Mae Muller joins Josh Smith for his latest GLAMOUR UK column, Josh Smith Meets, for a post-Eurovision debrief to talk about thriving in the face of failure whilst letting go of comparisons and perfection as she releases her debut album, Sorry I’m Late.
I am midway through my rendition of Mae Muller's bop, I Wrote A Song, when the 26-year-old enters our Zoom chat. Luckily Mae missed most of my cat's chorus rendition whilst her audio connected. Relief. “Don’t worry,” Mae reassures me, laughing. “Whenever I meet another artist I'm like, ‘Don’t sing it! Don’t sing it’ And it always happens. I love it, so if it slips out, I'm not mad.”
Mae came to mass consciousness this year when said song/earworm became the UK’s Eurovision entry. Yet despite the pre-show hype, Mae finished in the unjust place of 24th and second from bottom. Fear of ‘failure’ - especially failing in public - is something that stops many of us from putting ourselves out there, so I wonder what she learnt from it? Her response is something we can all learn from.
“I literally gave myself a day to really wallow in it,” the 26 year-old admits. “It was so unnatural for me because usually if anything happens I just get straight back up. But this was so huge. I physically couldn't. I had to give myself a minute, but wasn’t going to let it consume me. What kept me going was just seeing the support and obviously for a minute I couldn't see that. I was just like, ‘my life is over. Everything's ruined.’ But once I started taking control of the narrative and owning it in my own way, such a weight lifted off my shoulders.” If you haven’t seen her TikTok response, run now.
“I just had to focus on those positives,” she continues. “The second I just started having fun with it, it helped me get over it, but I can't do the pity party thing. I had people looking at me like, ‘oh.’ And I was like, ‘no, we're not doing that. No matter what the result was, I just had such an amazing experience and I learned so much and I've come out as a stronger artist, so there's no need for pity.’ There was no escaping that it was disappointing, but there were so many wins in that experience and that's what I hold with me. Now so many more people are going to hear this album, which I'm so proud of. That's all I can ever ask for.”
The sheer highs and lows of being an artist in the music industry are exemplified in Mae’s week which followed her Eurovision disappointment and ended with her securing her debut top 10 single. “That just sums up the music industry perfectly,” she tells me. “Or any creative industry! One day you feel like the world is ending and your career is over, and then the next day you're like, ‘oh, actually everything's fine.’ There's such highs and there's such lows and you just have to find a way to navigate it. Getting that top 10 was just such a huge moment for me, I felt like I had such a strong support system and it was exactly what I needed at that moment. It definitely put a pep back into my step!”
Mae’s debut album, Sorry I'm Late, which drops 29th September, is certainly packed full of more potential chart-topping bops which will put a pep into your step. But it stands for more than that, there is some substantial mash to go alongside these bangers.
“It’s a commentary of the female experience growing up through life from a girl to womanhood,” she says, describing the album. “I literally grew up writing this album and it touches on all the pressures that we can face, but also being at peace with that. How it's okay to feel the repercussions of those pressures but then we've got to keep it moving. A lot of women, no matter what sort of field you're in, we're always putting up these fences and trying to be emotionally really strong and to never break a sweat. I carried that for a long time.”
Mae describes the songwriting process as, “free therapy for myself,” which is apt as she is serving us a therapist-chic look today, complete with big brown thick rimmed glasses. A look that she perfectly describes as, “making me look like I know I'm talking about.”
With so many autobiographical tracks on the album from Bitch With A Broken Heart to Porn Lied To Us - song titles that scream they need to be listened to - I wonder what the album has helped her process the most? “Comparing myself,” Mae replies. “Whether that's career wise or looks wise. I've always been really, really good at doing that. I have had to unlearn that. You are taught to do that because ‘it's good to be in competition with other people.’ You think it makes you work harder, but really it just clouds everything and makes things that are meant to be fun, not so fun, it makes you resentful and you don't want that. Music is meant to be fun. You need to learn that everyone is in their own lane.”
Is her journey towards self love complete now? “I'm still on that journey, but I'm much better than before. At the start of my career, I felt like I had to write certain songs and had to show myself in a certain way: as this strong bad bitch who doesn't take any sh*t. All my songs were about that, it's such an important part of who I am, but now I’m finding the strength in vulnerability and how there's actually a lot of power in that and accepting I'm not going to be that person all the time. Self love is loving all parts of myself, not just the one that's on top, feeling cute and slaying.”
Getting to this point of being Mae Muller: Bad Bitch 2.0 has been a journey from starting out “putting on shows for my family in the front room every Christmas time,” uploading tracks to SoundCloud in 2017, securing a manager from an Instagram video, supporting Little Mix on tour to notching up over 2.7 billion streams globally, including the huge collaboration, Better Days with NEIKED and Polo G which even hit the charts in USA. I wonder if there is a point Mae would like to go back in her career and give herself some advice?
“Maybe at the very beginning,” she replies, “I would say, don’t allow people to tell you who you are, don’t not allow people to go, ‘you are this kind of artist, you need to be doing this,’ or ‘you can't wear that to a meeting, you need to be wearing this.’ I was so young that I allowed others to mould me into something that they thought I should be. I kind of lost my identity a little bit and now I’m reclaiming my identity. I'm still figuring out exactly who I am and what I want to say. But I think through writing I'm finding that I'm closer to that every single day. Don't let anyone else tell you who you are because you're the only person that can really make that decision.”
Whilst the album arrives at a time when Mae is thriving, it also comes at a time when female artists are thriving too. But there’s no mistaking the issues they still face from the likes of Ava Max, Cardi B and Bebe Rexha being attacked on stage to female artists still only making up 30% of the year ending charts. Is there anything that still frustrates Mae about being a woman in the music industry? “There is such an imbalance in the standard women are held up to,” she says. “Especially for performing, just as an example, you need to have the most amazing outfit on, but not one hair is meant to be out of place, not one bit of back fat is meant to be showing, you need to be looking so picturesque, but be performing and dancing and hitting every note. I feel like men are just not held up to the same standard. I just wish that the music was enough sometimes and not all the added extra pressure was put on top.”
“There is still a very double standard of what people expect from female artists,” Mae adds..”It’s slowly changing but we're meant to be the picture of perfection all the time. It's tiring and almost impossible to achieve. But that's why with my live shows I strive off the imperfection and it's a little rough around the edges sometimes. If I forget the words or I trip over, that's what I love about performing live, is that things can go wrong. I'm not here to be perfect. I'm here to put on a good show and for people to have a good time.”
Being the fearless artist certainly helps Mae on her mission to change the ‘perfection’ dial not only in her life but the industry as a whole. “I've always not been afraid to say how I feel,” she admits. And that is why Mae Muller is the unstoppable - and unflappable - artist she is even when faced with failure.
Mae Muller’s debut album, Sorry I’m Late is available from 29th September and you can pre-save it now.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qLjApqauqp2WtKLGyKecZ5ufY8Kse8Crq6KbnJp8rq3EZqSupJyav26%2FzqupsmWZonqtrdOe