March 28, 2025
By Chris Martins
Maya Delilah sits — typically cross-legged, often on a table, always holding a guitar — at the intersection of old soul and new pop, where autumn chill meets summer breeze, and deeply felt experience gets swirled up with never-ending daydream. The 24-year-old London singer, songwriter, and guitarist has thus far given fans windows into her world: colorful EPs that greet heartache with humor; brightly styled videos that give equal parts Royal Tenenbaums and Tyler, the Creator; and unadorned clips on TikTok and Instagram where she lets her guitar talk, deftly delivering Prince-inspired riffs, John Mayer covers, and original solos. She is, after all, a member of the Fender Next Class of 2024, a huge cosign from the guitar brand she’s been playing since age 8. But with her debut album, Maya brings it all together — the intimacy, the ability, the inspiration, the intentionality, the depth, the lightness — into one striking work: The Long Way Round.
“This album is a combination of so many parts of me,” says Maya. “I get so influenced by different genres, people, places, and experiences that it’s always felt hard for me to fit my music into a consistent sound or mood. It took me a long time (hence The Long Way Round) to realize that it’s a beautiful thing to have a body of work that explores so many different influences.”
It’s true. While these songs are steeped in soul-pop, they also contain rich strains of country and blues, hints of gospel and choral music, and one full serving of unvarnished funk. And making the album was a literal journey, from a barn-based studio in Devon, England, to a home studio in Los Angeles, and back to various rooms across London. All with a cast of friends new and old, including producers Peter Miles, Josh Grant, Doug Schadt, Seth Tackaberry, and Aquilo’s Ben Fletcher and Tom Higham, as well as collaborators including Samm Henshaw, Grace Lightman, members of FIZZ, organist Cory Henry, and drummer Aaron Sterling (Mayer, Taylor Swift, et al.). Sometimes Maya played and sang direct to tape. Others, she layered intricate harmonies. In the session for early single “Actress,” she and her crew created a moody Curtis Mayfield-inspired sample loop from scratch. Along the way came beer, board games, typewriters, and toy pianos; and conversations about Santana, Leon Bridges, Radiohead, Nick Drake, and Purple Rain.
But Maya’s muse isn’t the only thing tying The Long Way Round together. Opener “Begin Again” introduces a powerful theme. As she looks back at her first car, her first kiss, her first home, she returns to the gentle hook: “Another day, another end / Oh, we begin again.” The idea of cycles frames the set as the album goes on. Depending on your interpretation, The Long Way Round could be about regaining trust in love or losing it entirely. Shuffled, these songs could trace the arc of one relationship from inception to end, or it could be the bridge between a failed romance and a thrilling new one, or it’s a dozen separate vignettes. With these songs — from soothing, psychedelic send-off “Look at the State of Me Now” to Western-inflected codependence tribute “Necklace” — Maya proves herself a master of not just an evocative guitar solo, but of capturing life’s biggest contradiction: why everything matters all the time and also why it’s not that deep.
As she explains, “‘Begin Again’ is about life in simple terms. It doesn’t need over-explaining or complicating. I’ve experienced a lot of ends in my life, as many have, whether that’s friendships and relationships coming to an end or losing loved ones. It feels like a reminder to myself, and anyone else, to take it slow and know that things feel a lot bigger than they are in the moment.”
But looking back at an artist’s path, of course, it’s the opposite — every detail seems to lead to now. Maya was born and raised in Islington, Inner London, to a film colorist father and a set decorator mother. She started learning piano as a tot, but was more tuned into what her parents were listening to — Stevie, Ella, Prince, East African music with its winding harmonies — and the sound of her older sister playing guitar. Maya was a tiny rebel and also dyslexic, so anything classical was a drag and sheet music (or tabs) wouldn’t do. She took to guitar quickly, learning to play by ear and challenging herself to recreate a song or solo that she loved, one at a time (“Hey Jude” came first). When she arrived at the prestigious BRIT School (Amy Winehouse, Adele, FKA Twigs, et al.), Maya saw that even there girls and boys were self-sorting to acoustic and electric, respectively. She knew what to do: go electric, practice hard, never look back.
Inspiring girls and women to pick up the guitar became central to Maya’s mission once she had a platform. She’d done background session work within her community of music-making friends, but when lockdown came, she had to find her own way. And fans soon found her, on livestreams and TikTok, cross-legged on the floor, a bed, or a table, her fingernails dancing over the strings because she doesn’t use a pick, making the guitar sing out whole moods. But Maya had more to express, and began self-releasing in 2020. Over the course of two EPs (2020’s Oh Boy, 2021’s It’s Not Me, It’s You), she amassed more than 50 million streams of fan favorites like “Breakup Season” (with Henshaw). She debuted on Blue Note in 2022, reinterpreting Cassandra Wilson’s cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” for Blue Note Re:imagined II. Singles soon followed: the bluesy but hilarious kiss-off “Pretty Face” and the brightly bittersweet love song “Silver Lining.”
Maya’s complexity comes alive on The Long Way Round, an LP that can explore introspection (“Maya Maya Maya”) and despair (“Did I Dream It All?”), but feel all the more comforting for it. In her own words, it feels “like a record you put on on a Sunday morning in the kitchen.” Indeed, the Sterling-blessed country-pop confection “Man of the House” revels in the domestic potential of new love. Later, the ridiculously funky and flirty “Squeeze” demands you set down your mug and dance like no one’s watching. The instrumental “Jeffrey” (featuring Henry) slowly unfurls like a sunrise, and album closer “Never with You” embodies the hope of a new day — as Maya says, “The feeling at the start of a relationship when you haven’t yet learned loads about each other and there’s so much to come.” And just like that, we can begin again. The circle is complete.
“My biggest hope is that the album feels nostalgic to someone I’ve never met before,” says Maya. It’s an interesting thought given how uniquely “Maya” this set is, but that’s exactly what makes it work as intended. The warm glow, the wry smile, a sense of loss, and a yearning for renewal — we’re right there with her as she looks back, and ahead, at The Long Way Round.
