maryjo Premieres 'Love Fools' Video

04-03-2023

Video still

(Atlantic) 21-year-old pop singer-songwriter maryjo is fresh off of her Atlantic Records debut, the emotional ballad "Love Fools." Today, the song is joined by an intimate music video that follows the highs and lows of a stormy relationship via her home security cameras.

Produced by Nashville, TN-based artist/producer Logan Maggio and co-written by maryjo, Maggio, Beau Bailey, and Clara Park, the debut serves as an expert showcase for maryjo's distinctive, powerfully sultry vocals, with backing from GRAMMY-nominated and 2x ACM Award-winning blind piano virtuoso Gordon Mote. maryjo has quickly earned a fervent fan following for her singular and evocative vocal power, now boasting more than 1.3M TikTok followers and over 26.4M total likes.

A singer/songwriter hailing from Cleveland, maryjo has the kind of unforgettable voice made for heart-melting piano ballads. But while her songs show a phenomenal vocal command-often drifting from full-throated belting to a gorgeously fragile delivery inflected with cracks-it took years for the Knoxville-born artist to overcome her fear of singing in front of others. "My family's very musical and singing came to me really naturally, but for some reason I became super-private about it after we moved to Cleveland when I was eight," says maryjo, who also started writing songs as a little girl and took up piano in fourth grade. As she got older, she worked through her shyness by sharing videos on social media, steadily amassing a devoted following. After bringing her powerhouse vocals to the stage on season 19 of "American Idol," maryjo landed a deal with Atlantic Records and set to work on her debut single, "Love Fools": a stripped-back but spellbinding ballad featuring soul-stirring piano.

With more new music on the way, maryjo arrived at the breathtaking emotion of "Love Fools" by staying true to her instincts. "When I first went into sessions, the sound we were coming up with was very much like cookie-cutter pop," she recalls, naming Elvis Presley and Julia Michaels among her main inspirations. "Finally I had to stop and say, 'This isn't what I'm supposed to be doing.' I took a step back and asked myself why I was trying for something that didn't feel right, and because of that we honed in on a sound that feels like me: something I can put so much emotion into when I'm singing, so that I can give the audience something real to connect to."