MAY-A“2024 was a fucking hard as fuck year”. So wrote alt-pop singer-songwriter Maya Cumming – Mac to her friends, MAY-A to her fans – when posting to Instagram just over a year ago.
“I got dropped by my record label, I left my manager, I lost a lot of friends, I spent way to much money on lawyers, I was very isolated and felt the heaviness of everything that was going on in the world.”
The demons of that year are exorcised on Cumming's long-awaited debut album, Goodbye (If You Call That Gone) – with its title stemming from her attempts to absolve herself.
“I've always resonated with goodbyes where you're like, 'it's not goodbye, it's seeya later',” she says. “This title is the reverse of that. It's almost a kind of grief, where you're desperately trying to say goodbye to something but it just won't leave. The title is that feeling of trying to move through something, and trying to be rid of it.”
Goodbye is a shock to the senses from track one. Instead of pristine pop production and a bubbly undercurrent akin to MAY-A's previous output, the urgent rush of Catching Up 2 U charges past with urgent guitar and pounding drums – all while Cumming delivers breathless vocals.
She attributes this shift to learning more about rock history – in particular, the genre's oft-overlooked women.
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“I started listening to Sonic Youth and Bikini Kill, plus I read Kim Gordon's book [Girl In A Band],” she says. “I also really got into Evanescence, Paramore, and Hole. Courtney Love is a crazy bitch, and I love her.
“I was never from this scene – I was always a Taylor Swift pop girl – so when I got into rock in my teens, I felt like a fraud. These women made me feel seen, and made me realise I didn't need to fit into all of these molds I'd made for myself. I had to carve my own space.”
While books like Meet Me In The Bathroom and documentaries like Foo Fighters: Back + Forth gave her insight, Dan Ozzi's book Sellout (which profiles several punk-adjacent bands and their major-label debuts) gave her something far more important: Clarity.
“I was in LA, and I was coming to the close of my time with my US label,” Cumming recalls. “I felt lost. I found Sellout in a random anarchist bookstore, and I saw myself in so many of those stories. It was really interesting how Dan covered the relationship between DIY scenes and major labels, and how it's 50/50 between bands that made it and those that fell through the cracks.
“The final chapter interviews 20 bands that didn't make it. Every single one wished they could've just enjoyed it; that they could've gone for a run on the beach instead of beating themselves up every day,” she adds.
“I reached out to Dan, and told him: 'I think you just changed the trajectory of my life'. He responded and said some really wonderful things. When I finished Sellout, I knew I had to take my career into my own hands.”
Cumming had originally moved from Los Angeles from Sydney with hopes to start over. When she first attempted to write new material, however, the muse simply wouldn't present itself. “Everything felt really fake,” she says bluntly. “It's crazy being in the co-writing pool over there; you work with so many people that you start to lose sight of who you are and the music you want to make.
“Every conversation is about the Billboard Hot 100. That's not the world I belong in. I needed to go back to basics, and that's when Chloe came over. We bunkered down for a few months, and it started to feel like I was reconnecting with shit that mattered.”
“Chloe” is Chloe Dadd, Cumming's long-term partner and a singer-songwriter in her own right. Having served as part of the MAY-A backing band for some five years at that point, Dadd knew best (pardon the pun) when it came to recapturing the singer's energy. They channelled it into a slew of songs that made it onto Goodbye, including its second single (I'm Here For The) Girls – a neon-tinged, lipstick-stained ode to electroclash that's about as unapologetic and direct as you can get.
“I wanted something that celebrated being queer in a really over-the-top way – a real gay-bar song,” Cumming says. “I never wanted to be pigeonholed as just a queer artist – because, to some, that's all you are. You only get booked to specifically play queer events. It's easy to just write pop songs about dating girls and have that built-in fanbase – tempting, even – but Girls is just one of the many bases I wanted to cover.”
Cumming points to other key tracks to reflect on how Goodbye could only be made once she rejected the LA lifestyle. Take the striking ballad Last Man On Earth, for instance. “I wanted that song to feel really special and really different,” she says.
“I was really inspired by Mitski – particularly Drunk Walk Home, where she's just screaming through the outro. I'm probably a lot more tame than her, but I wanted it to really build towards that big ending.”
She also mentions album closer On The Way Down, which floats on buzzing synth loops with backmasked vocals before launching forward with drums that sound like fireworks going off.
“There's a sparsity to the lyrics, which I'd never really tried before,” says Cumming. “It exists far outside the invisible box I'd made for myself, which was so focused on radio structure. This song relies more on the sonics than the words, which I never would've done. It's amazing what you can make when you're writing songs the way you want.”
2025 was mostly a quiet year for MAY-A, with only a handful of live performances and a string of singles that breadcrumbed to the announcement of the album.
One particular live outing, however, was life-changing: Cumming was asked to join Cyndi Lauper on-stage at Sydney's Qudos Bank Arena to perform Girls Just Wanna Have Fun with her. This stunning, pinch-me moment deeply affected Cumming, who still thinks about it nearly a year on.
“Cyndi made me realise I want to keep doing this until I'm 75,” she says. “To be asked to sing that song, which has soundtracked the female resistance for 40 years... it's really incredible. The number-one lesson I learned from her was if you have a song that's true to yourself, you can do this forever. She’s the pinnacle of not chasing a hit.”
Disappointingly, she didn't get to keep the white-and-red polka-dot outfit given to her to match Lauper's. “I did see Hayley Williams on-stage [with Lauper] in the same outfit, though,” Cumming says. “I hyperventilated thinking we might've worn the same jacket.”
Through open-book honesty, divine-feminine rage and by kicking against the pricks, MAY-A has proven on Goodbye that she's far more than a child prodigy or a flash in the pan. She's here to stay, she's mad as hell and she's not going to take it any more. “I used to be someone that would keep things very internal and push things down,” she says.
“This album was my way to say, 'I'm not doing that any more. I'm putting it all on the table'. I hope these songs can comfort people when they feel like they're going to explode. This album is a slow burn; you have to sit with it. I deliberately didn't make it hi-fi, or really catchy and full of hooks. This was as raw as I could make it.
“I'm not going to make palatable music to try and win,” she adds. “I've already won.”
MAY-A’s Goodbye (If You Call That Gone) is out now. Tickets to her upcoming tour are on sale now.
Presented by I OH YOU, MG Live & triple j
MAY-A
Goodbye (If You Call That Gone) Australian Tour
Thursday 2 April | The Princess Theatre | Brisbane | Lic. All Ages
Thursday 9 April | Liberty Hall | Sydney | Lic. All Ages
Friday 10 April | Northcote Theatre | Melbourne | Lic. All Ages
Friday 17 April | Freo.Social | Perth | 18+*
*Under 18s can attend with a guardian / both must have a valid ticket
Saturday 18 April | Lion Arts Factory | Adelaide | Lic. All Ages
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
