Creation of Jordan Maye kicks off with “Deranged,” where she meshes big psychedelic guitars and piano balladry into a Queen-sized stadium rocker. She wrote the song on an acoustic guitar to be soft and unsettling, then built the song up in the studio to its hard rocking current iteration—hitting falsetto high notes that mirror Jordan’s mental meltdowns as she was literally “kicking walls and screaming.”
The fun uptempo “Walking On Water” shows us that regardless of everything Maye has been through in her young life, everything is going to be okay in the end. It’s a triumphant song about finding your people and celebrating small victories. “I was back at Berklee,” says Maye, “and had found my group of friends. One day we found this precarious, frozen river. It was scary, but I ran across it. I felt unbeatable.”
The primal “Embers of the Learning Man” sparks vivid imagery of dancing shadows behind flames, floating cinders and ash. It’s a percussion-heavy bonfire song about learning from mistakes and the pain we all suffer. It vibes with ‘60s classic rock psychedelia as she toys with themes of ancient elemental wisdom and time. “Oh the embers they burn / All the bridges you’ve earned / I rebuild, lord I try / I’ve no time to learn,” she sings.
The symphonic piano-pop track “Tarot” was based on an exercise Maye participated in, where she picked tarot cards and wrote poems about them. Maye chose The Lovers and the Ten of Cups. She focused on Garden of Eden-esque imagery of man and woman, and the meaning of nature. The song teems with the concept of feeling one with the Earth, yet all “children have to pay the debt to time.”
“Hush” is a stadium-rock ballad of love and loss that marries emotive guitar reminiscent of ‘70s soft rock with her luscious glam-rock vocals. The opening line, “Tired and a victim of the elements,” evokes a Bukowskian Barfly character, yet there’s more going on here. Is the emphasis on being a “victim?” Are the “elements” more than just bad weather? Her lyrical imagery of the snow and moving city lights as she leaves Harvard Square are vivid, and there’s a sharp cleverness to her carefully chosen words. She’s a storytelling songwriter in the vein of Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” or Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.”
“I was at a bar waiting for this Harvard student I was dating,” says Maye. “We were going to celebrate her birthday. Things were going too fast for me, and I was scared. More accurately, I was moving faster than I could keep up with. I kept thinking about how things come and go.”
“Tuesday” is a tragic ballad with finger-picked guitar and funereal organ underscoring the pain in Maye’s voice as she sings about “stain glass marble halls” and that feeling that this “pain will stick forever.” The sad love song “One Year After” harkens back to lost loves, realizing that someone you’ve put on a pedestal might not have ever deserved to be thought of that way in the first place.
The album ends with “Do You Really Care,” reminding us that friends will come and go as time passes. It hits the pinnacle of the stadium rock vastness of this collection of songs, starting with a dark intro reminiscent of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” before filling out into something more akin to Pyromania era Def Leppard, including a wailing guitar solo and a stomp-clap chant chorus. Through the power of this massive song, she confronts the loneliness we’ve all felt as she sings, “Is there anyone out there / Calling from far away / Was it even a human voice / I heard the other way / Do you really care?”
Maye writes deeply personal songs that resonate with who we are as a society. She taps into our shared empathy and compassion as she guides us through these specific moments of her life. Maye recently met songwriter and producer Rico Love (Usher, Beyoncé, Trey Songz) who’s advice deeply impacted her.
“Something he said really stuck with me,” says Maye. “Write things that need to exist, so people can relate to them. I just want to humanize our struggles in my songs, to relate to the problems we all share.”
Maye has been a consistent student of songcraft, taking piano, guitar and voice lessons since she was a child growing up in Atlanta. She learned to record on her own in high school and began writing original songs. While in high school, she was accepted to a prestigious week-long piano program at Berklee. She loved it and was accepted into a lyric writing class the next semester, but this time remotely, as COVID was in full swing. The following year she was accepted into Berklee as a full time student, where she continued to write and record songs.
From 2022 and into 2023, Maye took a year off of school to focus on her mental health. This is when she met producer, engineer and multi-instrumentalist Eric Breiner, who built a career as a composer for nearly 200 placements in ads, film and television. He recently left Hollywood for his hometown of Atlanta, where he focuses on producing new talent in his Peach Music studio, and to be closer to family. His brother Daniel plays drums on several of Maye’s songs.
“Jordan is an explosively creative individual,” says Breiner. “Every time she walks into the studio, she sits down at the piano, or picks up a guitar, and sings a new song. They’re always soulful songs with beautifully dark lyrics that invite the listener inside a young adult’s journey of self-discovery.”
Maye would bring Breiner demos that she recorded, and together they’d break the song down to its basic elements and put it back together. Breiner would take Maye’s base of lyrics and chords and start building from the ground up.
“Her voice can be powerful or sweet depending on the song,” says Breiner. “Beyond her command of tone, timbre and intonation, she’s such an easy vocalist to record because she’s never phoning the emotion in. If she’s singing, she’s singing with reason.”
Creation of Jordan Maye takes us on a candid journey of mental stress, love and death. Her songs are personal, yet feel universal in their humanity. We feel them viscerally and understand them innately.
“For me, ‘In My Life’ by The Beatles is the perfect song,” says Maye. “I find myself going back to it a lot. I’m always thinking about how time changes. Time passes. People come and go. The sun goes up and down. ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd is another one of those. I feel like I spent most of my life wasting time, especially now that I’ve found who I really am. I lost the kind of childhood that I wanted, in terms of my gender identity and in terms of who I actually am. I felt very isolated then. Now there are people in my life that make me feel found, happy, and that I matter.”
1. Deranged
2. Tuesday
3. Walking on Water
4. Tarot
5. Hush
6. One Year After
7. Embers of the Learning Man
8. Do You Really Care
All songs by Jordan Maye
Jordan Maye – Production, Vocals, Piano
Eric Breiner – Production, Mix Engineering, Guitar, Bass Guitar
Danny Breiner – Drums
Nich Gannon – Drums
Erica Ransbottom – Cello
Keith Cooper – Drums, Additional Engineering on “Do You Really Care”
Rob Kleiner – Mastering
