“Hi! Thank you for meeting with me. I’m sorry I’m a little sick, but thanks for rescheduling and thanks for talking to me…” In her first sentence to me, Maya Hawke has already thanked me three times, which I come to realize is a reflection of her empath superpowers and her disarmingly genuine graciousness and generosity. I’m the last one to the Zoom, but instead of being put off, she’s thanking me (three times). Still recovering from a bug, she sits up in bed in her dark button-down pajamas with white piping. She’s probably not wearing much makeup if any, but of course she doesn’t need any (the 25-year-old actor and songwriter comes from a long line of historically beautiful people). Hawke pushes her hair behind her ears, and I notice the square of a framed painting behind her pastel swishes of no particular persuasion. Hotel room art? Or a rental. That makes sense; she’s dialing in from Atlanta, where she’s shooting the fifth and final season of Netflix series Stranger Things. It’s early May when we speak, and her third full-length album, Chaos Angel, is about to be released. I ask about the title track that culminates in a repeated mantra-like outro of “I want you/I love you/I promise/I’m sorry.” She explains how that song and all 10 tracks on Chaos Angel were written from personal experience, living through and recognizing destructive relationship patterns and ultimately growing from them. She says in the textured, glottal-fry-free voice that I recognize from her songs, “The joke I used to make was that the relationships I was in were never the problem, but breaking up was always the answer.”
Her raspy voice is unmistakable to me as I’ve just spent the last two days submerged in her songs (hello, earworms), but most people will recognize her as the daughter of Hollywood actors Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, both celebrated for roles in era-defining movies of the ’90s and early aughts like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Dead Poets Society, and Reality Bites. Hawke grew up immersed in the arts she spent summers at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and Stagedoor Summer Camp and studied with Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio and Stella Adler’s Studio of Acting. She spent one year at the Juilliard School before leaving to play everyone’s favorite, Jo March, in the 2017 BBC adaptation of Little Women. She’s been with the wildly popular Stranger Things since its third season, portraying hyper intelligent mall worker/monster killer Robin Buckley. The most recent additions to the Maya Hawke streaming rabbit hole include Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City and the Leonard Bernstein story Maestro. She also had the leading role portraying a young Flannery O’Connor in Wildcat, her father’s 2023 biographical-drama pic.
But, true to her multifaceted artistic and intellectual legacy (yes, generations of models on her mom’s side, but also her grandfather is Buddhist scholar and writer Robert Thurman, and of course her father is also a writer and director who is said by The New Yorker! to be a distant cousin of Tennessee Williams, wha?!?), Hawke has emerged as a songwriter in recent years. She released her first full-length recording, Blush, in 2020. Her second, Moss, came out in 2022. Her latest, Chaos Angel, was released on May 31, 2024, and it is not only a confessional songwriter’s musical reflections on her experience, it’s its own mythology complete with hero’s journey, mythological beings, and mantras. Is the album a healing modality and spiritual system too? Has Maya Hawke started her own cult? If Joseph Campbell were alive, I’d ask him.
The chaos angel is an alter-ego/mythic being (part Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction and rebirth, with angelic qualities á la the Judeo-Christian tradition) born of lived experience, reflection, and ultimately, love. But the album begins with “Black Ice,” which presents the conclusion of surrendering to love with the repeated outro “Give up; be loved.” It’s essentially beginning with the end, so perhaps we could argue there’s also an ouroboros in there. The subsequent songs on the album present moments from Hawke’s experiences and relationships that led her to that point of view. “I really wanted each song to be about a mistake that I thought I’d made in my life and going back to the mistake and analyzing it, from both perspectives, was the idea,” Hawke says.
