Imagine, your original song has gone viral on TikTok. Ten million views in just a couple of days. Then come the offers: big-time record deals, management, sponsorship, TV producers who want to use your song. You’re flown from your home in Melbourne to the United States to record your debut album. It’s a dream come true.
Days later, you’re sleeping rough on the streets of Los Angeles.
How could this happen?
Step back for a moment.
Reyanna Maria was just 19 when this happened to her – all of it. These days she’s riding high on a wave of hit releases, concerts and festival appearances, but when her career first exploded into the stratosphere, Maria found there were more than a few shocks in store.
“I was eating breakfast one day and a black van pulled up outside our house. My mum and my stepdad and I – I feel like we’re all very anxious people – so we looked outside the window and we just saw this big black van. And I was like, ‘oh my God, what’s happening?’ I’m not kidding, I honestly thought I was being kidnapped. But it was a bunch of flowers that the label had sent me, and champagne.”
Reyanna Maria
Maria’s track “So Pretty,” sung through the built-in microphone in a set of ear buds, exploded across TikTok, then Instagram, then Spotify, then YouTube. We’re talking 50 million streams in the space of a week. The record labels came knocking; the offers piled up. Maria signed with Victor Victor Worldwide, the New York home of Pop Smoke, Ski Mask the Slump God, Pusha T and Nigo, to name a few. It was a strong play by Maria, and a great fit: she found herself a home among like-minded artists, creating music in the styles that come naturally to her.
Then came Los Angeles.
“L.A. is very cool,” Maria says. “It feels like you’re in a movie, being there. But at the same time, there’s this very dark and eerie thing about Los Angeles. It gets quiet at night. And it’s not the type of quiet that you’re used to when you go out on the streets in Australia. It’s like, it’s quiet there. Eerily quiet.”
After a long week working in L.A. studios, meeting producers, cutting tracks and experimenting with new material, Maria hit the party scene. Then, after a gathering in the Hollywood Hills, Maria found herself stranded without a ride home, and a dead phone battery. Her words: Fuck it. It was three in the AM and she needed sleep. She found some in a side doorway at the back of a secluded strip mall.
“I just sat at this fire exit around the side of a big building near the shops. I was like, wow – this is my first time as an artist in L.A. and I’m stuck in this random corner, just sitting here.” She smiles. “That’s probably going to be held against me. Someone’s gonna be like ‘see, I told you she was crazy.’”
Reyanna Maria
An audience assembled around Reyanna Maria – a worldwide audience, ten million strong, drawn to her immediate presence, her laid-back style, and her self-confession at the opening of “So Pretty”: “I’m so shy.” Maria spent the following year dropping singles that prove shyness is not a part of her vocabulary. Her provocative lyrics, her coquettish charm and the song’s irresistible beat – not to mention her years of vocal training – combined to create a collection of songs that slap just as hard live as they do in the studio.
“Doing my first show was the biggest thing, because I’ve always wanted to perform and sing my songs to people. I hadn’t even gone on stage yet, and they were all chanting Rey-an-na! Rey-an-na! I was full crying before I had even sung a note.”
After L.A., Maria spent time in Sydney, meeting artists, working with producers, and learning the industry ropes. The challenges of being a hard-working recording artist began to flow thick and fast.
“Everything is challenging, because I’m just a kid, really. I’m still learning how to navigate myself in the world, and then in the world as an artist. Moving myself to Sydney to do music, and to discover who I am as a person – that was very challenging, because I didn’t have a manager for the first part of it. And a lot of people were asking me: Who is Reyanna Maria? In that first year, I was just trying to be what I thought was wanted of me.”
Now back in Melbourne, Reyanna Maria’s music has become more reflective in recent months. Her new release “Wish U Well” acts as an open letter to her younger self, the person she was when she first became swept up in the whirlwind of the music industry, where success hit her real hard and real fast.
“I feel like my focus, now, is just to centre on my music,” Maria says, “and craft myself as an artist.” An introspective look comes over her. “And I think, also, just to live. And write some music about it. And see where I go.”
With over 200 million worldwide streams under her belt, Reyanna Maria has come a million miles from the kid she was when she began posting videos on TikTok. And she’s a million miles from the nascent artist who, once upon a time, found herself sleeping rough on the streets of L.A.
“I’ve got so much music,” she says. “And I just want to sing it to people.”
