INTERVIEW: Maisy Kay opens up by being ‘Emotionally Unavailable’
Photo: Maisy Kay’s new single is “Emotionally Unavailable.” Photo courtesy of Shervin Lainez / Provided by Press Here Publicity with permission.
Maisy Kay, the UK-born and Los Angeles-based singer, has a new single called “Emotionally Unavailable,” which was released with a horror-tribute music video (see below). The recording follows on the heels of an earlier single, “Karma Is a Bitch Like You.” For Kay, “Emotionally Unavailable” came together when she was in a hotel room in Florida on a work trip.
“I had no way of even creating any music at the time, but for whatever reason I got super-inspired,” Kay said in a recent phone interview. “And I essentially wrote the whole song without any instruments, which was a first for me. Normally, I always play along on the piano to understand what the chords are, but that was the first time I’d really written where I had no idea what it was going to be. I knew I was just going to have to figure it out when I got back home, and I literally wrote the whole song in like 20 minutes just in my hotel room in Florida. It was very strange.”
This experience, of writing down the entire song in 20 minutes and then going back to reexamine her creative effort, allowed the singer to face parts of herself that she wasn’t super-attentive to over the years, but still she kept this sonic journey light-hearted, campy and fun.
“I feel like that’s something that a lot of young people struggle with now, that fear of commitment and social media, and there’s always something new, something better maybe,” she said. “It can be really hard to settle on one thing, so I wanted to make a song about that that wasn’t just completely miserable sounding. … It was originally going to be part of an EP that I had titled Sad Girl Summer, but unfortunately we had a lot of internal changes. It wasn’t going to be able to come together, and at that point, I thought I’d rather get the song out there in the world.”
The music video that accompanies “Emotionally Unavailable” is inspired by two wildly different films from the 1990s: Clueless and The Silence of the Lambs. Kay admitted to being a big horror movie fan, and this time of year she loves horror games and Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios. This “dark side” of her personality, as she put it, is on full display in the new song.
“I love Silence of the Lambs, which is why we referenced it,” the singer said. “I think Scream really redefined the slasher genre, so that’s one of my favorites. And I’d probably also have to say Friday the 13th [as one of my favorites], not because it’s an objectively good movie, just because it’s so cheesy. I’m British, so the idea of a summer camp seems really exciting and foreign to me, so I just really enjoy that movie.”
Kay, who contributed lyrics and vocals to Anly’s 2017 hit song “Distance,” said she loves hearing back from fans on how her music helped them, changed them and comforted them. Sometimes, she’s not the best gauge on which recordings will leave an impression.
“There have been songs that I’ve put out in the past that I thought, oh man, that’s not that good, and then someone has messaged me, being like, ‘Wow, that line really resonated with me,’” she said. “It’s changed my whole opinion on the song, too, just seeing someone else connect to it and seeing what I was trying to say. It’s the best feeling.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult on the global population, and live performers were away from their art form and their fans for quite some time. For Kay, she is still taking steps toward relearning the skills needed for an energetic live performance.
“Transparently, that still feels like something I have to sort of relearn,” Kay said. “I don’t know if it’s like riding a bike. I think when you have two years of complete lockdown, you have to readjust to being a human again. … The thought of getting on a huge stage with all those people and practicing all these skills I haven’t done in a while, it’s definitely daunting, but we’ll get there.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Maisy Kay’s new single is “Emotionally Unavailable.” Click here for more information.