Although Hawke’s candid, personal lyrics are evident from her earliest recordings, she’s sharing even more on Chaos Angel. On this record, we get to hear more of Hawke’s own musicality. It’s a musicality that she was expressing as early as age eight, when she started writing her own songs “But I just rewrote the lyrics to a Hannah Montana song, so I don’t know if that means anything, but then I wrote another song called Purple and Yellow,” says Hawke. Music was where she could express herself unaffected by her dyslexia. “I was thinking things, and I wanted to be able to express them…I couldn’t, really, in the way of an essay, so I just started writing songs instead.” And these days making music is so organic, she sometimes doesn’t even realize she’s doing it. “I am kind of a very annoying person,” Hawke admits, “in that I’ll be at work, and someone will come up to me and go, ‘Oh, that’s so nice that you’re singing. You have such a nice voice,’ and I’ll be like, ‘Oh no, I was singing out loud. I didn’t mean to be….That’s so embarrassing, and, um, I’m sorry that I was doing that.’”
Unlike her previous albums where she contributed to the songwriting as the lyricist, the first nine tracks on Chaos Angel were created not only from Hawke’s lyrics but also grew out of her melodies and other musical ideas. She attributes this change in large part to the deepening trust with her ongoing musical collaborators Jesse Harris, Benjamin Lazar Davis, Will Graves, and Christian Lee Hutson—who recognize and support Hawke’s inherent, undeniable musicality. Hawke says of Hutson, who also worked with her on Moss: “[He] really encouraged me to trust my own voice more and to trust my own songwriting … I didn’t really think that I had anything to offer musically, and he sort of changed my mind about that.” Contributing musically as well as lyrically to Chaos Angel, Hawke approached this latest recording with a new confidence.
The result is something wholly pleasurable on multiple levels. Besides being a solidly produced album with top-notch musicians and the highest production values, there are surprising elements throughout the record that show a sonic risk-taking and playfulness. Yes, there are the auto-tuned, layered vocals on a traditional fisherman’s melody in “Better” unexpected but somehow fitting. But do you hear that funny bendiness in “Okay” that feels like a record set to the wrong speed? Is it reflecting the drag of our egoic identities on personal memories? There’s a surprising dissonance within the expansive bridge in “Wrong Again.” “Chaos Angel,” the title track, starts with a wonky piano that belies the epic outro mantra of “I want you; I love you; I promise; I’m sorry.” The chorus in “Big Idea” comes in two beats earlier than you think it’s going to, making you feel like you’re sliding irresistibly into the chorus, and yes, it’s slightly addictive. You find yourself waiting for that slide to happen again and again. Wee!
Another part of that interesting rub between the high production values and experimentation in “Chaos Angel” lies in the lack of manipulation on much of Hawke’s vocals. Her vocal delivery, which is certainly nuanced, deliberate, and artful, is at the same time raw, up close and personal, often leaving in the inhalations and other mouth noises that might be edited out by other pop artists or producers. Hawke whispers into the listener’s ear bits of conversation, inner monologue, reflections on relationships, self-doubt, expectations, and illusions. You almost forget whether the words are being sung or spoken as she begins the title track singing over that wonky piano: “I cried when my daddy said that your older brother was sick/but the only one who listened when you said what that man did….”
Her acting lineage and experience no doubt contribute to the authentic delivery of the lines, but it’s also her sensitivity to words and her attention to language that enable her to tell an evocative story within a song. She includes details that make the stories feel real. From “Wrong Again”:
20 dollars in tokens to play
an hour of Arctic Thunder
Commercial Coke bottle opens/
Give your tickets to the usher
Sit too close on purpose to see if
you adjust or hold your ground
And she doesn’t shy away from attempting to convey the ineffable and the conflicting emotions and desires in life and relationships. Who can deny the truth of “I need you/I need you/I wanna be alone” or “I love you as much as possible until I want to stop” both quotes from “Wrong Again.”
You trust her when she describes the offender in “Hang in There” as “a weapon of mass distraction.” And then you delight in the rhyme that happens as she continues the rest of that verse: “When it got bad enough, you fell in the habit of mistaking his violence for passion.” And it feels like she means it when she sings later “Man I wish that I could take his teeth out.”
