Maya Donovan is a Crooner

PINK IPOD: My first question will be about where you come from. I was wondering if you had any Southern roots ? Your sound could be from there.

MAYA DONOVAN: I don't. I grew up in Brooklyn, New York City, actually.

PINK IPOD: Then where did the Country inspiration happen? Was it something playing in the house, or something you discovered on your own?

MAYA DONOVAN: A bit of something that played in my house when I was a kid. My parents would play this one particular song by The Chicks, Wide Open Spaces, and a few other early 2000s country poppy songs. And I've always been trying to figure out exactly what my identity in recorded music would be, and something just felt very right about Country. I love storytelling, and Country revolves around storytelling in a very particular way.

PINK IPOD: In the first EP you release, in 2018, there were way more jazzy undertones to it. Do you feel like those earlier jazz influences still shaped the way you made this album?

MAYA DONOVAN: I made that first EP with my childhood piano teacher, who's a jazz pianist, and he put a lot of his own taste into it. I've never studied jazz in a formal way. As a songwriter I've always gravitated towards the richness of jazz chords, but the jazziness of that group of songs had more to do with who was helping me put them together. I love to be a crooner. I love to sing in a really heartfelt way, and that works for jazz, and for country too. It can work for a lot of genres. But there is some marriage of jazz and country singers who have this purity to their voice that I love to embody when I'm singing.

PINK IPOD: Do you remember when you figured out, oh, I can actually sing? It's something that I can do, and it sounds good?

MAYA DONOVAN: Honestly, and this is maybe an annoying answer, but I've been singing for truly as long as I can remember. I had a really raspy voice as a little kid. People used to say I sounded like I smoked a couple packs a day. I have a lot of recordings of myself singing as a young child. I sang through my days, and I was always writing too, making up little songs around the house. When I started learning piano, I started performing the songs I would write and accompanying myself. Really, as long as I can remember.

PINK IPOD: Can you tell me about the first song you ever wrote, then? Even if it was a silly little lullaby.

MAYA DONOVAN: The first song I wrote that's documented... This sounds ridiculous, but when I was a little kid, my parents were friends with a couple. One was a composer, and one was a songwriter, and they had a little music studio in their house. I co-wrote a song with them when I was three, as a gift for my mom for Mother's Day.

PINK IPOD: Oh no, that's so cute.

MAYA DONOVAN: So I have a recording of that. Then, when I first had a desktop computer, at maybe six years old, there was an early version of GarageBand. My dad and I would sit, and you can pop in pre recorded little loops of guitar or drums or piano, and I would improvise songs on top. So I have some songs of me sitting there with my dad. And when I started playing piano at seven, I started writing chords to songs. The first song I wrote on piano, I know, was about the boy I was in love with. My whole life has been documented by songs I've written. It's the way I've processed my life, seriously, forever.

PINK IPOD: Have you listened back to these songs?

MAYA DONOVAN: Yeah. I love listening to the very early ones. The songs from when I was six are funny and cute and revealing. Even as a very little kid, my instinct was to be very honest in what I was writing. So it's funny to get a little window.

PINK IPOD: Regarding what you said about being a crooner, and being honest almost as a thing you couldn't help: I feel like in your first EP, and even in the 2023 releases, that honesty is there from the start. But in your last album, there's an element of humor that comes even more forward. Was that a conscious choice? And how does it contrast with melodies that are way more soft?

MAYA DONOVAN: Whenever I can, I love to write in a slightly tongue in cheek way. I'm always trying to balance the fact that I don't know how to write about anything that's not me being devastated by something. I've never felt inspired by happiness. I wish I were, but unfortunately my best songs come out of my worst moments. At the same time, I'm someone who likes to laugh. I'm a very serious person, I take my own emotional life seriously, I like to cry, I feel deeply. But I also like to be silly, and it's hard for me to get a sentence out without being a little sarcastic. That's who I am. So bringing that into my writing is fun, and it's another challenge as a writer: to articulate something in a way that feels true, but also shines a light on how ridiculous the human experience is a lot of the time.

PINK IPOD: Absolutely. We're just very awkward creatures.

MAYA DONOVAN: Exactly. And that's the core of my writing. If I ever have a goal as a writer, it's exactly that: to highlight that we are all awkward creatures, working really hard to pretend we know what we're doing, when we're all confused and awkward at our core.

PINK IPOD: I was also wondering about this way of singing, and the arrangements, which are very layered. Is there some intentionality between the preciseness and humor of your writing, and the softer delivery? A way to highlight the writing differently, or maybe to not insist on it too much?

