Off the back of just four singles – 'Butterflies (The Rush Inside)', 'Making Space', 'Loved & Lost', and 'Endless Mistakes' – Mayah, known to her family as Mayah Clarke, has been gathering momentum.
As a singer-songwriter, Mayah writes music to help herself get over difficult experiences and challenges. "Basically, I use music as a way of experiencing life," she says, "so I write my way through. I use music to express emotion. Whether it's happy or sad, music is my way of journaling my feelings."
Mayah cut into the scene with a very lilting sound, so clear and with amazing tone, matching her fluid storytelling ability. As for the influences that shaped that sound, Mayah says that, oddly, as a child she never really had an interest in music. "For me, when I was growing up, I didn't listen to much music. It's quite strange. Mum told me I could sing nursery rhymes and humming the tunes from ten months old.
"Music's sort of just been there from the beginning. When I first started playing the guitar when I was 11, I was learning chords and the words just came. I'm not very influenced, but I do have some favourite artists which would have to be Ed Sheeran, I love his ability to share emotion through music and that's why I relate to him. He does that so, so well.
"My childhood was filled with 'High School Musical'," Mayah continues. "It was the music I was listening to. I would always pretend I was Gabriella and sing all her songs. Then I joined the school rock band, and we started to have lots of different covers, and I started to learn different styles."
Now, Mayah's own work touches upon a multitude of genres. "It's really strange; I just listen to songs I hear on the radio, then I'll add it to a playlist and listen to it every now and then, but I'm not very musical in the sense that I don't know a lot of artists, or bands, or technical terms. I'm very strange, as my mum would say! She says I'm an anomaly.
"I've written 60 songs now – all of them are so different. I just get my guitar, sit in my room, and it all comes together really quickly, in like, 30 minutes."
With such a unique start to the craft, what makes Mayah so sure that music is something she wants to pursue? Something she gets asked often apparently. "Really, from since I can remember, it's always been what I'm supposed to do. As a kid I thought of this career, that career, maybe I could do this or that. I just always had a strong feeling of what I'm meant to do.
"It wasn't until I got older that I realised that's not what everyone experiences. You know, you go through school going 'I like this, oh actually I like that', but for me, I was always knowing. [Music] is what I need to do."
Mayah's new single 'Traffic Light' will be released 21 September.