Speaking of taking someone’s teeth out, if it feels like Hawke has got your back, it’s because Hawke has got your back. Being there for people is her default setting. This is where her empath superpowers really kick in. She is not only aware of the emotional needs you’re not owning up to, she’s aware of her own, to the degree of knowing when she’s weaponizing her own vulnerability! Whoa.
She explains how, as a teenager, “I would talk a lot about the darkest stuff that was happening in my life right away when I met someone, and I realized at a certain point that that was a defense mechanism and that it wasn’t true openness. It was me going, ‘I’m worried you might think this about me so I’m gonna make sure you know that I know it about myself, and I’m worried you might do this so I’m gonna tell you this so you feel bad for me.…It was actually kind of weaponizing vulnerability to have a lot of control, or what I thought was control, over what people thought about me.” That is serious best friend material. You want someone with that genius level of emotional intelligence.
For someone who has grown up in the public eye and is essentially American pop culture royalty, she emphasizes the receiving of others more than receiving attention for herself. It reflects in her song lyrics. She sings, “I’ve been someone to talk about/I wanna be someone to talk to” in “Missing Out” (which there is a great video for with Hawke strapped in a chair á la A Clockwork Orange being force-fed culture in the form of scenes from classic films all starring Hawke). The song “Hang in There” is from the perspective of comforting someone ending a toxic relationship. If the lyrics are any indication, Hawke will best-friend you like the stuff of legends or superheroes. What trauma could withstand the depths of healing in the lyric “What happened to you is not who you are/Everyone knows who you are”?
But the more you talk with Hawke, the more you realize that her attention to others is across the board. She’s the voice you hear first on her songs, but she wants listeners to hear the contributions of all the musicians on each track: “‘Oh, that must be Ben on that instrument….That must be Will on that guitar solo….Christian must have worked on that song with Maya.’ I want them to come through because we really made this record together, and I just wanted them to be tangible,” says Hawke.
She even sees her concerts as ways to facilitate audiences connecting to each other. Fans approach her at Comic Con with books they put together of their times making new friends at her shows. “My favorite kind of fan is one that makes it about the other people that they meet,” says Hawke. “Like, it’s not really about me is what I realized when I went on the longest tour.” She feels like Robin, her character on Stranger Things, already gathers a community of people who might otherwise feel like outsiders. Hawke says she draws “a lot of young women who feel gothy and different and special and weird who want to express themselves, and then they kind of go to my shows, and they make friends with each other, and that’s really beautiful to me.” She says, “I used to get really stressed out at my shows because I felt like it was about me, and I was worried that I was going to let people down, and then I realized that it wasn’t about me. It was about them being together, and especially in the wake of the pandemic, like, young people getting to be together in a space. And really my job was to play music and to make sure the space is safe, and then they get to feel comfortable there. And that’s when I started to feel like my job was almost more like a host than an act, you know?”
When I bring up how much being there for people and being a good friend seems important to her, she responds immediately. “I think it’s everything about being alive. I mean I think that basically being alive is about finding people that you trust and that trust you and trying to be there for them, and I think that’s pretty much everything, and, like, working through difficult times and relationships to get to times where you’re stronger,” she says. “I guess I don’t like to give up on people. And I don’t like to be given up on, and I don’t like things to end.”
Hawke doesn’t mention any of her own romantic relationships specifically, and one wonders how her parents’ divorce in 2005 shaped what sounds like a deep acceptance of the complexities of relationships and a belief in the growth possible from allowing them and yourself to evolve through all aspects of a relationship—including pain and conflict. No matter how she got there, you certainly feel this understanding of life in her music. “I like to find people that you respect and to trust yourself as time goes by, even if there are difficulties in those relationships,” says Hawke. “You picked that person for a reason and you can work it through and get to a resolution that’s actually deeper and more close and more profound than the relationship was before that argument, you know, or that fight. And so yeah, I think that’s an extremely important thing to me.”
