mariaswords

[mariaswords]

Long bio... (I guess)

Hi! My name’s Maria and these are some facts about me (oh, and yes, I sing and write songs, but you probably already figured that out by yourself).

My favorite color is yellow — I used to love yellow so much that when I was a kid my parents would wrap every Christmas present in yellow paper and I wouldn’t want to open them, because I didn’t want to ruin the image. I have lived in 12 apartments (13 probably soon) and in 3 (4 soon) different countries (no, my parents are not diplomats). But talking about diplomats, that would be my career if I hadn’t chosen music first, because I own a degree in Political Sciences, a master in European and International Affairs, and currently doing an online Law degree (yeah, I overbook myself, that’s another fact about me). I am a sucker for movies, specially Disney… my favorite big screen couple is Anakin and Padme (me and my brother are big fans of Star Wars). I devoured books so much as a kid that my dad bought me an ebook, more as a present to himself than to me, because I was ruining him with all the books I read (his willingness to support my educational endeavors was leading him to bankruptcy). I wrote my first song when I was 15, tried to produce it on GarageBand and tremendously failed, and now I’m scared of playing with one of those DAW again. I went through a massive heartbreak when I started college that led me to write an entire album about someone (album called “The Girl You Want”), and I think I put all my love songs in there because now I struggle a lot to write about love. My favorite season is fall and my favorite holiday is Halloween. I love coffee. I don’t really like the color purple. I’m a scorpio, and still debating, after studying astrology on my own, whether I believe in it or not. I’m very intense, but sometimes too logical for my own good, which creates a very double edge, overthinking mess of a woman. Oh and, I’m 22 :).

Lots of love !!

[mariaswords]

Behind "When Summer's Gone"

I wrote this song a month ago, actually. I was working on this summer EP... funny story, I didn't know the EP was going to be about summer, I was just writing songs, and when I was on the third one I realized that all the songs I had written so far had the word "summer" in the title, and told a very specific summer love story that I hadn't intended to write ! Anyways, this is the first song of the EP, and it's one of the few inspired by a childhood memory.

So, back when I was a kid, my grandma ("Oma", which means "grandma" in Dutch, because she was Dutch) would always gather all the family in a small-town, beach town more like, in the frontier of Valencia and Alicante, in Spain. She would rent the first floor of a house from an old couple that she was friends with and we would spend two weeks there. In that sort of apartment, we had a backyard where me, my brother and my cousins would play cards after coming back from the beach. (Notice I was 9, or so, years old). In front of the backyard there were these high buildings, and on the top floor of one of them, there was always a boy that seemed around our age, maybe a little bit older, that was frequently sitting at his window. No need to say, I had a little bit of a crush on him, even though I had never met him before. And I think as time went by, (it had been years since he had seen us go to that apartment), we started to try to make contact by waving at him. Of course, my brother and my cousins would always joke about him being "my boyfriend", and so the whole family knew him like that. One day, we were playing cards, and he was at the window. He picked up a pen and a sheet of paper and wrote something on it, made a paper plane, and threw it to our backyard. Sadly, it got lost in a drain and we never figured out what was written there. I know it sounds as easy as shouting, and deciding to meet up outside and get to know each other, but at the time it didn't seem like an option because we were too young, and depended on our parents, I guess... Funny thing is that sometimes we would see him at the beach, playing volleyball, but never had the guts to approach him.

Anyways, this story is funny because when I told my brother that I had written a story about the beach town we would always go to, he already knew I had written a story about this guy (even though my brother was probably 7-8 years old, and I didn't even think he remembered all of this because we never talked about it afterwards). So I made a song imagining what could've been written in that paper plane, and of course romanticizing it as I would've liked it to happen at the time (except for the driving part, cause that would mean he would've been 18, and I would've been 9... so I made it work in the song so both were 18 or so).

