Mary Middlefield returns with a brand new single entitled "Sexless,"alongside its mesmerizing accompanying music video. Her newest release is a brash, rollicking, and raunchy number that really puts it all out there in a form of vulnerability separate from her past material.
The release of "Sexless" follows the arrival of her debut album, Thank You Alexander, which dropped on March 3. Born mid-pandemic, Thank You, Alexander was Middlefield’s cathartic response to heartbreak and sadness. The album reflects her journey through themes of infidelity, romance, and abuse, with songs such as her debut track "Band Aid," "Two Thousand One," and "This One’s For You," garnering support from music publications like CLASH, Notion, and The Line Of Best Fit.
A former student of classical violin, 22 year-old Mary Middlefield now wields high drama, desire, and vulnerability as keys to making meaning in a complicated universe, where love and abuse coincide. Her roomy, stream-of-consciousness songs veer between a keening pop-punk fueled intensity and a lovely folk-inspired softness, inspired by the likes of Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, as well as more recent artists like Claud, Jockstrap and The Japanese House. “He dumped me in the middle of the day while I was carrying his groceries,” she says. With nothing to lose, she figured it was the perfect time to experiment. She picked up the guitar, taught herself music production and from there, piece by piece and note by note, she began stitching herself back together, turning her pain into something generative, fortifying. Through song, she began to reclaim everything she’d lost in that relationship and its subsequent dissolution. She set to work on her debut album Thank You Alexander, a remarkably clear-eyed work that documents the process of heartbreak and grief in unflinching detail, spinning despair into indelible hooks. It was a way of establishing her own perspective, her own agency. “Alexander” might have broken her heart, but in the end it was her who won; she was the one who got to sing about it. The album was met with great acclaim. Shared by the likes of Clash and The Line of Best Fit in the United Kingdom, Glide Magazine in the United States, and featured in numerous Swiss media like Schweizer Illustrierte, Sunrise Starzone, or SRF3. Middlefield was named “SRF3 Best Talent” in the month of April, which allowed her to blossom further. In her first summer as an artist in the industry she embarked on her first festival tour, playing renowned festivals such as Montreux Jazz Festival and Winterthurer Musikfestwochen. Now, Middlefield returns with new material, starting with her new single, "Sexless," a rollicking and raunchy number that really puts it all out there: “I haven’t had sex in the past year,” it opens. “I’d already pushed my sincerity all the way out there with the sad songs, but with this, I wanted to push myself towards embarrassment,” Middlefield explains. In the end, she found, laying it all out wasn’t so embarrassing at all: “It gave me a new perspective. There's nothing really embarrassing about not having sex or being single or not having a partner or just not even wanting it. I don’t want to censor anything in my art. Life isn’t pretty, finding love and taking care of yourself and your loved ones is really hard, a lot of people are cruel and mean. If just getting through the day is hard for most of the people I know - myself included - why would I try to make anything prettier than it actually is?” Mary Middlefield's newest music is a purging of emotion, one that’s allowing her to move forward with a clear mind and a clean palette. But for now, this is music for the people who are stuck, scorned and lonely. Middlefield invites you to suffer and yearn and scream alongside her.
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