Vocalist/Composer Michael Mayo Releases New Single “The Way” | WATCH NEW VIDEO!
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Artistry Music/Mack Avenue Music Group:
Vocalist/Composer Michael Mayo
Releases First Single “The Way”
On Bones (due out in 2021), Michael Mayo‘s new album on Artistry Music/Mack Avenue Music Group, the virtuosic vocalist/composer and international performer establishes his place as one of the most acclaimed and versatile voices in music today. “The Way” — lead single from his upcoming label debut — is out worldwide today.
The gifted child of two “first-call” L.A. session musicians, Mayo was literally born into the business, and spent his childhood listening to and learning up close from some of the greatest musical artists of the 20th century, all of them friends of the family. “My Mom is a singer and my Dad is a saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist. I grew up in the studio watching them do their thing,” he remembers. “They would go on tour, sing with people like Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross, Earth, Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson… all the greats.”
“‘The Way’ is basically a song about someone who is expressing that they are attracted to someone, and is expressing it to that person in a way that is clear but also respectful,” reflects Mayo. “I had just spent my first summer in New York and I started dating someone. There were things I wanted to say to them and I realized that I couldn’t really figure out how to verbalize them, and this song came out of that. It can be really scary and difficult to express to someone what you are feeling for them, and this song is just an expression of that.”
Michael is similarly skilled at merging aspects of different musical genres, or ignoring them when he chooses. “I used to be pretty rigid when it came to genres. I was, like, ‘Jazz and R&B are mutually exclusive, and you must approach them like two entirely different things.’ But I learned that things that seem like they are entirely unrelated usually do have a common thread. Today, whether I’m singing my own music or other people’s, I know that the only real common thread that I care about is truth and authenticity.”
Photo Credit: Lauren Desberg
Mack Avenue