Riley Max – What It Takes
Riley Max is a 21-year-old singer-songwriter and multimedia artist from Colorado. Her debut album ROY G BIV – recorded at just 18 years old – received widespread acclaim, and her second album is set to release this fall. She is a rising senior at Harvard University, where she studies Art, Film and Visual Studies. She is also the music director of The Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones, and appears in a wide variety of musical theater productions. Her penchant for storytelling stems from an early love of 90s rom-coms and childhood exposure to copious amounts of 80s music, and extends beyond just music. Her background as a cover artist and comic creator for the Harvard Independent pairs with her skills as a composer to serve as the basis of her undergraduate thesis this coming year, which will take the form of a fully animated short film.
Riley’s latest album What It Takes is a 14 song coming of age musical collection the artist wrote over a period of five years. The album includes themes of navigating change, dealing with mental health issues, the dissolvement of friendships, finding love, connection and more. What It Takes is raw, honest, authentic and deeply personal. The music was written and recorded in dorm rooms, college studios, Riley’s own family home and more, representing a variety of locations and inspirations. She shares, “It was really important to me to preserve that spontaneity of things. What It Takes is a very exploratory album for me, because many of the songs were sort of written on the spot and even recorded that way, on inspiration, being in the moment. When I listen to this album, I get more emotionally nostalgic intense memories. I remember exactly when I wrote these songs, and that’s something I’m proud of, because I wanted to get better at writing about myself and actually putting myself on the page, not just putting these characters on the page. It does feel like, when I look back and listen to this album, I am looking back on real moments from my life, and not just these moments that I’ve concocted. I hope it means something to others as well!”
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