Last week, Ava Max decided to break her silence on what’s been happening behind the scenes over the past few months. After days of teasing what appeared to be the start of a new era on social media, she posted an open letter to her fans — “Avatars,” as they’re called — revealing that she’d been working on new music and, as some had suspected, that she’d left Atlantic Records, her label home of nearly a decade.
“In retrospect, I’m better off now because it taught me to stand up for what I believe in and not be afraid to speak up about what’s important to me,” she wrote. “I had to change a few things around and do what’s best for the music I want to make.”
Today, Max is speaking candidly as she looks back on the year that led her to this moment of newfound confidence. “I know what I want, and I think honestly it’s a good feeling to know what you want,” she tells Variety in the lobby of her new apartment building in Los Angeles, just two days before the arrival of her new single “Kill It Queen.” “And that is a beautiful place to be in. When you wake up, it makes you excited about life. Indecision was what was stressing me out before. Being stuck, you know?”
Max is lighting the fuse on the next phase of her career with a new team that she refers to as her “wolf pack.” On Wednesday, she released “Kill It Queen,” the first offering from her upcoming fourth album, due later this year. She partnered with Artist Partner Group, reuniting her with former Atlantic executive Mike Caren who fostered her early success with the imprint, and retained a new publicity team.
All of this, she says, is a welcome sea change: “They’re calling me all day and night. I’m just like, wow, they’re more excited maybe than me. How is that possible?”
“Kill It Queen” is a self-empowerment anthem in a classic Max mold, a forceful pop tune that leans even harder into the towering sound of past singles. She taps into her artistic roots — her mother sang opera back in Albania — and embraces her falsetto, something she honed with Eric Vetro, the gold standard of vocal coaches (clients include Ariana Grande and John Legend). The track is produced by Arthur Besna and Sam Martin, collaborators who have been working with Max on her next single and album.
She’s aware of the recurring online discourse that she should try something other than the explosive sound of her past singles. It only made her play into it more. “Something struck a chord. I’m like no. I love pop music. I love making pop records. Why would I leave that just because I wasn’t supported last year and I had a team that didn’t see me?” she says. “That’s why I restructured everything. I left my record label. I love all those people but they weren’t the right fit because someone who doesn’t see the beauty in pop music is not the right person for me to work with.”
Max is touching on one of the most challenging periods of her career. When she released her third studio album, “Don’t Click Play,” last August, she felt immobilized. The pop singer, whose hit singles “Sweet But Psycho” and “Kings & Queens” have more than three billion Spotify streams between them, had been trying different managers on a trial basis, but none of them were sticking. At the end of 2023, she split with Cirkut, her longtime producer and boyfriend, who started dating her co-writer Madison Love, and was left with a lingering sense of distrust. Ultimately, she felt isolated from Atlantic, the engine behind her success since she signed in 2016.
Max noticed a shift in her standing with Atlantic not long after her debut album “Heaven & Hell” was released in 2020. She recalls, for instance, that they wanted her to adjust her sound and get rid of her signature “Max Cut” hairstyle. “It was an energy shift,” she says. “It was almost like, ‘OK, we’re leaving her on her own.’ That’s how it felt. And I just knew something had to change, but I couldn’t change right away.” (Max pauses while discussing this chapter in her life to air out her black tee: “I’m like dripping sweat.”)
“Don’t Click Play,” she says, was entirely her vision. She did it all without her A&R, who “wasn’t answering my calls.” It arrived with a question mark — was the album actually dropping when she said it would? — and after it ultimately did release on time, it was followed by the postponement and subsequent cancellation of her second headlining tour. The stress of it all took a physical toll. She developed headaches and vertigo, and knew something had to change. She met with Atlantic and they mutually decided to part ways. “At the end of the day, we respected each other,” she says, describing it as a “grown-up breakup.” “We kind of came to the agreement, like we’re better off without each other.”
The next day, she called Caren to get the ball rolling on her next era. “He signed me in the beginning when no one cared about me. He taught me a lot at the time and he brought me in and I got so excited because I was working in the studio every single day and we were creating the sound,” she says. “He tells me the truth. And I like people who are honest and upfront. That’s important to me.”
Max is stepping into 2026 with a concept. She has the visual identity of the project mapped out — think Galliano and Westwood, more high fashion but “circus freak” with a theatrical bent. She’s working on new music and securing features. And while there’s no concrete timeline that she’s ready to share, she’s conceptualizing a new tour that she promises will follow.
Performing, says Max, will always be the priority. She didn’t always have dreams of becoming a pop star — she just wanted to connect with people as an entertainer. “I want to be out there. I want to see the fans. I want to perform,” she says. “I want to do everything 10 times better than I’ve ever had… I also want to feel reborn in this era. Dig this girl up. Find her again, and go bigger and better.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com ’