MAYA DONOVAN: Totally. At the end of the day, lyrics and melody are the things that matter most to me in a song, and vocal delivery is the glue that ties them together. The music that moves me most is hearing lyrics that feel really insightful, and hearing the way the person who wrote them delivers them. That's why I have an affinity for singer-songwriters. People who co-write with big teams, I admire that skill so much. I'm not brave enough for it. I like to keep my writing world in this room. I'm in my bedroom right now. I don't involve anyone else, or expose myself, before there's a finished product. So I have real admiration for people who can throw ideas out there, and I need to get better at it. But there is something so singular about sitting in a room by yourself and writing a song in its entirety, without anyone else touching it. So basically: I'm always trying to write songs in a way that keeps the words, and the way I deliver them, at the center. Sometimes things are intentional, and a lot of the time there's not much thought put into how I'll frame something. It just comes out the way it comes out. And sometimes that's even better.

PINK IPOD: I think I read somewhere that you were very inspired by Joni Mitchell. What were the records in the background while you were making the album?

MAYA DONOVAN: I love a female singer-songwriter. I really like listening to music by women who talk about their experience in the world. My whole life, I've listened to the more classic ones. I love Joni Mitchell, I love Carole King. But there are so many contemporary singer songwriters I'm obsessed with. I love Julia Jacklin.

PINK IPOD: Oh, I was wondering, actually. There's a line in your album that says, "Musical Chairs, we orbit the room". I was wondering if that was a reference to "End of a Friendship" by Julia Jacklin when she says "All my love is spinning round' the room" ?

MAYA DONOVAN: Not intentionally, but maybe somewhere deep in my brain. I'm such a super fan of hers. She's a prime example of a crooner. The way her voice moves is so glossy and spectacular, and I love her writing. And, not that this is what we're talking about, but I love the juxtaposition of people who say honest things that are a little jagged, and deliver them with a beautiful voice. On her song Ignore Tenderness, where she's like, I've been trying to be turned on by you, I've been watching porn. I just love hearing such blunt words delivered by someone who sings like an old country star.

PINK IPOD: I've been fascinated. You can really see the crooner and the humor she has. Could you tell me more about the name of the album, and the name of one of the songs, Georgia the Ceremonialist ? Because I tried to look online, and I saw this girl called Georgia Wall, who is a ceremonialist?

MAYA DONOVAN: Last spring, 2025, I lost one of my parents to cancer. At the same time, my romantic relationship of many, many years ended. My whole life was just a puddle. I was very lost, and I'm still figuring myself out after these gigantic losses that have changed the fabric of my whole life. When that happened, for whatever reason, I also decided I wanted to record this album. It was about to be my birthday last summer. It didn't make sense to have time to keep marching forward while these things made me feel suspended in midair. I basically was like, I don't know how to get through this day, my birthday. And a friend of mine had a friend whose whole practice is... she calls herself a ceremonialist. Georgia. She's a poet, sort of a performance artist, a healer. She marries a lot of practices together. What she does is compose, she calls it composition, ceremonies for life transitions. There are the obvious ceremonies, weddings, even funerals. But when you really think about it, a lot of moments throughout our lives are kind of ceremonies: rituals where we intentionally sit down and do something. And she helps walk people through that in an intentional way. When I heard about her, I was like, this is exactly what I need right now. A friend recently asked me if it was an allegory for something else, and I was like, no, it's very literal. A woman named Georgia made me a ceremony, and that was what I did on my birthday last year. I spent weeks collecting poetry with her, and different items around my room. On my birthday, we sat down, and some family members and close friends read me letters about how they saw me, what they saw I was going through, and what they saw for me in the future. We burned things, we cut ribbons, we did all these little ceremonial things. And it really did help me get through that moment. The goal we had decided on together was this idea of finding internal gravity: figuring out how to be anchored and centered in my life, for me personally, without the anchors of other people who had previously been in my solar system. That moment happened in the middle of me recording this album. The song was the last one I wrote for it, and it was just a portrait of literally what was going on in my life. But then it felt like it encompassed the whole project, and became the crown jewel of the record. So that was what I went with for the title. That's my long winded answer.

PINK IPOD: That's a great answer. First of all, I'm sorry for your losses. But do you feel like making this ceremony is something you've incorporated into your life beyond 2025? Where now do you take more moments to wind down and celebrate?

MAYA DONOVAN: I think so. Or just reflecting on... not that this is such an insightful thought, but things do just happen the way they happen. Tragic things happen, amazing things happen, and all of our lives will always be a mix of beauty and tragedy. Another thing I discussed a lot with Georgia was an idea she called seeing with the eyes of the riverbed. The water in a river is always going to be moving, but there is a fixed thing at the bottom of the river that stays static. In our lives, lots of things will move past us, people and places and chapters, but the riverbed is our own selves, which we keep with us forever. That was, again, this idea of internal gravity. How does anyone figure out how to be that riverbed, and not get swept away in water that's always going to be moving? To find gravity, and see things with wiser eyes. And sometimes that also means letting yourself wallow in the pain of watching things go. It is very painful to lose things.

