THE MIDLIFE EDIT PODCAST
Five-Year-Old Me Would’ve Said F*ck Off
with Maia Sharp
ABOUT THE CONVERSATION
The story behind Tomboy
I went to City Winery in Pittsburgh to see Tracy Bonham. That night, I also got to hear Maia Sharp play alongside Tracy and Liz Berlin. I’d listened to Maia before, but hearing her live made me want to sit down with her and ask how those songs came to be.
The story that stayed with me started at a kitchen table. Maia and her co-writer Emily Kopp were cracking up over childhood photos when they realized how much they admired the girls in them. Maia just wanted to play ball. She liked her hair short. She knew what she liked before she started wondering what other people thought she should look like. That conversation became “Tomboy,” the title track of Maia’s tenth solo album.
We talk about what changed for Maia around turning 50, why she left some of the rough takes on the record, and how moving to Nashville changed what she wanted to write about. She also tells me what happened when she opened an email saying Bonnie Raitt, one of her musical heroes, was going to record three of her songs. I got chills hearing her tell it.
IN THIS EPISODE
What Maia wanted to be when she grew up, from baseball player to saxophonist to songwriter
How childhood photos inspired “Tomboy” and a dating app inspired “Counterintuition”
Starting over in Nashville after the end of a long marriage
What getting older changed about the way Maia makes music and thinks about perfection
How Maia helps veterans tell their stories in their own words through SongwritingWith
MEET THE GUEST
Maia Sharp
Maia Sharp is a songwriter, singer, and producer whose songs have been recorded by Bonnie Raitt, The Chicks, Cher, and Trisha Yearwood. If you’re new to her music, start with “Tomboy” and “Kind,” two songs we talk about in the episode.
Which ghostwriter has had the most say in your story?
When Maia talked about what girls were supposed to look like and what they were supposed to want, I thought of the Culture Ghostwriter. It’s the voice that says, “That’s just how things are,” until you start hearing it as your own.
If this episode made you wonder where some of your own rules came from, I made a quiz for that.
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