For the past four years, the award-winning, Juno-nominated, SOCAN #1 bilingual Canadian songwriter, recording artist and producer Maïa Davies has been on a stubbornly unwavering mission of deep musical and self-discovery.
Born in Montreal, Davies has devoted the vast majority of her life to the craft of music. Getting her start in the Warner Music signed folk band Ladies of the Canyon, she has released two solo albums in French and penned over 12 top ten commercial radio hits for Canadian music artists, including Mother Mother and Serena Ryder.
In 2019, following the dissolution of an intense but ultimately toxic relationship, Davies also left her role at a notable Toronto-based production house and decided to shed all geographical allegiances. Taking on a nomadic lifestyle for a few years, she began traveling from BC to Halifax, then off to Europe’s Stockholm, Paris and Spain, landing in California for a long while, writing, dreaming up and carefully constructing her songs on the matter at hand: her devastated, roughed up and beaten, broken into a million pieces big heart. She toiled over endless lyric rewrites, explored sonic paths in her imagination and took novelesque notes on her hopes for the result. Landing later on back in Canada, she headed straight to the studios to commence recording what would become her forthcoming full length opus, which will be release in Toronto boutique singer songwriter label, acronym records.
“Songs and writing are the best way my body knows how to express pain to date,” Davies explains.
Maïa Davies is making the kind of achingly honest music that can only be generated from a wound so deep it needs space and time to heal. and intentionally recalls Maia’s favorite incandescent baroque pop princess, Kate Bush, as well as the Kafkaesque etherealness of Beach House, with a classic singer-songwriter’s nod to her idol, Carole King.
In top tier studios across the country, Maïa recorded these raw confessions, pulling together an A list of friends to imaginatively co-produce with her. At Pierre Marchand’s legendary Montreal Studio Pm, Halifax’s Joel Plaskett-owned Fang Recording, Vancouver’s expansive and classic Hipposonic, to name but a few, she worked tirelessly on arrangement and instrumentation experiments with talented producers Marcus Paquin (Begonia), Erin Costelo (Kaïa Kater), TWIGG (Ben L’Oncle Soul), Andy Stochansky (Ani DiFranco, Lola Lennox), Brandon Bliss (Monster Truck).
Maïa Davies is adamant in her activism for women in the music industry.
“Lift Me Up’s predecessor, the potent “Stockholm,” reveals and explores the damages of the sexual harassment and assault she had survived in the aforementioned toxic relationship. Maïa Davies was transparent about acknowledging the song’s message (released as a single in November 2023), and the need to further address the issue of women’s safety within the music industry. It’s something she considers to be at the core of her beliefs, and resolving it still has a long way to go. The song was accompanied by a striking and thought-provoking video collaboration with award-winning director Lisa Mann (The Used, Apocalyptica).
The new radio single “Lift Me Up,” produced by The National producer Marcus Paquin from Montreal, is a sincere, lush tale of growth, from heartbreak to hopefulness. It will be out on acronym re it’s April 3rd, 2024.
Maïa’s musical journey is one shared with empathy and composed with passion, as confessional as it is comforting in its intimacy and scope.
