your guitar?’ or ‘Do you know how this amp works?’ whereas they would never say that to a guy, and I've seen them not say it to guys I'm playing gigs with,” Delilah elaborates. “Something that happens quite a lot is that I'll be carrying a guitar case down the street and guys all the time seem to say to me, ‘Oh, is that an acoustic guitar?’ I feel like there's a really strong stereotype of boys playing electric guitar and if girls do play guitar, it's going to be an acoustic guitar and they will sing at the same time.”
Delilah goes on to share one particular experience of sexism that has stuck with her. “I once went to a guitar shop and it was all men who work there, and it was me and my dad who went, and we walked in and they called me a pet name and asked me if I wanted to try a beginner guitar,” she describes. “When I started playing a guitar, I could see their faces change, which was very satisfying, but it's things like that that I can completely imagine someone who is just starting out or isn't that confident being really discouraged.” Delilah also aims to share awareness of the stereotypes and sexism which surrounds women playing guitar. “There's a lot of people who don't seem to see that it is a stereotype, and I've posted posts about it saying that I want to encourage women to start playing the guitar because it's a male-dominated instrument — which is a fact — especially the electric guitar, and then all of the reply comments are always from men and they're always saying things like, ‘Oh, you're just doing this for attention’ or ‘This is not true.’ I get messages quite often of girls saying they bought their first guitar because they've seen my videos, and that kind of thing means the absolute world to me, and I want to keep promoting that as much as I can.”
It’s no secret that social media has had a massive impact on Delilah’s career, as her millions of TikTok likes and healthy Instagram following all work to build a platform for her to share her music. However, like most of us, Delilah has “such a mixed headspace with social media … I'm so grateful for what it's done for me — especially TikTok: there's no other platform that can get one video to two million views overnight, and that really helps with getting more people to listen to my music. I love playing guitar on Instagram and I can see that people really enjoy it, which I love, but it's always in my mind: How many of these people are going to listen to my music on Spotify or come and see your show? It's not just them seeing me as a guitarist. It's weird, my manager will text me like, ‘Spend an hour today on Instagram as work,’ so I get a cup of tea, do some scrolling, make some content. Although, taking a selfie is still not very natural to me.”
As a final point, we discussion fashion and how Delilah’s father working in the film industry helped shape Delilah’s colorful, eccentric personal style. “I've grown up with my dad who's a colorist for film and TV, which is a really cool job, and my mum is a set decorator as well, so I've grown up in film industry life,” she says. “When I was growing up, I would go into his work and watch him work on this beautiful cinematography and all of these beautiful colors, and especially recently I've noticed how that has impacted my fashion and my personal style. I think more recently I've taken inspiration from Tyler The Creator's fashion and he works with color amazingly — his fashion is quite Wes Anderson, and I love Wes Anderson. If I could make it work somehow, I would dress like a Wes Anderson character all the time.’
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