Mahalia’s IRL is a long-awaited storybook, told through the lens of a girl stuck between the 4 walls of home, processing heartbreak, and coming to terms with the world we live in. The pandemic threw a lot of things out of whack, but also provided some much needed perspective, and for Mahalia, it forced her to feel out her emotions, and lay it all out through guitar chords, piano melodies, and soulful crooning. Though Mahalia wishes not to spend 4 years in between albums, her vivid storytelling and ability to put you in her shoes is something that can only be perfected through time. IRL allows her to preach about the realities of love, the ups and downs that it can bring, but also the other side of love, filled with reassuring comfort and deep connection. Though her relationship with love now is stable and secure, she can only be grateful for the learning curves and lessons she learned through heartbreak, to make this album as real as it can be.

To dive into the deep end, we caught up with Mahalia a couple days after her exhilarating set at Glastonbury to talk us through performing, emotional ruts, and the vulnerability that comes with writing from real life experiences.

I know you’ve had a pretty hectic past week. I just want to ask, how’s everything been?
Amazing. I still kind of feel like I’m coming down off—not even a cloud, a spaceship, because I feel like it’s further than the sky. But, no, I feel really good. My voice is back, which is nice. Glastonbury definitely took my voice away from me, but I think it did with everybody. But I feel great. I’m kind of doing this thing right now on socials, where I’m counting down to the record, and that really keeps me grounded. It allows me to just really get into the days and the time, so I feel good at the minute.

Especially with album rollout and just playing Glasto, you can get very easily caught up in everything that’s going on. So it’s nice to hear that you’re staying grounded and you’re still just living and breathing.
Exactly. Still living, still healthy. Could go to the gym more, but here we are [laughs].

I kind of want to talk about Glastonbury a bit. I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of feelings and emotions playing a stage like that would have brought up. So tell me about that performance for you, and I guess this period afterwards that you’re going through.
Well, it was crazy because I think sometimes I think as artists, we are moving so fast that we don’t really think about what everything means and what it is, in the moment. And I think leading up to Glastonbury; I probably didn’t realise how big it was going to be. I was told that I had a good slot and it was a good stage, and I know the festival well so I know the stage, but I don’t think it all kind of came together in my head until the last minute, and you know what? In the beginning, before I went on stage, it was kind of bittersweet because I had woken up that morning with practically no voice and, just not what you fucking want. And I was kind of freaking out. But I had a late slot; I had an 8:30 PM slot. So, luckily, thank the Lord that I’m smart, I stayed off-site because the site gets really dusty. It can get really crazy, so it’s really not good for your voice. So I basically spent the day silent. My boyfriend was with me. I wasn’t talking to him. My friends were with me. I wasn’t talking to them. I was warming up, I was sucking on Vocalzones. I was kind of just literally silent up until about 8 o’clock. And then my parents came, and I kind of had a little cry. I think I was just stressed about not being able to sing correctly. And obviously, with Glasto, it’s mental because it’s live and then it’s also live on TV, and everybody’s watching. But everybody kept saying to me, the moment you step on stage; your adrenaline is going to take over. And I was kind of there going, “It’s not, it’s not,” because my voice isn’t here. And then I went on stage and lo and behold, it took over. Then I was just able to just look and enjoy. And that feeling, I’m not sure I can describe. All I know is that I was kind of staring at everybody, people were on shoulders, and they’re screaming and they’re smiling, and I’m kind of looking at everybody like, what the fuck are you doing here? Yeah, there were a lot of emotions. By the time I came off stage, I think my adrenaline was on its way down because when I came to the back of the stage, I just fell onto my tour manager. I didn’t know how to process it, but it was amazing. And then I went out dancing that night, saw quite a few people who had been to the show and just got to be a part of that world. Glastonbury really does feel like another world.

Even watching the footage back and seeing how many people were there, I can’t even imagine how you managed.
And that’s the thing about festivals. You can kind of count the people in the space, but then you have to count the people all the way at the back who maybe are walking. There are so many people that are able to see you. And I think that’s also why it’s so incredible for artists who maybe aren’t used to crowds. Like, I can’t play a crowd of 20,000 in London. So to then be on that stage and see how many people is like, whoa, this is absolutely crazy.

I also want to talk about being pulled back into reality by the people surrounding you, because I remember you posting on Instagram a couple of weeks ago, you posted about your performance for Jools Holland and how you weren’t having the best time before it, until your mum kind of snapped you back into reality. Do you feel like you owe a lot to those around you and how they’re able to pull you out of those kinds of ruts?
Definitely. That scenario in particular was huge for me, and my mum is a really big person for me. When I was backstage at Glastonbury, my tour manager came over and said, “What do you need?” And I told him, I could really do with my mum just to kind of settle me. And it’s so important to have those moments because I think we can all get in our heads. I definitely get in my head, especially nowadays, because of the way that people talk about an artist’s performance, the way they sang or if they didn’t hit a note. And we’re in this world right now where everything is online; everything is filmed, and everything is for everyone to see. And I think it’s really unfair to kind of pick apart artists like that. I think I’m always scared of not doing the best performance I can possibly do. And also, I was having this conversation recently, but I’m kind of within a world and a genre that is really about vocalists. And it’s not that I don’t see myself as a vocalist. I think I sing in a really unique, authentic way. But I wouldn’t say that I’m a vocalist. I wouldn’t say that I’m somebody who does all the tricks and all the stuff. So whenever I get up to sing, I just get scared. But I just get scared that people are going to say “She was flat” or “She can’t sing” or blah, blah, blah. And I’ve always said that people can say things online about the way I look, about my body, about the way I speak, whatever. That shit doesn’t get to me. Of course, it kind of seeps in, but I already have that complex anyway, honey, so whatever you say is not going to bother me. Whatever you’re saying, my small voice is already saying it, so leave me the fuck alone [laughs]. But when it comes to comments about my music and my voice, that stuff really hits home. So I think I need people to just say to me, you have fucking got this; you are completely fine. And my mum is always really good at that, and she did totally help me with that performance. That was not my best vocal performance at all. In fact, it’s probably one of my least favourites online. But my performance and my physical and the way that I just carried, is what I’m proud of and I couldn’t have gotten into it without her.

