Maya Hawke on Her Great New Album, ‘Stranger Things’ — and Why ‘Love Story’ Is One of the Best Songs Ever

By Brian Hiatt

Brian Hiatt

With her relentlessly melodic fourth album, Maitreya Corso (out today), Maya Hawke is starting to establish a sonic lane of her own, combining Aimee Mann-level musicality with hyper-literate, polygraph-test confessional lyrics. In a recent Rolling Stone Studio interview, Sink broke down the making of the ambitious album — including the influences of Taylor Swift, Sadie Sink, and William Blake — and looked back at the end of Stranger Things, plus much more. 

On the first song of the album, “Love of My Life,” you sing, “What if I got what I wanted/What if I was who I wanted to be?” Is there a little bit of trepidation attached to the idea of getting what you wanted? Sometimes wanting can feel like lacking or missing something, and sometimes it can feel like dreaming and aspiring to something. And I think what I was trying to explore at the time was, if I did get what I wanted, what I think I want right now, would that make me happy or would I then just want something else?

And is there a way to reach at least a certain level of contentment with who you are, what you’re doing, and what you have? Which doesn’t limit your creativity or your drive to keep going, to keep searching, to keep being hungry. ‘Cause that’s the thing that makes you wanna wake up in the morning and brush your hair. But I don’t know. Where is that line between being satisfied and comfortable and content and giving up?

So if it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad? Basically? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Just a total rip-off. [Laughs.]

The album is bookended by that song and the final song, “Dreamhouse.” Tell me about that structure. “Dreamhouse” is really about joy. And getting what you want and building a place where you feel comfortable and where you feel yourself. I wanted the record to feel like a journey, which is why I gave it that title that may be intimidating to pronounce, because I wanted it to feel like the journey of a fantasy heroine and a journey from aspiring towards something — oh, I wanna be with this person, I wanna live this kind of life, I wanna make something of myself — to, oh wow, I’m looking around at what I have and what I’m doing, and it feels really good. And so that’s the needle I tried to thread.

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Tell me about that album title. I come from a lot of different worlds and different philosophies and understanding. Corso is a reference to [beat poet] Gregory Corso. And Maitreya is a reference to the bodhisattva and this idea of new beginnings and the combination of the divine spirit and the human spirit. And I don’t know, It felt right to me. I was looking for a name of a fantasy heroine to go on this journey that I felt like the record was, and that felt like the right name.

On this album, I hear where Joni Mitchell gave you permission to do certain things, both melodically and lyrically. She’s a hero of mine.

And then I also hear the influence of Taylor Swift in the specificity of the lyrics, though she’s not the only one who’s had that approach. I think she inspired a generation. I think she made a generation of young people listen to music and think, oh wow, my life could matter. My feelings could matter. And the details of it could matter, my personal stories. And of course, it’s a [William] Blakean thing, the minute particulars, right? The more specific you make something, the more relatable it actually is. But I was hugely influenced by her. I’ve been listening to her music my entire life. You could start any song from any word and I would be able to know where you were and finish it probably. So it’s an undeniable influence.

On the song “Lioness,” you talk about “watching Sadie talk to God through the lav mic.” I wonder who you’re talking about. I am talking about that Sadie. I think that names are really fun, and figuring out how to use them is fun, and indicating and winking parts of your life. I think that there is a dangerous line you can walk where you don’t wanna really be writing fan fiction of your own life or trying to build puzzles for people to crack. At least that’s not my game. I don’t want people listening to the songs and trying to figure out what I’m talking about. I want them to listen to them and figure out how they feel. But one theme of this record, as well as love and contentment, was about a reckoning with ambition. And “Lioness” is really about getting what you wanted and struggling with some discontent with it.

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You have that line on that song, “put my picture on the poster.” One might think you knew what came with fame given how you grew up, but I guess you have to actually experience it yourself to really know the reality. Yeah, I think so. And I also think there’s a spectacular nature of this industry where it all is extremely glamorous and then there’s a profound loneliness to it, where you’re sitting for nine hours in a wig and makeup that sweats off of your face in a trailer waiting for it to be your turn at two o’clock in the morning, and you’re like, “What am I doing here? Am I being an artist right now? Am I being creative?”

I’m watching my dream come true and I’m grumpy. And how is that acceptable? How is that an acceptable way for me to feel inside? How could it possibly be acceptable for me to talk about that? How could I get on the phone with a friend and be like, “I’m so annoyed,” when I’m living my dream and so many people’s dreams, right?

