Mae Muller’s latest song, “MTJL,” is all the thoughts that fly around in our heads on any old mundane day. As humans, we tend to have very high expectations, and most times – nearly every time – reality hits far below these expectations.
“I wish I was a morning person, but I’m not / I should’ve called my Mom, but I forgot,” she sings, “I wish I’d learned guitar, but I gave up.” The beauty of the song is the fact that it’s very relatable, especially to young adults who are just coming into the way of the world and trying to navigate being independent. And oh yeah, it’s that time when you’re starting to think that learning to play guitar might have come in handy, but you had found it too boring to keep up with at the time and had given up.
“Don’t wanna sound ungrateful / No, I’m not doing bad / Another day could be the best I’ve ever had / Oh, but today, today I’m feeling sad,” she sings, before going on to conclude that maybe she’s “not just a mess” and it’s just the way it is with life and living. “I’m sad, I’m stressed / But maybe that’s just life, I guess.”
Sharing the message and inspiration behind the song, Muller says, “I think it was really important for me to have a moment where it was just going to be really stripped-back, just me and a guitar. I just wanted it to be a diary entry – I wasn’t worried about the usual verse, pre-chorus, or chorus structure of the song as such, I just wanted to get it off my chest.
“I feel like as humans we’re very good at being hard on ourselves and we all want what we can’t have, so this track was just a big outpouring of all my insecurities. I definitely have a lot but I’m learning to accept them, it’s what makes us human. I think this is probably the best song I’ve written lyrically, and I’m very proud of it.”
The accompanying music video, or home video in this case, shows Muller waking up on a typical day and doing the typical things we normally do on a typically boring and depressing day. Her lethargy in the music video really does a lot in complementing the song’s lyrics
Muller wrote the song with Kian Sang, Karl Ivert, Ivert, and NEIKED, with NEIKED and MTHR serving as the track’s producers. “MTJL” is the tenth track on the British singer-songwriter’s upcoming album Sorry I’m Late.
