Maye Opens the Heavens

Maye Osorio couldn’t sleep. One day, while buying a yoga mat at the Grand Central Market’s Bazaar in Downtown Los Angeles, she found out why.

“I had a meeting that day in that building, and I saw a lady who was selling yoga mats, so I went up to her and she just started reading me como una vidente (like a clairvoyant),” Maye says. “She started telling me there were nine spirits in my house. I bought nine white candles, placed one in each room, and did a little ritual. Things started happening: a gust of wind came out of nowhere and opened a window. Something definitely left, and in that conversation, she said my mission in life was to ‘abrirle el cielo a la gente’ (open the sky for people).”

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Maye’s long-awaited debut, whose Spanish title translates as “Music to Open the Sky,” is an exercise in the ethereal. Born in Caracas and raised in Miami, the Venezuelan indie singer-songwriter established herself as a gentle emerging force in Latin alternative music with an effortlessly bilingual sound caught between dream pop and bolero, a Cuban genre similar to the torch song that revolves around bongos, acoustic guitar, and heart-wrenching lyrics full of yearning.

Her second official single, “Tú” (“You”), released in 2019, is perhaps the perfect example: a slow-moving love song set to a sliding electric guitar with an echo of bongos and shaker grounded by Maye’s voice, light as if it came on a gentle breeze. The song has rightfully entranced the world, racking up millions of streams. She’s ventured into alternative rock (like debut song “My Love,” with its sweltering guitar-driven beat change in the chorus), and has even covered Bad Bunny and J Balvin’s Oasis-era sadboi post-breakup hit “LA CANCIÓN,” imbuing everything she sings on with a quiet fire.

Música Para Abrir El Cielo is an album about attempting to reconnect with yourself and the world through (and after) rupture, and sees Maye further sharpening her muted magic, expanding herself until she soars. Moving between playful and dramatic indie rock and slow-burning boleros,  she gets a little less gentle without losing any of her gentleness, more brutally honest without sacrificing her tenderness. She started recording with producers Mick Coogan and Scott Dittrich near the end of 2022 with “Una Medalla,” a lively pop-rock track about the extreme sport of living without your lover’s stare. The song opened the door to more sonic play in that direction, also enlisting long-time collaborators Fernando Belisario and Pat Howard.

Though Maye lent her honey-voiced breathiness to tracks by DannyLux and Vanessa Zamora—as well as lending her pen to Omar Apollo and Pharrell, and opening for The Marías during their Cinema tour—she’s never been the main artist on a collaboration until “Lento.” One of the album’s more upbeat moments sees Maye duet with Beto Montenegro of Rawayana, the Venezuelan alternative band that won the Grammy for Best Latin Rock Album earlier this year.

“I was introduced to Beto through a friend. They had been working with Mick [Coogan], and we all ended up getting in a room together. We were missing a festival song. Mick had the perfect instrumental that he had worked on with Scotty [Dittrich],” says Maye of the collaboration. “Writing with Rawayana was easy, but also kind of challenging because they were fast. It felt like I had to keep up with them, which was challenging in a great way. Now we have more than five songs written, but ‘Lento’ was the first one that we did together, and it flowed naturally. We just had so much fun doing it.”

Though she expands her register toward the danceable, the standouts here are her slower moments. “Bailemos,” driven by her voice and an acoustic guitar before the refrain is echoed back via whistle, calls to mind indie’s great balladeers like Rodrigo Amarante. And of course, the boleros: Using the familiar sounds of the classic genre, she turns it on its head. Cheeky “Peter Pan” sees Maye send an ex back to where he came from. On “Luna De Miel,” she reflects on nostalgic first moments now lost to time. Album standout “Ella” glimmers as Maye sings about belonging to herself and healing in solitude (translated from the spoken outro in Spanish): “Everything is fine,  everything has always been fine / You just have to open your eyes / And realize that, sometimes, you’re drowning in a glass of water.” The album’s climax, “Ángel,” continues the heavenly metaphors and combines bongos with anthemic guitar and an energy that could fill a stadium on a song about finding love again. Maye’s boleros, and her use of these sounds, were compelling from the start, but largely leaned into the genre’s trappings of pedestalled loves and universe-stopping kisses. Here, she focuses her approach, channeling these classic sounds toward new meanings: healing from bad love, finding oneself after the dust clears, looking bravely toward new beginnings.

“I’ve always loved listening to Los Panchos or Celia Cruz’s album Boleros; I always got this nostalgic feeling from that time when I heard them. I grew up with them and wanted to make them my own,” says Maye of the genre. “On songs like ‘Luna de Miel’ and ‘Ella,’ I really wanted to make sure those elements were present. When I wrote those songs, I was trying to channel a spirit of independence and self-empowerment. I had ended a really long relationship and felt like I needed to be alone. I’m still on that journey as we speak, and it’s felt good. I’m reminding myself who I am, no matter who is beside me.”

As of press time, Maye has wrapped her first headlining tour. She was accompanied by family, as she has been from the start. Maye has collaborated with her sister Ana, who makes a cameo in the “Tú” video and sang backup on Maye’s Tiny Desk concert, and brother Fernando, who shot most of her single artwork, including the cover of Música Para Abrir El Cielo. In a full-circle moment, Latin Grammy-winning father Fernando Osorio, who earned his trophy working with Celia Cruz, served as her opening act. Grounded in her roots and her day ones, Maye’s new era shines bright, a beam of light reflecting off the sea after breaking through a throng of clouds.

“I’ve had a connection to the sky for as long as I can remember; I’ve always loved sunsets or sunrises and seeing the sunrise on the beach,” she confides, when asked about the album’s title and her dreams for Música Para Abrir El Cielo. “It has a deep meaning for me. It’s also about authentically being yourself. I hope it takes people on a journey, and I’m just happy that it’s out and it’s doing the thing already.”

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