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At just 24, the Australian singer-songwriter Maya Cumming – known to fans as May-a – has already experienced the promise and heartache of Los Angeles as a star-making town. In 2021, she signed with Atlantic Records in the US ahead of her debut EP, Don’t Kiss Ur Friends – a moment she described at the time as “a dream”. The following February, she featured on Flume’s precision-made festival anthem Say Nothing, which went on to win the 2022 Triple J Hottest 100.
Amid that whirlwind period, Cumming was flown back and forth to LA for arranged studio sessions with producers and artists she felt little connection to, ultimately relocating there in 2024. What should’ve felt like a career arrival was instead a dispiriting eye-opener.
“I moved to LA for the label and then did the sessions that they put in for me,” she recalls. “And then I was like, these are sucking everything out of me and leaving no trace of my personality in any of this music. It was just feeling very stale and devoid of personal touch, like canned Christmas music.”
After what she describes as “so many compromises” on her 2023 EP Analysis Paralysis, she split from Atlantic in late 2024, having already begun work on a debut album fuelled by resentment at the music industry. “I had lost who I was because of trying to please corporations that just wanted me to write singles and hits,” she says. Bunkering down with her partner, the guitarist and engineer Chloe Dadd, Cumming wrote fully formed songs that alternated between righteous anger and personal revelation. “So much of it was driven by spite,” she says. “I felt like no one believed that I could write my own songs or have my own vision. I was like, I’m gonna do this, because fuck you.”
To help shape a sound distinct from the hushed bedroom pop of her past, Cumming called on experienced hands in rock and pop-punk, including Paramore producer Carlos de la Garza, songwriter and Yungblud collaborator Chris Greatti and Foo Fighters drummer Ilan Rubin. The sessions clicked, and the resulting album, Goodbye (If You Call That Gone), is released this month. “I think I associated LA with purposelessness for so long,” she says. “Now I can see the potential there, because there are goals, not just throwing shit at the wall until it sticks.”
We meet in an aggressively air-conditioned room at the Sydney office of Sony Music Australia, which signed Cumming in 2020 and now oversees her worldwide rights. Despite a full day of press, she is engaged and plain-spoken, noting that talking “in-person and in-depth” about her work feels new after years of coverage as one-to-watch. “It’s been fun and cathartic, because I have a lot to say about [the album],” she adds.
Steeped in Bob Dylan by her amateur muso father, Cumming busked at markets and shopfronts around Byron Bay and Bangalow as a young teen. At 14, after the family moved to Sydney, she met her mentor, the producer Christian Lo Russo, by strolling unannounced into his Randwick studio. Already a teen YouTube creator, her earliest songs were shaped by the diaristic pop of artists like Lorde and Taylor Swift.
“I loved so many different bands, but they were all fronted by men,” she says. “I was like, well, there’s no woman in the Red Hot Chili Peppers or the Strokes, so I guess I’ll be Taylor Swift.” In her early 20s, she discovered the likes of Garbage, Hole and Veruca Salt and decided “this is where I’m meant to be”.
Goodbye (If You Call That Gone) centres on the steely Last Man On Earth, which distils the album’s ire into the line, “I wouldn’t forgive you / if you were the last man on earth.” The fizzy, party-ready (I’m here for the) Girls marks a clear evolution from early single Apricots, which captured the tentative queer longing of her teenage years. After that song, she says, “I got a little bit scared of being put in a box – like, she’s a lesbian artist for lesbians and no one else. With this album, I don’t care who puts me in what box. I just want to write what I want to write.”
With the 2025 Triple J Hottest 100 just days away when we speak, Cumming recalls finding out Say Nothing had won while she was on tour in snowy Berlin. “I knew it was going to place because it’s Harley [Flume], but winning was completely unexpected,” she says. While thrilling, its success shaped what collaborators expected from her in those despondent LA sessions. “They were like, ‘sing like Say Nothing, quiet, and y’know, get the Billie Eilish fans.’”
Our conversation turns to the word “lucky” tattooed on her throat. “When I got it, I was definitely not in a good place – because no one’s in a good place when they get a neck tattoo,” she says, with a laugh. “At that point, I was in a place of, ‘You’re lucky to be alive and you need to be reminded.’” Now her feelings on luck have evolved into gratitude, including for the steady support of her parents; her mum, a makeup and hair stylist, was on hand for her Guardian photoshoot. “They have just been there for me, and I’m fucking crazy,” she says.
Last year, Cyndi Lauper invited Cumming to perform Girls Just Want to Have Fun alongside her in Sydney, dressed in matching red-on-white polka dots. The arena call-up helped usher in this next phase of May-a the artist.
“It was phenomenal to watch [Lauper] perform at 71 – she was so there, rolling around on the floor,” Cumming says, still clearly in awe. “I was like, well, at least I have my goals set out for me now.”
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Goodbye (If You Call That Gone) is out on 20 February
May-a’s songs to live by
Each month we ask our headline act to share the songs that have accompanied them through love, life, lust and death.
What was the best year for music, and what five songs prove it?
This is an impossible question, but considering I’m 24 and most of my musical discovery was early teens, 2015 personally shaped me the most so it’d have to be that. The early 2000s were great for rock music – the Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Killers …
What music do you clean the house to?
Probably Chappell Roan or Rage Against the Machine’s discography, depends on the mood.
What’s the song you wish you wrote?
Bitter Sweet Symphony by the Verve.
What’s one song you wish you didn’t write?
Amiinmyhead? I was like 16, so I’ll give myself a pass.
What is the last song you sang in the shower?
You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette. But in a gremlin-like voice.
What is the song you have listened to the most times this year?
According to stats fm it is Everything is Embarrassing by Sky Ferreira, close second being Lonely Girl by Tonight Alive.
If your life was a movie, what would the opening credits song be?
You Get What You Give by New Radicals.
What classic song should be stripped of its title?
Anything by R Kelly – fuck that guy.
What song do you want played at your funeral?
I mean Party Rock Anthem would be pretty funny, but realistically Silver Soul by Beach House would be a nice way to say goodbye.
What is the best song to have sex to?
Pretty much all of Steve Lacy’s early discography.