That's the whole story ! Again, you can listen to a part of it (I didn't post the entire song) on Youtube :). Thank you for reading ! Love you 🫶🏻

[mariaswords]

Hey guyssss ! So, I just posted a first demo on Soundcloud called "Summertime Affair" (aka, the lyrics I talked about in my songwriter tag 😉). It's about understanding a break up months after it happened, and it's alternative rock influenced ! Hope you like it, feel free to tell me what you thinkkkkk!!! (im pretty excited hihi) Love you 🫶🏻

[mariaswords]

I also feel like being 22 is the weirdest age ever, cause there is a part of me that feels adequate to have a 9 to 5 office job in a big city, and then the other part of me just wants to do "get to know me" tags on YouTube and Tumblr, like HOW DO I COPE WITH BOTH. I'm like this half teen, half adult but I can't seem to find a middle ground. its exasperating.

[mariaswords]

I think I would've been happier being born on the early 1990's... I wanna use myspace, not TikTok, ughhhh

[mariaswords]

[mariaswords]

hey guys 🫶🏻 so, it's around 2 a.m. here but I was practicing a little bit the chords of a song I wrote a few weeks ago called "when summer's gone" and decided on posting a rough demo of it on YouTube 🎸. check it out if you're curiousss !

also, I'll be posting the behind the song post tomorrow 😉...

[mariaswords]

I've been working on this song I've been putting off FOR YEARS, for like 4 years now lmao. I have like four pages of a notebook of lyrics for this song, this is part of a verse:

I am the movie of our story / I remember how you sat next to me / On my birthday party, when you didn't forget // I spent winter trying to figure this out / Maybe I was too young, too loud / Maybe this just happened in my head...

Still working on the chorus cause I'm not the biggest fan of it... we'll see ! 🎸🎹

[mariaswords]

the comfort I feel posting on Tumblr compared to posting on YouTube is on another level. I'm always so uncomfortable on camera lol.

[mariaswords]

Behind "All Over Again"

This song is part of an album I wrote between the age of 15 and 20. It's deeply inspired by the sound of "Red" (the album) by Taylor Swift. I wrote this one when I was 18. Although I wrote it at the end of august, I had an autumn vibe in mind, that's why the picture (out of my Pinterest board aha).

I wrote the first lyrics when I was in the tramway on my way to meet a friend at the mall. A few minutes before leaving the house, I got a text from this guy who I was in love with after weeks of no contact — guy who I was purposely ignoring because I knew he was not good for me. That's how the whole concept of "all over again" came up, because it was always the same pattern: me trying to forget him and him coming back, in the thick of healing. I also happened to realize while writing this song that each time this pattern would repeat itself, I'd feel more lost in what to do, and therefore in who I was. So the back bone of this song is the realization of going through the same feelings for someone all over again while getting scattered little by little in the process until you lose sense of who you are outside of it.

overall... happy I moved on lol. thanks for reading !! :)) <3

[mariaswords]

I posted two original songs on my YouTube channel... feel free to check them out if you want 🫶🏻.

I'm going to dedicate a separate post to explain the background of the song "all over again", feel free to read that if you're interested as well <3.

[mariaswords]

Songwriter Tag

I created this songwriter tag for every songwriter out there, so people can get to know artists more :) this is my take on it !

1. Name and stage name

My name is Maria, and my stage name is just my real name, duh, which is Maria Andreu. I never really thought of making one up, so it's just my real name.

2. Where are you from and where are you based now?

I am from Zaragoza, Spain, but right now I'm living in Paris. I went there to do my master's (which I already finished) and have to go back for an internship after the summer. It's also where the studio I record in is located.

3. First song you ever wrote — what was it about?

I wrote my first real song (not little melodies I would write when I was a kid) when I was 15 called "Not A Good Actress". It's supposed to be pop-rock influenced, and talks about wanting to be with someone so bad, but having to hide it from your friends when you go out because it is impossible for you to be with that person, and they wouldn't understand (obviously aha). I wrote it the same night I went out at around 2 a.m. in the morning. Then the next day I opened garage band and tried to come up with some kind of instrumental (total fail)... hopefully someday I'll be able to record it and release it :).

4. Your favorite lyric you've ever written

I really like this verse that I wrote for a song called "Summertime Affair":

I pulled the trigger and ran away / Cause nothing is sweeter / Than what could’ve been, or what I had, and left. // Reading my little life away / I wrote in the sideline / Got lost in the timeline, tried to understand

I think it speaks volumes about how a break up sometimes goes when you leave someone... and in the end you star questioning more your own ways than theirs.

