Leyla Ebrahimi – I’m Sorry Maria
Today, emerging alt-pop artist Leyla Ebrahimi releases “I’m Sorry Maria,” a cathartically scream-along new single out now on Deerfield Records / Interscope Records.
Alternating between soothing dream-pop and raging alt-rock, Leyla’s latest captures the feeling of being torn between two impulses: to love the one you’re with, or to be free to experience the world.
Leyla’s fans pleaded for “I’m Sorry Maria” since she teased it on her socials in January, but the song demands to be heard as a whole. With beachy strums, mellow guitar, and singsong vocals, things get off to a sweetly nostalgic start — but that idyllic feeling becomes increasingly eerie and urgent with creeping harpsichord, surging synth, and waves of distortion. Each time she hits the chorus, Leyla gets more guttural: “I’m sorry, Maria / You know it’s been hard, you know I keep holding on / To this idea, Maria / That I could be free, it’s so sad that I’m not.”
“This song is about regret,” says Leyla. “Regret, and also confusion and anger and owning the fact that you can be 100 percent convinced that you know what’s right for you in any given situation, and find out later — when it’s too late — that you were totally wrong. It’s also, most of all, about letting that truth out at the top of your lungs.”
Directed by Hannah De Vries (Slayyyter, Daya), the “I’m Sorry Maria” music video leans into the song’s polar nature. On one hand, you see Leyla dressed in black within an otherwise beige suburban world, haunted by a ballet dancer who moves to her own rhythm. In other scenes, she tears at a wall of missing-person flyers that read “Last Seen In Love,” absolutely obliterates a feather pillow, and, in the end, trudges off into the woods at night.
“I’m Sorry Maria” once again unites Leyla with co-producers Alexander 23 (Olivia Rodrigo, Reneé Rapp) and her go-to collaborator Shane Pielocik. The pair have worked across each of her recent singles, including November’s “i don’t like being left behind,” which, KCRW wrote, “pushes her signature emotional chaos to cinematic heights, bending dark synth-pop and fuzzy indie rock into something raw and luminous. It’s messy, urgent, and beautifully human.”
She also recently wrapped her first headlining shows — at Hollywood’s School Night and Brooklyn’s Union Pool, where she used to barback while secretly working on music — and brought her full live band to New York’s GIRL NOISE fest and the opening slot on Del Water Gap’s New Haven homecoming concert last month.
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