Chatting with Maehem99: Turns Pain Into Music through an unconventional creative life, emotional honesty, collaboration and Burn Your Wishes, a single shaped by loss, pressure and the need to turn overwhelming feeling into sound.
Maehem99’s music comes from an unconventional life shaped by creative industries, emotional pressure and transformation. Burn Your Wishes was written during a painful moment of loss and stress. With Ives Missing and Emily Bennett, the track turns vulnerability into sound, marking feeling before it disappears into silence.
Left PHOTO: Dress JILL SANDER Boots CELINE courtesy of Solar Beam Kingdom // Right PHOTO: Vintage cowhide corset AZURA ARCHIVE Dsquared leather pants FOR THE SOUP
Tell me about yourself and your way of living that led you to begin making music.
It has not always been by choice, but I have always lived unconventionally. Music was the natural form of expression that came after years in different parts of the creative industry.
The challenges and difficulties you’ve faced, and how you found your place in becoming the artist you are today. I’m nowhere near being in the final form of the artist and person that I want to be. But I think that the pro- cess of becoming a really good artist is not meant to be easy.
You should be drawing from intense and often painful experiences. If you’re making something that comes from a deep feeling, you will break your own heart for days after its creation because you have to pull something out of yourself that you might not have seen before, or pull something overwhelming from the world around you. I think it’s easy to tell if an artist has nothing to draw on or isn’t accessing something true to them.
Vintage Snakeskin Dress THE SOUP
Over the next year, my dream would be to collaborate with other artists that I could hopefully learn from and maybe contribute to their art too, if I’m lucky. I’m so grateful to be collaborating with so many insanely great artists in many mediums for this project already.
How was the new single created, and what was the production process like alongside your team?
I wrote ‘Burn Your Wishes’ last summer. I made it because, at the time, I felt I was losing someone who was so important to me.
Look MAISON MOONSIEUR
We were both living under an unimaginable amount of stress and pressure. The world felt so heavy, and I didn’t know what else to do but mark the feeling in the only way I knew how to. I’m so lucky that my team was able to help me bring the track to life, from the co-producer of the track, Ives Mis- sing, to my amazing creative/visual director, Emily Bennett.
White Coat PILAR DEL CAMPO
Team:
Photo JUDITH MORENO
Art Direction MANU DE COCO & EDO JIMÉNEZ
Muah ANA GOSH
Stylist EMILY BENNETT