But of course we’re all human and the same thing, the carrot on the treadmill — I think discontent is in the nature of humanity. The happiest person in the world has bad days and days where they’re not grateful and days where they’re unhappy. And that song is about those days. And there’s a reason that it’s not the first or the last song, and it’s because that’s not what most of my days are like. I’m a really lucky person and I’m especially right now a really happy person. But it’s not always true.

So when were you watching Sadie Sink talk to God through the lav mic? I was actually talking about working on Stranger Things. There was a day where I was really grumpy and I wasn’t feeling very inspired. And I came into set and I was a background player in a scene that she was in, and I remembered how magical acting is. I just watched her pick a spirit out of the universe and make the whole room quiet and speak truth and feel truth and turn something from a game of playing pretend into something extremely authentic and really moving.

And it was a kick in my butt where I was like, no. Bring it every time, every second. Always. Yes, you’re filming for a year. Don’t get lazy for one second. Remember what the magic can be like. When I was at drama school, I used to complain, it was like 80 percent of the day is magic, but 20 percent is total bull-honky. And then I started working and I was like, oh, whoa, 80/20 is a high percentage of magic.

The ratio is shrinking. Yeah. The ratio is shrinking. And that was a moment where I was like, oh, it doesn’t have to — you are shrinking the ratio. You are losing touch with the magic. You are losing touch with what makes you wanna wake up in the morning and brush your hair. You’re depressed. It’s not the art that’s depressed. You are. So I think Sadie is the greatest actress of our generation and I love watching her work in anything, but that was a wake-up call for me.

Does she know she’s shouted out? Yeah.

You got permission? I would never ever, in a million years, not get permission. I think there’s a whole other conversation we could have for an hour about the morality of writing about people. And writing about your experiences, whether or not you name drop-them.

So you ask permission even if you don’t use names? Yeah. Sometimes. I think that it’s a weird feeling to be written about and I’ve had it in my own life from people that I love that know me and that didn’t name-drop me, but wrote about me. And it’s weird. Sometimes it can feel exposing and vulnerable and I don’t wanna put anyone in that position. And you don’t want anyone to learn how you feel about them in public.

And also songwriting — Miley Cyrus actually said this, who is also a huge influence and inspiration to me. But she talked about how feelings enter your body and that’s not who you are, right? You are not really angry in your entire self. You’re a lot of things. But to write a great song, sometimes you wanna zero in on a singular feeling. Where you’re like, oh, I’m gonna write an angry song about this, and really that’s just a moment of a way you feel.

It’s like an ember that you’re fanning into a flame, but it’s not really a flame until you do that. Yeah. And it certainly doesn’t encompass all of what you feel. I think that if you write a really angry song about somebody that you love, you wanna be like, hey, just so you know, before you listen to this on the album — I’m not angry at you. I was angry at you on a day that was really inspiring and created this thing. And do you feel OK about me sharing that feeling with the world? Or not?

On the first single, “Devil,” you sing about ambition. And someone calling you out on your ambition. You have a lot of complicated feelings about that. I do. I think ambition is amazing and it’s a motivating force and it gets you on the treadmill. But I think it also has a bad side. And I was having a really insecure period of time where I was feeling bad about myself and bad about my career, and I was talking to someone and I said, I just don’t think I’m doing well enough. I don’t think I’m successful enough. And they asked me, when would it be enough?

And it stopped me in my tracks and I thought, oh, the only time it would ever feel like enough is if it was too much. If it started to impede my life, impede my ability to be anonymous, to be free — that’s when I’d be like, cool, this is enough. And I don’t want that. I don’t wanna not be able to be a person. And so that was a wake-up call for me — I’ve gotta check in with my ambition, because the only thing that would satisfy the gremlin in me is the ruination of my freedom. And so I’ve gotta go talk to the gremlin and figure out a way to make a deal with them where we could both be happy.

And that’s the devil. Yeah. That’s the devil in the song. That gremlin who was like, “More — you must do better. This person is more successful than you.” And you’ve gotta talk to that guy and be like, OK, how can we work something out? This jealousy isn’t helping me. This competitiveness isn’t helping me. It’s not making me a better artist. So that’s what that song’s about.

You do a really cool thing of returning to the chorus of “Love of My Life” on the track “Maitreya and the Way Back,” which I think helps qualify this as a concept album. And I know that track came together in a really interesting way with different collaborators. Yeah. I’ve been working with a lot of the same people for as long as I’ve been making music. Benjamin Lazar Davis, Will Graefe, and Christian Lee Hutson, my husband. And we have been writing together all for a really long time, and I wanted to do something where each person wrote a different section of the song with me, kind of in isolation, and then we combined them. I thought that would be cool. And we ended up combining it all in a live take.

