Pop can be a wild ride - exhilarating highs, fantastical dreams, stress, turmoil, and a bit of heartache and pain. Mae Muller has experienced all of that since she first signed her major label deal as a 19-year-old with all the hopes and dreams of someone doing their dream job properly for the first time.
The last few years, though, have seen Mae experiencing the other side of being a pop star - the part that isn’t talked about as much. The side of creative doubts, personal burnout and a general feeling of: why am I doing this?
It led her to make perhaps the bravest decision any pop star can make in today’s hyper-speed pop age. Stop. So she did.
Now, as she enters a new chapter in her career as an independent artist, Mae Muller has flipped the switch on her life and emerged on the other side, making the best music of her career - her deeply personal and gloriously fun new EP, ‘My Island’.
“It’s been a very transitional period of time,” explains Mae, reflecting on the last couple of years, including a great big pop-singing-contest elephant in the room that, looking back, feels like the catalyst for her change in mindset. “I did Eurovision, which feels like forever ago now. It was a huge learning experience for me, but I felt like I was this vessel just doing the movements and going through the motions, but feeling in the back of my mind that this doesn’t feel right, and this isn’t why I started writing music. It feels a bit wrong.”
Eurovision obviously didn’t turn out the way she might have dreamed, but she doesn’t regret the experience. “While it was happening, it was so busy and there was so much exciting stuff going on. I loved talking to the fans and that kept me going, but there was always a tiny speck of anxiety going around it. I always had a bit of: is this right?” she says.
“I don’t regret it because I got to release my debut album straight after. If I hadn’t done that, I might not have been able to do that. I went on the Graham Norton show, Graham Norton followed me on Instagram and y’know what - a win is a win,” she laughs. “I am so thankful for that because I don’t think I’d be making the music I am now and making the decisions I’m making now. Because after that, I said: I need to sit with myself, without any of the noise and all the people, and think about - what do I want?”
"I was in the sea shouting: I need to find myself"
That question prompted the biggest change in Mae’s professional life. “It ended up with me leaving my major label, which I’d been with for eight years,” she explains. “That used to scare me a little bit because of how the industry makes people, especially women, feel like they have an expiry date. I’ve gained so much knowledge and wisdom, and I know what I won’t tolerate. I think that’s a great thing to have, and that only comes from experience.
“I had a great relationship with my label, and they always wanted the best for me, but I wasn’t quite making the music I wanted. And it was the same with my management, who I had for five years. I thought: maybe this is the craziest idea I’ve ever had, but I need a completely new clean slate. I left everything. It’s such a cliché, but I went to Thailand. I was in the sea shouting: I need to find myself. I took a year, which was a scary thing to do - but also such a luxury.”
Making the most of that time out to reflect and recalibrate allowed Mae a new, enlightened perspective on her life and her music. “I didn’t write anything. I was doing human things - learning to drive (I still can’t drive, but we did the lessons),” she laughs. “I spent time with friends and family, and I’m lucky to have the best group of people around me. I felt like a human again. I was like - who’s Holly? (Mae’s actual real name.) I know that’s a bit lame, but who am I outside of this? Can I still stand up and be proud of myself outside of music?”
When she did start making music again, things felt very different. “I started making music for no one else’s validation apart from my own, and I hadn’t done that since I was about 19,” she says proudly. “It made me really learn how to trust my instincts again. I wasn’t sending it to my label saying, ‘Do you like this?’ I would write a song and look around, and there was no one around, and I said, 'Do you like this?' It took me a while to work out, what do you like? The more I did it, the more I realised - this is what makes me feel good.
“‘My Island’ is a body of work I can fully stand behind and say I wouldn’t have done this any other way. It documents the past few years in exactly the way I’d want it. It’s fun, you can dance to it, you can shake your arse to it - and it’s also a little sad at times. That’s the life experience. I find the beauty in that, and this EP has really helped me look at that in a positive way.”
"This is it. This encapsulates everything I wanted to say"
So, let’s talk about that EP then. Five diverse bangers. Maximum joy and big feelings.
Beginning with the blissed-out calm of the opening track ‘Island’, it introduces some new influences. “We were listening to All Saints, Seal and Madonna’s ‘Ray Of Light’. A lot of old school stuff. I was loving Addison Rae and Charli xcx, the icons of this day and age - but I thought, who were they inspired by? And that made me dig a bit deeper. You have these sessions where magic happens. We were talking and writing, and by the end, we had a whole song. This is it. This encapsulates everything I wanted to say.”
‘Hello Kitty’ ramps up the fun and frivolity. It’s always one of the biggest joys in music when you can hear the happiness bursting out of the artist. “That song is simply about having fun,” she beams. “There’s no deeper meaning to that song apart from: you better get up and start dancing right this second. Sometimes we just need that. It doesn’t make you feel anything else but joy. As we were writing it, we were laughing and saying: can we say this? Can we say that he’s massaging my feet while we’re watching Jimmy Fallon? I said, why not?! I say that so much when I’m writing. Why not?
“I’ve been performing that at festivals. I think performing an unreleased song is a good way to give it a test run because there’s that direct connection with fans, but it got people moving and singing along.”
Elsewhere, you have the slightly cheeky ‘Touch Me City’ and the introspective reflection of ‘In My Head (I Hate It Here)’, which sees Mae showing her vulnerable side in a soothing way. “I’m such an oversharer anyway,” she says. “I’ve always found it really therapeutic, and I’ve loved that side of making music - being able to have it like a diary entry.”
The EP ends with ‘Breakaway’, the song that ushered in her new chapter - and perhaps the most important song of her whole career. “It was the first song I released as an independent artist. That was so significant to me. It really captured that happy and sad melancholy emotion. There’s magic in between sad and happy, and as I was writing that song, I felt like I captured that emotion.”
Despite this bright new direction, Mae hasn’t disowned anything she’s done previously - she just sees it as a different phase in her life. “I’m so proud of all the work I’ve done, and I’ve done some amazing things,” she smiles. “Now, in terms of the music, I can really stand behind it and know that I’m doing it because I wanted to do it, and know it came from the heart. From the beginning, all I wanted was to write my own stuff, do shows and connect with fans - and that’s what it’s going to be about for me now.”
Forging her own creative path has also illuminated the way Mae sees pop music in general in 2025, guided by the new generation of stars finding success on their own terms. “Pop music is in a really exciting place now - you turn on the radio and there’s so much variety,” says Mae excitedly. “Before, there was a formula to follow, especially as a woman, where you have to do this to get here - but now people really want authenticity, which looks different for everybody. That’s what we’re hearing with Doechii and Sabrina Carpenter, who are having such a moment. It’s real and it’s authentic and they’re doing it in their own way and people believe it. People want to believe. That’s what’s really exciting about pop music right now.”
Reinvention can sometimes be a cliché in pop music, but for Mae, it truly is a new beginning, practically and creatively. “I’m learning so much, but it was like a wake-up call for me. We’re going to have to get creative. It forces you to get your hands dirty and look around you. That forces you to be a better artist,” she says, laughing about having to finance her own videos now, but celebrating the joy of working with her friends. “Everything is so bloody expensive!”
“It’s weird, but before I got signed, there were endless possibilities and I could go anywhere - and now it’s come full circle,” she says, looking ahead to her future plans: new music, headline live shows, and writing for other artists, including buzzy new girl band Say Now.
“It’s a whole new world,” she concludes. Welcome to Mae Muller’s new island utopia.
Mae Muller’s EP ‘My Island' is out now.