I want to talk about your new album IRL, which of course is your first album in four years. We were just talking about the people’s reception to music. Do you feel a little bit nervous or scared about the time span in between works?
Yeah, I definitely do. I think there’s just an underlying anxiety at the moment. The sophomore album is scary because I think people are expecting you to do one thing because they only know one thing. And I think I’m probably scared about the fact that, sonically, this album sits very differently to my first record. In my opinion, the thread of any album is always the artist. So that’s kind of how I look at albums and how I look at growth and music. I’m not really scared about that, but I’m definitely scared that people won’t like it as much. And of course, just to be totally real, I’m a signed artist. So I’m always kind of scared because if I’m not going to achieve something that everybody else wants me to achieve. But those things you have to try and put out of your brain because this was the album that I had to make and this was the album that I made, so while I’m scared, I’m also just excited for this wait to be over.

Would you say you’re a different person now when you were writing and curating this album, as opposed to the person you were when creating your first album, Love and Compromise?
Yes, definitely. I think when I was writing Love and Compromise, I was kind of writing from the perspective of talking myself into being the woman I am now. So all of the subject matter is about compromise and love and heartbreak. I was kind of talking to myself, like, saying to myself, you need to be this person. And I think on this record, I am that person. And it kind of feels like there’s a real feeling of independence on this album. Not just in love, in life and other issues. There’s a real feeling of me getting to a point. So, yeah, I definitely feel like they are different.

And then with the title of the album, IRL, what does that mean to you and what does that mean to the project?
IRL honestly came post-pandemic because I was like, fuck this. Everything was on the phone; everything was on the laptop, I was in this apartment. So I was kind of stuck in this cycle of doing the same things every day. And what it is for me is, everything you hear, every song, all of it comes from in real life experiences, because I write in that way. I’m always trying to think of titles that perfectly reflect the way that I write. And I think with my first larger project, it was a mixtape back in 2018 called Diary of Me, that kind of perfectly described the way that I write, because all of my songs feel like diary entries. And I think IRL just allowed me to be able to go anywhere. Love and Compromise is very clear. It’s very much a title that explains this is what the album is about, whereas IRL is like, what the fuck is she going to talk about. I wanted people to understand that the way that I write and the way that I talk about things, that everything is from my real life, which sometimes can make writing really hard because sometimes things aren’t exciting and I’m in a long term relationship and sometimes he doesn’t do anything shit, so I can’t write anything about it [laughs]. But I definitely got some stories out on this record that I’m super proud of.

That’s awesome. With that being said, then, since you understand the purpose of this record for yourself, what are you hoping other people take away from it?
Independence. I want people to really feel a sense of strength from this album because that’s how I feel when I listen to it. And there are songs that I think really kind of take you through those waves. There’s a song that I keep talking about because I want everybody to love it, it’s called Goodbyes. That song came when I was going through this horrendous heartbreak. Heartbreak can be something that is deeply, deeply sad and deeply painful, but it can also be fucking chaotic. And the last time I was going through a heartbreak, I felt like I was going insane. It was like I was crying and then I was laughing, and then I was cooking, and then I was lying on the sofa, and then my shit was getting burnt on the stove, and then I was, like, dancing around the kitchen and then I was crying. It’s like this huge wave of emotions. Goodbyes totally is a heartbreak song. And it’s basically saying, “Why are you leaving me?”, that has this acoustic moment mixed into this dance type beat, so I just wanted to show that chaos. I want people to feel strength in that, because I feel like in the moment, when I was deeply sad and writing this record, I was trying to find comedy and love and happiness within it. So I think independence and strength, which maybe is a bit cliche, but that definitely is kind of what I found whilst writing it.

Then after the album drops, what’s next? What are you hoping to do for the rest of the year?
I don’t bloody know. I think tour is very exciting. I really desperately want to come back out there. I’ve actually been saying to my live agent for the past two years, every time it gets to Christmas, I’m like, am I going to Australia or am I going to New Zealand?”. It has been such a long time. And every single day I get a notification from Triple J that says “Triple J is now playing Mahalia”. I’m like, “Guys, they are playing the music. Let’s fucking go.”. So I definitely want to get my car on the road. I think on the road is where I really shine and I’m able to really kind of sit in my truth and do the thing that I really love. But also, I think I just want to keep releasing music. I definitely don’t want to take four years again. I know that I put out projects in between, but I just want to keep that momentum. I’m 25 now, and I kind of want to have a baby around 32, so I just want to keep moving. I just kind of have tunnel vision with that.

Follow Mahalia here for more and stream the new album IRL now.