5. What's a song that changed your life?

Okay, this is going to be very basic... but so true. "All Too Well" by Taylor Swift did make me want to, firstly, write more personal and detailed lyrics, secondly (more importantly), learn guitar. If it hadn't been for that song, I wouldn't have picked up the guitar in the first place... really happy I did though, because I'm still not really good but it helps a lot with performing.

6. Who are your biggest songwriting influences?

I mean, again, Taylor Swift !! Cannot stress that enough ! Mostly her albums Red, Folklore and Evermore. I also love Golden Hour (the album)'s songwriting by Kacey Musgraves... the way she puts things in such a simple way, but still so poetic ! I mean, Lana Del Rey (Norman Fucking Rockwell, again the album, is a masterpiece)... yeah, mostly those artists I'd say.

7. Pen and paper or notes app?

I'm all for physical, old-fashioned ways... but for this one I must say digital. Although, I don't really use the notes app that much (except if I get an idea when I'm out, which often happens) — I normally go for pages on my laptop, with a black document and a cursive, kind of romantic, font. I do that because it makes it feel more intense, and I'm all for intensity aha.

8. Chords first or lyrics first?

Moooost of the times lyrics first. I actually feel that I write my best songs when it's lyrics first. BUT, because (and only because), I'm trying to get better at guitar, I kinda force myself to come up with melodies for different chord progressions and streaming patterns. I would say my favorite songs have come up with some lyrics first that keep being written as I come up with a melody.

9. Go-to instrument when writing?

Guitar. Most of my songs can probably be performed with only a guitar (at least for now...). But ngl, I mostly write songs with a beat in the background, so I only look for the chords on guitar if I want to perform it somewhere.

10. Weirdest place you've written a song?

Most of my songs have been written on my bed aha (how rare...). I can only think of three that I've written in either the airport ("You Used To Call Me At the Airport"), or in buses and stations ("The Girl You Want" and "Murky Waters").

11. What's a recurring thing in your music?

I would say summer love... I write a lot of summer related things, except for summer hits lmao (okay, not a good one). It's actually crazy because I was working on this project and I wrote, like, five or six songs in a week, and I didn't realize until almost the end of it that five out of those had the word "summer" in the title and talked about a summer love, when I was not even experiencing one myself ! I think I'm brainwashed by Call Me By Your Name and Grease...

12. Your dream collaborator (alive or not)

Jack Antonoff. Do I even have to specify?

13. A line from a song you wish you wrote

Pfff, honestly the entire lyrics of "Mariners Apartment Complex" by Lana Del Rey, one of my favorite song of all time. Also, the entire bridge of "Peter" by Taylor Swift... there's so many of her, I couldn't just pick one to be fair.

14. Favorite genre(s) to write in

Pop. That's what I mostly listen to. Now, there's so many branches within pop, so I would say acoustic pop, pop rock and country pop. Although I want to start writing more "dance pop", with some synth, but I find it hard to write lyrics I'm proud of and still try to make it a "dance pop hit"... I'm still figuring that out.

15. What do you hope people feel when they hear your music?

Well, it obviously depends on the song... but I would say, as an overall, I want them to think deep about the lyrics. I love when a song can have multiple meanings depending on the things the person listening to is going through. I love when you can personalize a song to make it have a meaning that's only yours. If I can ever achieve that, then I'm all set tbh aha.

16. Any projects coming up?

I don't really know aha. I mean, something to be released probably not in the next two to three months (at least not on big platforms, maybe Soundcloud). I'm still writing things, trying to figure out my unique sound... the next period is going to be more about contracts and pitching myself (I hope), more than actually releasing. If that doesn't work out, then I guess I'll be releasing some stuff. Everything is pretty uncertain, but I'll keep this online diary updated :). What you can check tho is my YouTube channel, where I film rough demos of original songs and I'll maybe start posting some covers of other songs... we'll see where the wind blows aha.

thank you so much if you read the entire thing :). if you're a songwriter you're totally free to do this tag. also, I'd love to get to know more people into songwriting, so feel free to reach outttt !

all the love ♡.

[mariaswords]

should i get a digital camera? ... the answer is probably yes.

[mariaswords]

[mariaswords]