Lyrically sincere and heartfelt, ‘Mama’ is a deeply personal song and video from the Stockholm singer-songwriter Maja Francis. A creator of shimmering country with a pop influences, Francis has been referred to as an ‘Emo Dolly Parton’. What Francis and Parton have in common is an ability to draw listeners in with beautiful melodies. On this single, Francis’s fine voice is buoyed by the backing of Johanna and Klara Söderberg from First Aid Kit. The combination is sublime.
‘Mama’ is taken from Maja Francis’s first full length album, ‘A Pink Soft Mess’. After well-received EPs and millions of streams, this was the natural step. The new material was recorded and produced by Johannes Runemark and David Wikber, who create a rich, warm, gently swirling, layered song. The album includes ‘Anxious Angel’, which was heard in the closing scenes of Netflix original series ‘Love & Anarchy’. These songs were consciously more intimate. Francis explains: ““Early summer 2018 I released my ‘Cry Baby’” EP’s and after that I collapsed in a small pile, dyed my hair blue and went down to the sea in Skåne where I grew up. I had gotten lost in why I started with music from the beginning, and I stopped feeling things from the inside. It made me sick, and I felt that I needed to stop with the music and with the image I created of myself, to be able to fall in love again…. And somewhere among tears and pink cigarettes I started writing a diary which later became a voice memo which later became a whole album – ‘A Pink Soft Mess’. I realised during these years that I had really missed the organic and what I actually started in from the very beginning….. just my voice and at most one instrument and then adorned it instead of the other way around, that my voice had to fight towards a production all the time, or being saved up with an auto tune because the melodies did not come completely from me, or because I did not get bogged down in things. Johannes and David who produced the album understood immediately. We spent a few days in a studio on the countryside, where their biggest mission was to make me feel totally free in my own voice – there was so much that was damaged there. They helped me find my way back to actually love being in the studio from hating it.” And that love comes across here. Enjoy.
