Maria Lane makes moodiness into a masterclass on vulnerability
“I’m a crybaby. I was actually crying inside that CVS.”
After releasing her first single in 2021, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Maria Lane knew she wanted to start over. “Strangers Again,” as she told the FADER, didn’t feel like the best introduction to the world; leaning more toward pop than the acoustic indie-folk sound she finds a comfortable home in.
“Sometimes when you first work with a producer and you're a songwriter, you don't really know how to mesh those two worlds together,” she said of the process. “I was very much like, I guess whatever he says is right.” After connecting with producer Julian Giaimo through her partner, they’d go on to craft singles like her latest release “Nashville” and her 2022 album maybe i’ll feel better together. Now, her warm, wistful, and sometimes haunting voice floats over acoustic strings and ambient sounds, helping make songs like “mean it” and “serotonin” feel intimate; even conversational.
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For Lane, the songwriting process can be all-encompassing; often resulting in deeply vulnerable lyrics about situationships gone wrong, watching her sister move hundreds of miles away, and the turbulence of turning 26. “I'm a crybaby. I go through stuff,” she said, going on to describe one of the first songs she ever wrote: an angst-ridden breakup ballad written after a pre-teen breakup. “I'm such a sensitive person that the only way I feel like I can validate my feelings and understand them is by writing about them, and it helps to put them in a poetic sense.” On her 2022 single “crying in a cvs”, she detailed a casual relationship that left her at her most vulnerable in the middle of a shampoo aisle; her straightforward stanzas boast the kind of earnestness you’d expect from a tear-filled phone call with a heartbroken friend. “I was actually crying in that CVS and I was so stressed out because I just wanted to buy my shit and get out,” she said. “I laugh about that song because it was so dramatic. I wasn't even dating this guy!”
Lane knows just how universal her love of dreamy melodies and moody subjects really is, comparing her music to ripping a page out of her journal. “I want people to know that they don't have to feel alone if they can relate to the lyrics,” she said. “I do write these songs for myself, but once I release them, I want other people to have their experiences with them. I want to let go of what I wrote and just be like, this is for you to take as you will.”
As a new artist, Lane thinks platforms like BandLab and ReverbNation are instrumental in connecting artists with the kinds of opportunities they may otherwise have missed, especially in those first few crucial years of their careers. “I think having access to these things is really nice and in terms of networking and putting yourself out there, it’s really cool,” she explained. “It's really nice to give people opportunities like this who are still new.”
With a new single and subsequent project dropping this fall, Lane already seems ready to evolve into something new. “Now I understand why some artists who've been putting music out for years are like, I hate my first album. You feel so much growth from where you were at that point,” she said. “I think the lyrics [on the upcoming project] are definitely more specific and the production is a little bit more experimental. I didn’t want it to sound exactly like the album, but I still wanted it to sound intimate.”
Artists are often lifelong students, committed to the undoing of everything they know as long as it serves the creative process. To Lane, making peace with vulnerability has been the most important one. “Putting your music out is scary at first, but I think once you take that step to just release your music and share yourself with the world, it's a really special thing,” she explained. “It always feels like I'm sharing a piece of myself.”