Maggie Miles Tackles Her 20s, and Finds a “Placebo”

As alternative artist Maggie Miles pushes through the second half of her 20s she’s come to some big revelations.

“No one talks about how awkward this decade is,” she says, “People think that’s when you’re grown up, and that could not be further from the truth.”

Having experienced the peaks, valleys, victories, and heartbreak of being a recording artist for the entirety of her adult life, Miles is baring her soul on her just released single “Placebo,” which is from an as-of-yet untitled project due out later this year.

While the soul baring isn’t new for Miles, the way she’s baring it is.

A big, bold alternative rock song, with a vulnerability, and wisdom that only comes with experience, it’s a “Placebo” that manages to be stronger than any drug.

I caught up with Miles to find out more about “Placebo,” including some of the music industry related issues that inspired the song. She also discussed her growth as a songwriter, and what led to her and a friend teaming up to launch an artist collective in her current home of Nashville.

We first met a long time ago, pre-pandemic, 2020, Mercury Lounge, New York City. I think you were 21. Six years, and a number of projects later, you’re now in a new era with your brand new single, “Placebo.” What’s different for you this time around? 

I think that whether you’re an artist, or not, a lot of people can relate to, as you progress through time, as you experience things in life, and as you become, you really are kind of just returning to who you are.

I think a lot of life is going through seasons where maybe you don’t know, or you’re trying on a little bit of a costume, and you think you know.

There’s all sorts of seasons, and eras you go through, especially in the decade of your 20s.

So I think, for me, as a new era, it actually feels the most baked into who I am. I’m in my skin, I feel confident in who I am as a person, and feel excited to share that through my art.

There’s some aspects of this new project that feel similar to my first album (Am I Drowning or Am I Just Learning How to Swim). It’s a little bit less produced, maybe. Obviously there’s production, but it’s more recorded, raw instrumentation, and things happening very live, and in the moment. I really like that, because it gives more of a timeless feel to it.

I noticed one word that gets repeated a lot in “Placebo” is pain. What was the pain that was informing the song? 

Well, when you met me I think I was actually 20.

Oh, wow. What were you doing in Mercury Lounge! 

{laughs} No, seriously, who let me in there?

I was fresh from moving out of the DC music scene, and kind of getting settled here in Nashville, and I just signed my first deal, and I can’t dive into that too much, but what I will say is, it’s the music industry. It’s not designed to enable artists at all. It’s designed to profit a specific margin of people, and to kind of exploit gift, and exploit talent, and promise, and potential.

When you’re young, you quite literally don’t have experience on your side. The only thing I knew how to do at that time was write songs, and play shows, and that’s its own thing.

Maybe that should be the case, that should be all I have to know how to do, but that was, unfortunately … being green, that ignorance, there were a lot of things that went down that slid right over my head that I didn’t know until years later. I was like, wait, I wouldn’t have handled that that way if I had known that conversation took place, or if I had looked at the fine print, or known to look at the fine print.

There was a lot of fallout.

After that deal dissolved, and a lot of things shook down in a way that I look back, and I’m like, dang, that was painful, and I think it could have been avoided in some ways.

Songwriting-wise, are there things you do now that maybe weren’t in your repertoire half a decade ago? 

Totally.

I think more than anything, this project feels incredibly cut open. It’s very present Maggie.

It’s like present Maggie in the sense of the past maybe like two or three years of life where I’ve been out here. It’s less hiding behind allegory. I’m still using a good amount of imagery on the record, but it feels incredibly vulnerable.

It’s very like, here’s how I’m feeling right now. Here’s XYZ that has gone down, and these things that have actually influenced how I feel.

That, to me, feels like growth.

I’ve always been vulnerable in my music, that’s the point, but I don’t know if I always knew how to be present. I would get caught up on things in the past. This feels very now, here and now.

You’re also rocking harder than ever with “Placebo.” Back in the day, you told me about your grunge roots coming from your dad, and listening to his albums, but what else has you inspired to be a bit louder than you’ve been before? 

To be honest, it’s been playing shows for the past almost 10 years. The way that I am when I’m on stage, you know, it is a bit more unbridled. It’s not in the box, so to speak.

I’ve had the absolute pleasure to work with amazing producers in my career so far, people who truly uphold my artistic vision, and want to help make it happen. I feel so lucky, but I do think that with this project, it is the least hurdles.

I’m never having to explain why we should do something, I simply bring it in, and my engineer, Matt Bolton on this project, he’s like, yeah. There is no, “OK, well, explain why you want to do that.” There is none of that conversation. It is simply let’s plug it in, and do it.

It feels like that disconnect between my show and the record is not there, and it makes me really happy.

Do your older songs still hold a place in your heart, if not your setlist when you play out? 

Absolutely. The show I’m playing next, we’re opening with “Sanitized Things.”

“Sanitized Things,” “Momentum,” “Indecent,” “Asthma,” all those songs, to me, they live in that scene. It’s alternative music, and it’s great, it’s super fun.

You’re also relaunching Nothingless. Tell everyone about this venture, how it started, and what your hopes are for it. 

Nothingless is this sort of artists collective that me and my good friend Nicholas William put our heads together around when things started to open back up post pandemic.

In late 2021, and 2022, we were like, we miss playing shows, we miss being in a room with all of our friends and experiencing live music. It’s why we do this. so we started to look at this music scene that was bubbling around us that didn’t really have much of a genre, but it had a feeling.

At the end of my shows, during the last song, I would typically say, “This is the last chorus, promise we’re gonna give you everything we have, and nothing less.” So he just was like, we should call it Nothingless.

We did a couple of showcase style things where we would throw a bunch of our favorite bands in town on it, and then him and I would headline, and it was so much fun.

It kind of fizzled out, but our friendship has since rekindled, and he’s launching a whole new artist project called Make/Believe, so we both just want to do anything we can to boost up each other’s projects, and make some noise, make a big deal, and just support each other through community, because that’s what we have, we have community.

Will we see you on the road at some point this year? 

Yes, you will.

I don’t have anything like locked in yet, but I will be on the road this fall. It’s more a question of how long, and how much, and where.

Is there anything else you’d like to add about the project, yourself, or what you have going on? 

The next song after “Placebo” will be coming pretty soon.

What I can say about the project is it’s not all rock. That’s why I feel like people who really like Am I Drowning will really connect with this record, because it has a lot of pop sensibility in the writing. Even “Placebo,” to me, feels like a pop song with it’s singability, and it’s hooky in that way. The next song I'm putting out is kind of a pivot, and I enjoy doing that. I enjoy keeping people on their toes. It’s definitely in the same world, and in the same kind of organic-y, and timelessness, but it’s an acoustic-driven song.

When I say acoustic, it’s still full band. There’s bass, and drums, and electric guitars, but a lot of these songs I wrote on acoustic guitar, which is a new kind of realm for me.

The green acoustic that I’ve been playing, I got that about four years ago, and it kind of woke something up. There was a little sleeper agent in my brain, and it unlocked something for me. I just really connect with it. It’s my friend.

Does the guitar have a name? 

I just call it Green Bean.

For more Maggie Miles check out her Linktree.