Maya Hawke has opened up about the emotional toll of releasing new music, admitting she dreads the process and often feels exposed when her work finally reaches the public.
Speaking to PEOPLE, the 27-year-old singer – who dropped the album Maitreya Corso earlier this month – didn’t hold back when describing how uncomfortable she feels every time she puts out a new project.
She said: “It’s always weird. If I’m being honest, I hate putting out music.”
Maya continued: “There is this pointing at the self, where it feels so great to write all these personal songs, and to record them and make them with your friends, but then you have to promote it, and it feels like promoting your diary.”
She finds it jarring letting the world in on her personal life, adding: “There’s something that feels very yucky to me about it, and it’s painful and hard. No compliment will ever make me feel good, and every insult will hurt.”
The singer went even further, revealing she doesn’t see album releases as celebrations at all.
Instead, she views them as a kind of farewell.
She explained: “I like to see it more as a funeral for the record than as a release of it.
“Because it was yours, it was this living thing that was movable and changeable, and now it’s this frozen dead thing out in the world that people get to talk about.”
Despite the discomfort, she stressed that she is still grateful for the listeners who connect with her work.
She said: “I’m thrilled that people are hearing it. I’m wildly flattered. And I’m so happy to be letting it go, but I’m terrified while I’m doing it.”
The Stranger Things star recently admitted she “hated” every album she released before her new one, admitting she was burnt out, overwhelmed and unable to enjoy her own music until now.
She said she reached breaking point during previous album cycles (2020’s Blush, 2022’s Moss, and 2024’s Chaos Angel).
Maya told the Los Angeles Times: “Every other album cycle I’ve done, by the time I got to the point where the album came out, I hated it.”
Maya – who worked on her latest LP with her musician spouse Christian Lee Hutson – explained that the pressure of promoting her work online left her drained.
She said: “I was just exhausted by the internet and by being public, and I wouldn’t want to post about it.”