PINK IPOD: Regarding the sometimes overwhelming movement of the river. Your song, Musical Chairs, maybe a bit simplistic to say, but is a more sad song on the record. And I noticed it's also one of the few songs where you don't use the pronoun I so much, but you use we, which is rare. And because that song feels very ceremonial, could you give me a little more background about the storytelling?

MAYA DONOVAN: I don't think I even realized it. That's actually profound to think about. So that song is about my stepmom, who died about a year and a half ago of cancer. It's about being in the hospital with her while she was in hospice, in her final days of life. It's interesting that you say the thing about I versus we, because it was a very ceremonial moment, and it was more of a we. There was this whole body of people surrounding her. It felt like we were all one disjointed organism, orbiting, which was both symbolic and literal. When you're spending a lot of time in a hospital room with a bunch of people, there are only so many places to sit. One person sits next to the hospital bed holding her hand, then goes to get food, so someone else takes that place. Someone's napping on the couch, there's another chair, there's a toilet you can wheel around and someone sits on top of it sometimes. It was this orbiting, all of us taking turns in a different place in that room, seeing this person from all these angles. Up close, then a bird's eye view, just watching the scene. And, to be very blunt and dark, watching someone die is a unique experience. It's strange that it's part of life, because it feels supernatural. I'm not religious, but there's a lot of spirituality in my family. My sister, and my stepmom too, really believe in spiritual things, in signs. There were moments where my stepmom would say things, and she was definitely out of it. One could say she was just out of it; one could also say she was accessing some other dimension. I believe that more. Some pretty spectacular things happened that felt very supernatural. It was difficult to figure out how to write about that experience, so I went with trying to take a snapshot of literally what was happening in that room.

PINK IPOD: About the making of the album, and the order of the songs. Although you said you wrote Georgia the Ceremonialist last, I couldn't help trying to figure out if there was a linear structure to the story. It does look like, but contradict me if you disagree, there's a red thread of acceptance. You still embrace the conflict throughout, but in the last song you seem to accept some of the darker things, and kind of embrace them. Is that how you thought about the storytelling, or did it emerge by itself?

MAYA DONOVAN: The funny thing is, the reality of when the songs were written is almost the opposite. The songs I wrote more recently are closer to the top of the album, and some of the older songs are at the bottom. So in a way, it's a going backwards in time thing. But that last song, Tell Me It'll Be Soon, is one I wrote a lot of years ago, and when I play live, I always like to have it as the last song. Even though I wrote it a while ago, it weirdly feels like a lullaby to me. It's one of the truer, more honest songs I've ever written. I wrote it in a moment when I was feeling really threatened and jealous of another girl, a singer-songwriter, a friend of a friend. I was like, she's more successful than me, and I'm never gonna be successful. I was having a pity party, leaning into this feeling that, for me to be okay, I need someone else to tell me I'll be okay. What's been cool about performing that song for years is that I get to tell myself those things as I perform it. And as many times as I do, I'm sure I'll always be an insecure girl who gets jealous and threatened by other people. Like we were saying earlier, most people are probably all jealous and insecure and awkward. So that song feels like the seal on the album: throughout all of these things, I'm always going to be battling that fight internally, to feel like I'm enough. But in terms of narrative structure, honestly, the album came together more by what felt like the best flow from one song into another. A lot of the songs are about really separate things in my life. The album is more a picture of me as a person, rather than an album about a breakup, or about one moment. It's really: this is me, okay? Some of the stories are connected, and some are not. But the through line is the riverbed. It's me, at the base of all of these experiences.

PINK IPOD: Oh, that's great. It's like a wide snapshot, and you just put it there. I have to ask: how come Adrianne Lenker did the backing vocals on Georgia the Ceremonialist? How did that come about, and what felt right about it?

MAYA DONOVAN: I'm a gigantic fan of hers. It was kind of by chance. My friend Jon, who made this record with me, is a friend of hers. She heard the song through him, and decided she wanted to put some vocals on it. I was so blown away. So surreal, to hear someone I've admired for so many years singing words that I wrote. I wasn't even there when she added those vocals. The song was completely recorded, it needed to be mixed and tweaked, and I had sung my own harmonies. I just got a text from my friend saying she had come by his studio and tried singing some background vocals. I remember walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and listening, over and over, to the chorus where she's singing, in total disbelief. I still listen and I'm like, what the fuck? That's insane. An unbelievable dream come true, to have her legendary voice on this project. It's a little Easter egg: some people notice it's her, others don't. But it's a very cool part of this.

