“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?