In a way, her connections to people in her life are so deep that she doesn’t have friends; she has family. “I think I’ve always been a real family person,” Hawke says. “You know, even as a kid, I was always closer with my family than I was with friends at school.…There were times where I was angry about it, where I wished that I’d been one of those kids [with] a big group of friends and that was the center of my life. But I think that it’s made me treat all my friends like my family. As I have gone out into the world, I’m still really close to my family, but my friends are becoming my family….I don’t have any casual friends, really. I have family who are my friends.” In her rapid-fire, descriptive, hyper-articulate way, she describes wanting to be the kind of girl who likes “going out with the gals on a Friday or Saturday. You don’t really know everyone that well, and maybe Penelope has something going on that she won’t talk about, but you’re all out. It’s fun. You’re gonna play poker and drink chardonnay until you go home. I don’t have those kinds of friends. I have friends where maybe I’ll hang out with one or two of them at a time, and we’ll talk for hours, and they’ll probably stay over, and then we’ll wake up in the morning and go get breakfast. You know, I have those kinds of friends.”
I’m taking this ferocity of commitment to relationships of all kinds to mean that Hawke also doesn’t give up on herself or her songwriting, which is great for us, because we’ll have a lot more music to discover with her as she continues to evolve and explore. As to what future albums might look like, Hawke says, “I think my curiosity is just leaning more and more toward the folk tradition. What I mean by that is simple songs, simple chords, simple stories.” She grew up listening to greats like Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, “a lot of Wilco, a lot of Bright Eyes.…He [her father]’s got great taste in music….But my mom does too. I think Joni Mitchell, Tracy Chapman, and Fleetwood Mac are all more my mom. And Willie Nelson, Wilco, Bright Eyes, and Kris Kristofferson are more my dad. I’ve also loved watching his taste change as I’ve grown up. Like he’s a huge Swifty now, because of all of the daughters, I think. That’s been really cool to watch.”
She mentions the songwriting of country legend Willie Nelson as inspiration: “So when I think about Willie Nelson, I feel like he finds a way to say the most complicated emotion in the simplest words.” She returns to the idea of straightforward storytelling within songs: “Really making sure that there’s a beginning and a middle and an end and that you’re not kind of coasting on a vibe, which is something that drives me crazy about a lot of music today, but I’ve been excited about it at other times in my life. Right now I’m having, like, a ‘vibe allergy’ and a feeling of being really pulled toward storytelling and clear, simple messages in songs. And yeah, that’s what’s been really exciting for me lately.”
In terms of what those stories will be, one thing we can safely say is they won’t be one dimensional. I had pulled tarot cards for each of the songs on the album, and track seven, “Big Idea,” drew the Devil card. We talked about how that card symbolizes the opportunity for true freedom and power by making friends with your shadow or by coming to terms with what you’re both drawn to and run away from. In a way, the card reflects where Hawke was writing from in the whole album. She described receiving a tarot reading once where she had pulled the Death card, and before the reader could explain its full meaning, Hawke interjected that she already understood that the card really isn’t about death at all; it’s about being reborn. The tarot reader laughed that Hawke had “jumped so fast to the positive conclusion, you didn’t even dance with the possibility of it being negative. You were so afraid of the darkness that you actually intellectualized yourself right directly to the light.” The lesson was that “you actually need to take a little more time with the darkness before you get to the rebirth,” says Hawke. She describes how Chaos Angel reflects her breaking the cycle of running from difficult feelings, even by intellectualizing herself into the light that she could, as the opening track “Black Ice” concludes, “Give up/be loved.”
And what happens after you break the cycle? What happens when a chaos angel gives up to be loved? It sounds like we have to wait until the next album. “I’m probably in a different cycle now,” Hawke says. “I’ll probably explore it on whatever the next record is that I make.”
Photographed by andrew frame