There are some overdubs but [most] of that song was one live take, everyone in different iso booths. I remember Christian was in a room with a keyboard, a piano, and a guitar on his lap, and he starts on the piano and then he switches to the guitar and then he switches to the keyboard. All in one go.

I really wanted you to feel a love story. There’s a love story in this album — in dealing with ambition and dealing with fear and dealing with history, as you grow as a person, I think you become more and more available to be with the love of your life. If you’re not yourself, you’re not gonna find your person. And so you’ve gotta reckon with the mirror before you can reach out your hand. So I wanted to tell a full love story, but I didn’t want the album to be 20 songs long. So we wanted to jam a big story in together. 

Where are you with your own process of emotional separation from Stranger Things? Have you totally closed the book? The last two years of finishing the show, going in to work on it and then finishing it in the public eye, has been the biggest graduation and emotional turmoil ever for me. I was so scared for it to end. I felt like I’d finally gotten my sea legs in my community and really ditched my new-kid feeling and really got comfortable right when it started to end. And I was really scared. It became such a grounding force, such a family, a character I love playing, and I was really scared to have it end.

What were you scared of? Being lost at sea. Not having a home base to return to. Losing those friendships, possibly. Also, just — “maybe I’ll never work again” is always available in the conversation. Some combination of those things was what I was scared of. And also, am I any good at this? I’ve now been playing this character for a while — did I just get lucky and get this part? And then they built the part for me to succeed in it. Am I actually a terrible actor and I don’t deserve to be here? Imposter whatever.

So I was really scared. And then we had a year of funerals [for the show]. Which was really intense. Private funerals and public funerals. It was really sad. And scary and confusing. And I’m feeling better now. And part of that has to do with the fact that we’re all still friends and that feels reassuring. And I’ve worked since, and that’s comforting. And so far it seems like things are good. We’ll see. I’ll keep you updated.

I think for viewers, series finales are a reminder of death. And I think that’s why people tend to freak out one way or another as fans. In this case, they refused to believe — some of them — that the finale was the finale. They went through the stages of grief. I don’t make fun of it at all. I went through the stages of grief. I get it. I’m still going through them. I think I’m close to acceptance, but if I got the call tomorrow and they were like, “Hey, do you wanna come back?” I’d be like, “Yes.”

I think the Internet’s also just a weird place, and I’ve really learned that these days there is a lot of false information, a lot of false feelings, false outrage, false everything. And that each of us have an internet that is designed for our own personal self-hatred cocktail. I’ve learned this from looking at friends’ phones and they’re being like, oh, you didn’t hear about that? Oh, I heard about that. Oh, you hear bad stuff about you? I see bad stuff about me, and I just hear about how amazing you’re doing. The internet’s trying to ruin our friendship, so you know what’s happening.

And so I really have been working on trying to stay out of it and having my own feelings about the show ending and my own grief and not really trying to filter through everyone else’s response and feelings of people that I don’t know. It’s all complicated, and people work each other up and people — the community of fandom. I don’t know. I thought I’d have a point and then I didn’t.

It’s also fun to hallucinate collectively. Yes. It’s fun to have a collective hallucination.

To go back to your music— you started off really just writing lyrics and then everything changed once you got into the other half of songwriting. Yeah. I was really afraid.

Why? I just didn’t think I was any good. And I think I very quickly started — and this is where great fortune meets its own complications — I very quickly started working with extraordinary musicians who were very intimidating. I I hadn’t been able to meet people like that, I probably would’ve made demos by myself in my room and put them on YouTube. But that wasn’t the hand I was dealt. I was dealt a hand where it was like, “Hey, come over. I’ve got the greatest guitar player in the world here, who wants to write a song with you.” And that’s a really intimidating environment to be like, “But maybe what about this?”

I was really insecure and really afraid, and didn’t think I was good enough and didn’t see why my idea mattered when there were clearly so many better, more informed ideas in the room. And it took a while and a lot of encouragement from some people in my life to think that my idea was worthwhile, not because it was better. But because it was mine.

And that gets into the specificity — it is about expressing yourself. And when you’re expressing yourself fully, ideally people can connect to that.

What would be your pick for some of the greatest songs ever made? “Golden Slumbers,” I think, is one of the greatest songs of all time. I think “Try a Little Tenderness” is one of the greatest songs of all time. I think “Being Alive,” Sondheim — one of the greatest songs of all time. He’s just one of the greatest writers of all time. And I’m gonna say “Love Story.”

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