Mae Muller: ‘I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere’

Mae Muller’s debut studio album ‘Sorry I’m Late’ is set to be released on 29 September. She is performing at The Key Club on 17 September, with tickets available from Crash Records.

With an infectious heartbreak anthem and a charismatic singer-songwriter at the helm, expectations were set high for the UK to repeat last year’s success at this year’s 67th Eurovision Song Contest.

But following an intense months-long process – and after performing ‘I Wrote A Song‘ too many times for anyone to count – the contest came to an abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion for Mae Muller.

The UK placed second to last, a result which whilst not unfamiliar for us as a nation, was one that this year took many by surprise.

“I gave myself a day to feel like my life was over.”

“It was such a long process, the experience had so many ups and downs and it didn’t go the way we had planned,” she tells me.

After giving herself a day to process the result, she turned to TikTok – the app she tells me she uses more than any other on her phone – and posted a video making fun of the situation.

“I didn’t want to be seen as the victim or for people to feel sorry for me.”

The response was a masterclass in self-deprecation. After all, she reminds me, “no one died.” It was yet another example of why this genuinely hilarious and down-to-earth pop star has resonated with so many people.

Besides, winning the contest was never the only goal. “I didn’t go in thinking I was going to win. I went in wanting to connect with people and share my music with more people, which is what we did. It was a win in my eyes.”

‘I Wrote A Song’ rose thirty-six places the week after the contest, reaching number 9 in the UK Official Singles Chart and giving Muller her first top 10 hit.

A few months on, the 26-year-old, who was born and has lived her whole life in North London, is about to release her debut studio album ‘Sorry I’m Late’.

Exploring love, loss and dating with her no-nonsense honesty, the album confronts Muller’s own experiences of turbulent and sometimes traumatic past relationships.

Describing the album as a love letter to the multiplicity of women, the album artwork features multiple versions of the artist herself sitting around a last supper scene, each one representing a different song.

“I wanted it to be very visual. When people listen to my songs and close their eyes I want them to be able to see it.”

With seventeen tracks, the album is longer than most. But for a project that has been five years in the making that is perhaps inevitable. There is a lot that Mae Muller wants to say.

Her lyricism shines throughout and many of the songs, such as ‘MTJL’, sound like diary entries.

The explosive album track ‘Something Real’ is surely destined to become a crowd favourite when performed live.

‘Nervous (In A Good Way)’ sees an artist who has become almost synonymous with toxic relationships find something more hopeful.

Its tender lyrics describe the feeling of finding something pure and innocent.

She tells me if she was going to write a track for the breakout coming-of-age television series Heartstopper, this would be the one.

Most of the songs were written at home or at her studio in London, but after a recent trip to Stockholm, she left with five album tracks. “They know how to write some good-ass songs.”

After hitting the festival circuit over the summer, she is set to perform intimate and acoustic sets to promote the album, including in Leeds where she will perform at The Key Club.

Fans will be able to ask her questions and she explains she wants it to “feel like we’re in our front room having a chat.”

From singing in front of millions on the world’s biggest stage in Liverpool to three hundred people in a club, it’s performing that “makes everything worth it” for her.

“Being in music can be tiring and draining but hearing and seeing how people are connecting and relating is what keeps me going.”

Letting go of the album and giving it to the world, she explains, is a surreal feeling.

“It has been a hypothetical album for so long. I have had all the songs, but now it is real and it is coming. I am so proud of it.”

“It has taken me a hot minute to get to this point, I have been through a lot, but I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere.”