welcome to from NYLON Liner Notes, a deep dive into the untold stories that went into the creation of our favorite tracks, straight from the artists themselves. Here, Maya Hawke breaks down three songs from his latest album Angel of Chaos.
Weeks before the release of his third studio album, Angel of Chaos, Maya Hawke is ready to take it out into the world. “I really did it as an album, and so having to split up the singles and leave them out … I'm so excited to have it all,” she says, calling from her temporary home in Atlanta, Ga. ., where the latest season of Strange things. (“It's going really well,” she says of the shoot. “It's really fun to be with everyone again, and it's a little sentimental already, so it's all good.”
The album, released on May 31, reunites Hawke with regular collaborators Christian Lee Hutson, Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe, all of whom also worked on his previous album. moss Recorded between The Outlier in Woodstock, New York and Electric Lady Studios in Manhattan, the album became an instant hit with listeners and critics alike, with Hawke's songwriting at the fore.
Here, the artist breaks down three songs from the album, sharing behind-the-scenes stories of the inspirations behind them and how they were made.
“loser”
“Something clicked in me where I changed from this feeling of inadequacy around these Ivy League students, where I was just this kind of delinquent actress.”
The song was actually written in a lot of time. The first round of writing this song happened, unwittingly, on a day when my brother had a bunch of his [college] friends in the state for the weekend. He and I went for a walk, and when we came back, this fire had started in the brush near our house, which is an old log farmhouse. We had this panic of trying to put out this fire, but then he and I sat down and wrote the prechorus, “Well, I was like embers on leaves.” We walked around with this in our back pockets for a while and forgot about it. At some point, I came up with this little tag that I thought would be a good thing in a song at some point, “Now I know it's me who's losing me.”
Later, we had dinner and we were all saying what our wish was if we had a wish, and this young lady said her wish was to write the next great American novel. Something clicked in me where I shifted from this feeling of inadequacy around these Ivy League students, where I was just this kind of delinquent actress. I mean, even somebody's mom at one point was like, “Oh, it's so nice to be here with all of you. You're going to have these relationships that you made at this Ivy League school for the rest of your life.” And I was like, “Oh God, I'm going to throw up.” But when I heard her say that, I said, “Oh, you don't want to write the next great American novel. You want to write the best novel you can write. You want to be specific.”
I remember when I had a generic ambition, when I said, “I want to be a movie star.” But before I made the decision to do this work, I made sure I was specific; that he would like to be an actor, even if he were an acting teacher, even if he were doing regional theater. Whatever happens along the way, I would always want to make this decision. And so, in that moment at dinner, I started to have a lot of love for the things I had learned in my life and the things I hadn't, and I let go of some of my jealousy.
The song came from those moments. The last moment was after a show I played at The Colony in Woodstock. We went back to that house where we first wrote, “I stayed like coal in leaves,” and we were in the living room late at night after the show. My brother and I started repeating the prechorus and I combined it with, “Now I know I'm the one who's losing me.” well [Lazar Davis]my long-time collaborator, the producer of my last record and a brilliant writer, started going, “Lose, lose, lose.” I have the recording. It was this really exciting moment where you felt the song was happening.
“Black Ice”
“Sadie Sink is one of my favorite singers in the world and one of my favorite people; she was just in the neighborhood.”
That was the first song I wrote for the record. There was a day when I was in drama school, so that would have been 2017, a long time ago, and I was in upstate New York. I had to go back to the city to go to class, and it started snowing, and I thought, “We could lie. We could just say it snowed. We got snowed in, we couldn't even open the door. And we couldn't go back”. Later, during the pandemic, I had a moment of missing that time in my life and missing that person I was with. I started working on “It was snowing when we woke up and we thought about staying home.” That melody came and I played with it. For years, I had it sitting in my back pocket for years, and I was working on other little verses, and I tried to finish it, and it even had a different chorus at one point.
I was singing it in front of Christian [Lee Hutson] once, randomly during the time we were working moss. He said, “What is this?” And I said, “Oh, that's nothing. That's just this little tune that I've had for years.” He says, “Did you write that tune?” Up until that point, I had really seen myself as a poet in a band. I would always write my songs with music, but then I would throw away my music and think it was bad, and save my words and give them to someone who I thought was better equipped to write music. And he said, “That's the music for that song.” And it encouraged me a lot between when I did moss and when we did Angel of Chaos use my own tunes and write my own stuff.
There are a lot of melodies on this record and chord progressions that my bandmates wrote, that Ben and Will [Graefe], and Christian and Jesse Harris]added. But there's also a lot of music that I wrote on this record. I almost wrote on every song. That's very different on this record, and it's because of “Black Ice” and Christian's encouragement that this record is what it is.
My friend Eliza Callahan, who is an amazing member of the band Purr, came to sing the outro, and so did a bunch of my other friends. The vocals are from all the people I've worked with, or just friends of mine who were around Electric Lady when I was recording the outro. sadie [Sink] he has the most extraordinary voice I have ever heard in my life. Honestly, it's really in tune. We had to detune it a bit to put it with my voice, because it makes me sound out of tune. She's amazing and one of my favorite singers in the world and one of my favorite people, but I was just in the neighborhood. The idea of it all was that my community was telling me to relax with magically isolated, singular voices that become a chorus.
“well”
“What interests me most about music, at least right now, is”What is the simplest way I can articulate the most complicated emotion?'”
The song is basically a word, and the where [the idea of a mantra] is the most prevalent. First I wrote: “If you're fine, I'm fine” on a restaurant napkin, which became the title of a poem he had written, and every letter other than “if I'm fine, then you're fine” was in the poem.
The phrase came from a conversation I had with a friend of mine, where I was exasperated because I was going through a very difficult time with a very important relationship in my life. What everyone was saying to me was, “But you know in their hearts that they love you very much.” And I had been told so many times, I started to say, “Well, shit. Why do I give a shit how they feel in the bottom of their hearts? When will I be able to see it? Because if it's not actionable, if I'm not experiencing this feeling, of what value is this to me?” I was really thinking about codependent relationships and how if one person isn't doing well, you're not doing well.
Within the poem, she had really said everything she wanted to say about him, and that what hurt was repetition, not being able to escape. I love this Phosphorescent song called “You Can Make Me Feel Bad If You Want To,” and basically, I was like, “Oh, I could.” To do this type of repetition [in a song], you need to have a phrase worth repeating where the meaning can change every time you hear it. And I felt I had found one, so I copied something I liked.
I haven't been in “poet mode” on purpose in a long time. Poet mode was my main focus between 16 and 20, and I've used those poems for all they're worth in my songs. It is very strange now that I decide to write a poem, especially now that I have been working as a musician. If I have an idea for a poem now, it's usually turned into an idea for a song. “Well, I'll make a song out of it.” Now, it's usually a gesture of communication when I want to say something to someone and I want them to really understand me, I try to write them a poem sometimes.
I think the main difference is that music is very powerful and you can really elevate language with music. What I've learned is that if the language you use is too loud and you put music on it, it can become oversaturated and ruin it. There are some people who do it very well. For me, in music, what I'm most interested in, at least right now, is, “What's the simplest way to be able to articulate the most complicated emotion?” Here's a good example: There's a song on my first record called “Hold the Sun.” I still feel very positive about this song, but I wouldn't write it now. I would never put [something like,] “I want you” in a poem, for example. This is so simple, it's so direct, but if you put music behind “I want you”, you get some of the greatest songs of all time. But if you just write I want you on a page, you'll get a sext, not a poem.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Angel of Chaos he is out now
