Singer songwriter May Payne is back with The Mic answering questions on her new single Between the Lines, as our Izzy Morris breaks down the new single, life on tour and what's next for May's upcoming EP.
Hi May, it’s so lovely to meet you!
May: Hi Izzy! Nice to meet you too!
So I hear you’re in America at the moment, how come?
May: My partner is in a band that are doing a lot of touring and stuff over here this summer, so I'm kind of along for the ride with them a little bit, which is really fun.
Whereabouts are you headed?
May: So they’re based in Pittsburgh, but kind of going everywhere around. There are lots of different legs going to different places and stuff, mainly around the Midwest and the East Coast.
I bet you get to interact with lots of different American bands and
artists doing that, right?
May: Yes, that should be really cool!
But while you’re in America, you’re also sitting on a new single and you're in that space at the minute between creating something and then revealing it to the world. How does that feel? It must be a really vulnerable thing to do.
May: Yeah, yeah, it is. It does feel like that. Like it definitely feels like quite a vulnerable position. I think especially with promoting a song and stuff... It's a bit of a learning curve for me. So I've been really stressed trying to figure out good ways to do it and stuff. But I am really excited especially because it’s a song that I’ve been waiting to show for so, so long. I wrote it when I was 17, so I feel like it’s going to be kind of cathartic in a way to finally release it and sort of let go of it a bit, in a way.
Totally! And given that you wrote it when you were 17, and you’re 20 now, how was the song changed? Because didn’t you originally record and release the song when you were 17?
May: Yeah. So it's a really funny story. I wrote about this guy originally who I was really good friends with, but he was seeing somebody else. But even though he was, there was so clearly something between us and, like, he would kind of lead me to think there was something more going on. I don’t know, it was a weird dynamic. So I wrote about that and that feeling of being between the lines. Like, I’m between that state of being something ad not being something and I don’t know where I stand.
And then, after him and his girlfriend broke up, we did start to date each other. He was learning how to produce music at the time, and he was the first person I knew. He was like, ‘I have a mic and some speakers.’ So he heard the song and he wanted to produce it. And I was like,‘Yeah, of course, oh my God that would be so fun.’ So he produced it. And to be honest, I didn’t connect with that version in the first place. Like, it was very led by him. I didn’t really want to release it, but I was like, whatever, if you want to do that that’s fine. But then a few months later, I found out that he’d been speaking to other people at the same time that he was with me and kind of leading other people on. Which is
that classic thing where it’s like if someone does that to someone else, they’re probably going to do it to you, you know what I mean?
So in retrospect, kind of stupid to not think that was going to happen, but I ended up saying to him, ‘You have to take the song down.’ You know? That’s MY song, like, after I know about this stuff, you have to take it down. And yeah, I feel like my perspective as changed a lot, like, at first you know, since seeing his true colours, but also just since maturing. I think at the time, I didn’t see how manipulated I was being in that situation. Like, I didn’t have any perspective on the fact that I’m quite a vulnerable and sensitive person, and I think that people see that and know that they can, you know, treat you badly and that you’ll just let it slide. So the song is definitely a bit more f*** you now. It’s definitely less of a ‘Oh my God, why don’t you like me?’ And more of a ‘Why are you treating me like this? What’s wrong with you?’ That sort of a song.
I was going to say you can absolutely hear that in the track. There is so much strength in vulnerability. Would you say that it’s become stronger sonically and in the way that it’s created?
May: Yeah, definitely. I write all of my songs just on the piano, and that can be something really Powerful. But sonically now the song is… I don’t even know how to describe it, like an alt-pop, rocky thing. It really packs a punch, by the last chorus especially, and I sing in my chest voice, which I don’t do a lot of which is really cool. Without changing the basic chords of the music and without changing the melody or the lyrics, I definitely think it’s like a new song in a way.
As a longtime @getamay Instagram follower back in 2016/2017, I was along for the ride with you in your emo phase, and while I know generally you go for more of a singer-songwriter style, do you think that maybe that’s crept it’s way in here?
May: Yeah 100%. And that’s so cool! I think over the past year or so I’ve really started listening to emo music and enjoying it again. For a long time after my emo phase, I was like ‘Look, it’s so embarrassing. I don’t like it. I’m way more esoteric than that. I like way more clever music than
that.’ But no, I totally do still love emo music, and it’s really cool to be able to incorporate some of that stuff in there.
What emo music have you been going back to recently?
May: So, the first few artists I went back to were My Chemical Romance and Pierce the Veil… and I thought, see Fall Out Boy were my favourites, like, my favourite favourites. But I was like, ‘I’m never gonna like Fall Out Boy again.’ They’re the one band that, I don’t know, I was like ‘Oh, this is just cringe now.’ But then I saw them live at one of those small gigs they did, and me and my friend Noah went to see them in London. And I was like, ‘Ok, no, they are so good.’ So I’ve been listening
to a lot of them as well.
