The MX in mxmtoon is now for Mexico.
Some days ago, Maiabetter known by her stage name, mxmtoonvisited Mexico City for the first time to offer a showcase intimate in The Rock & Roll Club, as well as getting to know some sites in the Mexican capital. A few hours before Maia went on stage at the small vinyl store, I had the opportunity to talk with her about her surprising arrival in our country, as well as her recent and future projects.
It was the night of January 31 that some lucky fans were able to see mxmtoon finally play in Mexico in a small show where the artist conquered the hearts of all attendees with her charisma and her ukulele, something that Maia I had waited a long time.
I’m so excited. I feel like I should have come much sooner. There were things that got in the way, obviously, but I am very happy and grateful because I received many messages from fans who will come telling me ‘I can’t wait to see you, I’ve waited so long!’ and that gives me hope that I can continue doing this in the future. I never thought I would visit Mexico and it is really cool Being able to be here (…) is the first time I will play in Mexico and I am super excited because not every day you can come to a city to get to know its culture, its people and really discover a new place. “I’m here for fun and for work.”
Prior to your visit to our country, mxmtoon She shared a brief message in Spanish on social networks in which she announced her arrival in Mexico, however, she herself admits that she still needs to learn the language a little more, and what better motivation than her large base of Spanish-speaking fans.
I started learning when I was 10 in school and then when I graduated high school I found out that a lot of people who listened to my music spoke Spanish, so I watched all these videos that people upload to YouTube where the description is in Spanish and the comments are in Spanish and I thought ‘oh, I should probably go back to what I learned in school’so I tried that but it is very difficult.”
Nonetheless, Maia does not rule out the possibility of one day writing a song in Spanish, although I would prefer it to be by another artist, so I recommended some acts from Mexico’s alternative scene with names from Natalia Lafourcade until budaya and Ivana.
Oh, I’d need a lot of help with that, but I’d really like to try it. “I would love to know more about Mexican artists, I need some recommendations.”
The latest release of mxmtoon is about plum blossom (revisited), an album of remakes of some of his first songs, which he wrote more than seven years ago. That is why I asked her about what it was like to revisit not only her music, but the feelings and memories of that special time for her.
I started writing the songs when I was 16, so with a number of them I didn’t have a lot of tools to help me make them sound the way I wanted them to sound. Going back and giving them a moment to perfect them was really special. I even got several messages from people who are coming to the show saying that they have been listening to me for six years and I think we have grown a lot. It’s fun to go back to something you did when you were a teenager and think about how you could make yourself more proud of it if you had access to everything you have now, so I think it’s a fun reflection to look back and think about how “You have come far since then.”
After several years and thousands more followers, Maia She shared with me some of the most valuable learnings she has obtained during her career and the main changes she has gone through since she was that teenager who wrote songs in the comfort of her room.
I only knew how to work on my own and in my room for a long time, so a lot of the new things I learned were how to work in studios, write with other people, and produce a bit more. Apply all of that to plum blossom (revisited) it was fun”.
For this material, mxmtoon had the help of Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs in production, one of her musical heroines since she was younger.
She is so cool and has been in the music industry for a long time. I remember I started listening to it when I was probably 13 and now we found out that we’re neighbors, which is really funny, but I think there’s nothing more impactful and helps you understand how far you’ve come than working with someone who has inspired from a very early stage of your work. It’s like a dream come true”.
When asking Maia Who else would you like to work with in the future, he answered me without hesitation: “I would really love to work with any of the boygenius, that would be great! “It would be my dream collaboration, they are very talented”so now it is also one of my most desired collaborations and laughingly we hope it will happen someday not too distant.
Going back to recording songs he wrote when he was 16, I wondered if Maia She felt embarrassed by some of them.
I’m proud of myself and my younger self for being brave enough to make art because I wanted to… but there are certainly other songs that make me quite sad like “1-800-DATEME”, I can’t believe that was the first song I put out! she confesses to me between laughs.
Given this reflection, I asked Maia What would you say to your self from back then if you had the opportunity to talk to her.
Let her not be so hard on herself and also be even braver than she was. I think I was very scared when so many people started listening to my songs and I was ready to run away in the opposite direction thinking oh my parents are going to find out I make music, this is so scary, I don’t want them to know!’ but it all worked out and I’m so grateful, but I wish I believed in myself a little more and not let things like imposter syndrome stop me from writing on my own. I feel like it’s very difficult to start when you’re a teenager because it’s very easy to convince yourself that you’re not good enough, but I think teenagers are more capable than they think.”
And in that he is right, well mxmtoon At just 17 years old, he managed to take advantage of a strong online community to share his music and story, which resonated with the youth who grew up watching live streams on Twitch and venting their daily thoughts on Twitter. Thanks to her songs, thousands of teenagers found a new voice with which they could empathize and identify, leading to Maia to become the great artist she is today.
When I first started I was one of very few mixed Asian and bisexual people talking about topics like race, identity and sexuality and now I’m one of many, which is really good because we can see how the music industry has changed to tell more stories and have more representation, so I feel very grateful to be a part of something that seems to be moving in a positive direction and I can only hope that we continue to share new stories with different people from different places. “I am very fortunate that my story can be told and I hope that there are more people who can share theirs.”
The visit of mxmtoon to Mexico was a surprise even for his most die-hard fans, since he has not currently released any new songs or made any announcements about any LP until now, because after asking him about the future of his musical project, Maia He shares with me that he is finishing a new album.
I’ve been working on my third album since last year and I think that for several of those songs I can say that I feel that they are some of the best things I’ve ever written and it’s a very nice feeling to not be so critical the first time I hear something that I’ve done. When I worked with more people in the past I kept very quiet and didn’t contribute ideas but now I feel more confident in my voice to say ‘did you know? No one else thinks the things I think or hears what I do, so I have to share my ideas, otherwise they will never get out into the world.’so I feel like having that mentality was very important to realize that I can be a great singer-songwriter even though it’s been seven years hahaha.”
With this third material from mxmtoon and a surprise visit to our country, we hope that Maia He will return soon to give us another magical night of longer duration in which we can listen to both his existing catalog and the new songs that he claims contain some of his best lyrics.
Most of the third album is done. I think I’m in the final stages of that, finishing production and everything, but I’ve been writing too much. I have more than 30 demos that I’ve worked on, but the album won’t be that long, I have to select them, but that’s what I’ve been focusing on and I think there will be several shows this year in North America, I hope to expand them to be more international, but my main purpose is to finish my next material because it was fun to work on plum blossom (revisited), “But it’s been two years since I’ve put out new music, so I’m excited to see what people think about the new album when it comes out.”