PINK IPOD: I feel like it's also quite cool that it was on Georgia the Ceremonialist, because it almost feels like it's her presence, then. And I was wondering: did Georgia the ceremonialist listen to the album? What did she think?

MAYA DONOVAN: She did. I sent her the song right when I wrote it. I asked, is it okay if I use your literal business name as the title? And she was like, please, I'd be honored. I think she loves it. And the title, as her own name, is just so beautiful. The idea of a ceremonialist is so cool. It was a no brainer when I finished writing the song.

PINK IPOD: And so you have spirituality all around you, and music, and your life. Do you have any other non musical inspiration? Another type of art, anything, not necessarily just for this album. Something that inspires you on a daily basis.

MAYA DONOVAN: That's a good question. I'm always searching for that kind of inspiration. I am not much of an artist in any other way besides music. I'm really not a visual artist, and I would love to be, so badly. I wish I were a painter, an illustrator, a sculptor, any kind of visual medium. Frankly, and I talk about this a lot in my songwriting, I watch a lot of TV, and I love movies. Sometimes I feel inspired in a way that maybe sounds ridiculous: I watch a lot of reality TV. Watching absurd dynamics between people, scripted or, not that reality shows are real, non scripted, does inspire me, in this stupid way. That's when I tend to feel the most inspired: watching things. I love seeing movies in a theater, the sensory deprivation of being immersed in a story that way. I often leave a movie theater ready to write a song.

PINK IPOD: You said in one of your songs that you could have a media PhD. What would you write your thesis about, exactly?

MAYA DONOVAN: Well, I wrote a paper in college, and I'm going to botch my memory of this, about the similarity between the way men watch sports, and how sports is gendered in this male way, and the way people watch reality TV, and how that is gendered in this female way. I am endlessly fascinated by reality TV and the sociological things it reveals. It's a very interesting mirror to our society. So my media studies PhD is reality TV.

PINK IPOD: Would you write about Real Housewives, or...?

MAYA DONOVAN: Perhaps. I love all the Bravo shows. The show I've watched the most this past year is Below Deck. Have you ever watched it?

PINK IPOD: No, never.

MAYA DONOVAN: Below Deck is about the crew on yachts. It's fascinating. First of all, you really get to see how a boat functions. Now I know all these things about the hierarchy of power on a boat, all these random nautical terms. Then there's the interpersonal drama: the crew is in close quarters, sleeping in little bunks together, so they all have relationships with each other. And then there's the drama of the guests, rich people who are insane and have insane expectations. And watching people navigate service... As a person who's had a service job for many years, I work at a fancy restaurant, it's very fun to watch that play out with other people.

PINK IPOD: How have you been able to combine the service job with the music making? And, especially recently, with your releases, has it clashed a bit more?

MAYA DONOVAN: It's definitely hard to find the time in the day. Since I put out this music, there's been a lot of work to do around it, so it's been a lot to juggle: a job I have to show up at, and managing a bunch of music stuff. But I also think that when the time comes, hopefully, when I'm not working a restaurant job anymore, I'll miss it a little. The people I've worked with at this restaurant, some for a lot of years, we've kind of grown up together. A lot of them are also artists and actors and creative people. It's been a really beautiful community. And when I have a show, all my coworkers come in as a little clique, and it's the best. So I both hate it and love it, and I think I'll miss this chapter of life once it has passed.

PINK IPOD: Could you tell me a bit more about your live performances? How much do you adapt your songs, who has been playing with you, and do you maybe have a special memory from one of your shows?

MAYA DONOVAN: I've been performing live for a long time, but most of my history is me playing solo, which I love to do. Now that I have this record, I'm hoping I'll get to play more shows with a fuller band, because it does the songs more justice to have a really full sound. I used to never play with a drummer, and Jon, who made this record with me, is a drummer. Having energy brought to these songs, which, granted, are all sort of depressing, but have momentum in them, transforms them in a way I'm loving. So my hope for this next chapter is playing with a band more often. But there's also something magical about playing solo. I really like to stretch out time when I play live. The musical term, I guess, is rubato. I take a lot of liberties. And again, vocal delivery: I like to make sure people are hearing the words, hearing me tell these stories. I love telling stories about songs when I play live. A long term goal of mine is a one woman show, either something fully new, or incorporating things I've already written. There have been lots of shows over the years, but the show I had last month, my big release show for this album, was one of the most special, if not the most special, I've ever had. It was at a church, and every minute of it was magical.

PINK IPOD: Would you ever do a show in Paris?

MAYA DONOVAN: A hundred percent. I love Paris so much. One of my favorite places on earth. I have had intentions of moving to Paris.

PINK IPOD: Please do. We need more folk in Paris, I think it would do everyone a lot of good.