Oh, who doesn’t love a bit of Fall Out Boy!
Going back to Between the Lines then, what’s the reception been like for the teasers you’ve put
online. Do people remember it from the first time it was released?
May: Yeah, yeah, yeah! That’s been so cool, because I remember when I took the song down people were like ‘Where has it gone? I can’t find it anywhere!’ It’s been so cool to see so many people come back, like ‘This used to be one of my favourite songs, and now I get to hear it again!’ In my opinion, it is just such a new and improved version too, and I’m so excited to see how people take to it and what people think of that. It’s funny, because I remember when I first released it, and I shared the
first clip of the first version of it, people were like ‘This is a really cool song, but I don’t think the drum beat makes sense on this.’ Or ‘I don’t think this works here.’ And they were all things that I didn’t like either, so it’s cool to think that I’m going to get to give people what they wanted all
along, in a way?
It feels fully ready!
May: Yeah, definitely. It feels like it’s fully marinated now, ahah.
Speaking then, of gigs and touring; you’ve been on tour with artists like Bonnie Kemplay and NEEVE. What is it like touring with them?
May: Honestly, the tour with NEEVE for me was so amazing, I didn’t really know what to expect because that was the first time I’d ever been on tour, and they were so lovely and seeing how dedicated they are to their music and also to their content creation, that was really, really interesting to me. I learned a lot from that. And just, how much fun they had with it and the professionalism, in a way? I think that professionalism in a musician is a kind of hard thing to understand – it’s
not a typical type of professionalism. And Bonnie’s great – we’re really good friends. We’re in, like a UK based Boygenius knock off group together. Yeah, she’s really amazing,
I love this rise of supergroups, like we’re seeing with FIZZ as well…
May: Yeah! It’s so cool and it’s so much fun. It’s us too and our friend Dee Rae, who’s also another singer-songwriter in Manchester. We’re called Brunch Motel – we’ve only written like… two songs I think? But in our heads, it’s a thing.
So, on top of the new EP, we might get to hear something from
Brunch Motel, then?
May: Yeah! Maybe! Maybe… They’re such nice people to write with because, we’re all friends, so it all works really nicely.
So apart from the people you’ve already mentioned and that you’ve already had the chance to tour with, is there anybody else that you’d love to tour with?
band, like NEEVE, and that’s really cool, I can have my band, we can dostly, someone I would love to tour with is someone like Leith Ross– they’re so, so, so great, I love their music a lot. I think that with my music, there’s a lot of room for adaptability. I can do it with a pop rock band, like NEEVE, and that’s really cool, I can have my band, we can do track. But at the same time, I’d love to do it with someone who’s more of an introspective singer-songwriter and really show that side of myself and do something solo. I think that would be really cool.
On a similar vein of talking about some of the other artists in the scenes that you operate within; much like Nottingham, Manchester has a wild music scene. Who do you think we NEED to be listening to from Manchester at The Mic?
May: I would say Dee Rae. I’ve already given her a shout out, but she’s just amazing. And Evie Eve too is another good one. She’s got some really cool music, and she’s got some orchestral instruments in her live set up and it works really, really well.
Aside from the EP, a potential supergroup and of course ‘Between the Lines’ – have you got anything else coming up that you could tell us about? Any details about the EP?
May: Yeah, so the EP, is something I’m really excited about – details pending on that. But that will be soon, towards the end of the summer. I think it is, like, a real self-discovery thing? There are two songs on it –‘Between the Lines’ and this other song – that are some of the first songs I ever wrote; old, old, favourites that still resonate with me that I’m getting to reimagine. Then there are two that are new and show who I am now which is really cool. There’s a lot of growth that’s happened between them, but there are similar themes that reoccur which I think is kind of funny. Like, when I’m talking about ‘Take it Too’ and ‘Between the Lines’ – they were written four years apart, but there are SO many similarities, behind them and the situations. Yeah, it’s definitely a reflection of how I got to where I am now, in a sense, and some of the things I’ve learned about myself. I don’t know, like, I find it hard to pinpoint my emotions sometimes, because they’re so extreme and so triggered by really small things and are so massive that it’s hard to understand them. So, the four songs from that EP are definitely songs where I haven’t really understood what was going on in my head until I wrote the song, and then I was like ‘Ohhhhhh, OK!’ It’s definitely an EP of self-therapy, I feel.
It’s great that art can be used to help you process your feelings in that way! Thank you so much for chatting to me, May! Is there anything you’d like to encourage The Mic readers to do?
May: Yes! Listen to ‘Between the Lines’ – tell me what you think, I hope
Izzy Morris
Edited by Olivia Hannant, Video: May Payne Youtube
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