Maya Delilah

North London native Maya Delilah is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose largely self-analyzing songs reflect voracious listening habits that range from classic and contemporary singer/songwriters to soul, blues, gospel, and hip-hop. The first showcase for her tenderly ringing voice and economical soloing was “Tangerine Dream,” an R&B-rooted ballad featured on Oh Boy, her 2020 debut EP. After another self-released EP, she signed with the historic Blue Note label, and from late 2022 to early 2025 released a batch of songs that increased anticipation for the March 2025 arrival of The Long Way Round, her debut LP. Delilah plays acoustic and electric guitars and never uses a pick. Born and raised in Islington, Delilah bonded with the acoustic guitar at the age of eight, and learned primarily by ear. She was diagnosed with dyslexia, a condition that made it difficult for her to learn piano and French horn with sheet music. At the age of 15, Delilah was a finalist in the Mayor of London’s Gigs Big Busk, a street music competition. Just after she entered the BRIT School for performing arts, Delilah took up electric guitar. Encouraged to record her own material while doing session work for Millie Turner, Delilah independently released her first commercial recordings in 2020, and at the same time developed an online following through social media. The EPs Oh Boy and It’s Not Me, It’s You, issued respectively in 2020 and 2021, were followed by a cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon,” recorded for Blue Note Re:imagined II (with inspiration from Cassandra Wilson’s version, released on the singer’s Blue Note album New Moon Daughter). A month after the compilation’s arrival, Blue Note announced their signing of Delilah, which coincided with the October 2022 release of “Pretty Face,” a withering ballad directed at an ex. Five more originals, from “Silver Lining” to “Begin Again” — the latter written with longstanding collaborator Stephen Barnes — were issued in 2023 and 2024. The funky and rolling single “Squeeze” followed in February 2025 as another prelude to Delilah’s first album, The Long Way Round, released the next month. ~ Andy Kellman