After wiping her discography clean and taking a nine month hiatus from music, nineteen year-old Gloucester, MA native Juliana Maria returns with a fierce performance on debut single “LOVERBOY”, with crisp production from Florida resident northxix.
As a self-taught vocalist who hails from Gloucester, Juliana’s origin plays a big part in her creative process for a multitude of reasons. As a native of a small island town where everyone knows each other, her artistic endeavors struggle to breathe in a suffocating suburban atmosphere, as she describes it. “The first reaction when people pursue music [is that others] tend to ridicule instead of actually support [sic]… It took me a while to be vulnerable in my writing, for that sole reason”. For the residents of her hometown in particular, the pursuit of a successful career in music is a relatively foreign idea, which also exacerbates the feelings of not being taken seriously by those closest to her. For some time, even Juliana struggled to take herself seriously as an artist. But despite the challenges she faced at home and her changing perspective on making music, fate struck and Juliana found a musical mentor - through cheerleading, funnily enough - who helped her discover new motivation and evolve sonically. Instead of quitting, a fire has now reignited in Juliana’s heart and this time she is not to be underestimated.
The track itself is an emotional exposé and pop ballad that discusses toxic love interests and the all too common cliché of “the pursuit”. Juliana Maria displays an impressive vocal range that invokes comparisons to SZA over an infectious array of keys and addictive guitar lead that could have only come from the genius of northxix. While others have executed similar visions in the past, Juliana effortlessly captures the unique essence of romance and “the chase” in the Gen-Z era and northxix perfectly compliments her on every note.
These two artists initially met through a public Discord server for artist “contradash” and mutual friend and artist “Dev Soter”; a storyline which should feel familiar to those tapped into underground spheres of music. The collaboration itself was the inevitable result of a growing relationship as artists, but the track was born from a spur-of-the-moment decision when Juliana felt unfulfilled with a separate track she had been working on previously. She asked herself, “Who the f**k can I work with, that one, I’m comfortable with, and two, will make a sick f**king beat? North - obviously!” However, playing unfinished beats over FaceTime, singing rough drafts in the car over Snapchat videos, and meeting through Discord are not typically ideal ways to collaborate. When art is centered in the here and now, hundreds of miles of distance between artists and unique time constraints can prove to be challenging to overcome at times. The process behind working together to create “LOVERBOY” is not only an apt representation of how the current generation is changing the face and inner workings of music, but also how musicians specifically had to adapt in the landscape of a pandemic. The painstaking hours poured into this song by both parties proved to be overwhelmingly worth it in the end - the seamless production effectively highlights the themes of romance and pursuit of a love interest yet remains palatable sonically for a wide array of audiences.
In fact, the construction of the strawman identified only as Loverboy achieves a lot for Juliana in this regard. This purposefully vague identification of the subject not only allows Juliana the opportunity to address multiple past romantic interests without revealing too much for the folks back at home, it also allows a sense of catharsis. The emotion displayed throughout the track is a new level of vulnerability for Juliana, which is made even more impressive by her self-proclaimed difficulty with tackling sensitive and personal subjects in her art. Despite the nebulous identity of the Loverboy, Juliana says she’s “looking forward to some angry text messages when [the track is released]”.
Regarding her plans for the future and what she hopes to immediately work on, Juliana says that rather than focusing on a new single, she’d rather pursue improving the marketing aspect of her revitalized career. “I’ve never done a photoshoot… I’ve never done an appropriate rollout, I’ve never had a pre-save link in my life. Like, all of this is very new to me, so I’ve been very busy pushing that and marketing [myself]”. However, that isn’t to say she won’t be creating - “For now, I’m just really focused on writing a ton, finding beats, finding producers… I [also] would love to learn to produce… It’s essential in sounding the way I’d like to sound”. Despite her claims that she isn’t working on a new single, Juliana teased that a potential project may be in the works, but she’s “just gonna keep at it, and we’ll see where it goes from here”. I believe I speak for everyone here at Aurision when I say that we have high hopes and cannot wait to see all the heights the new Juliana Maria can reach.
Author’s Note
Hey everyone! I just want to take a second to introduce myself and thank everyone at Aurision for bringing me on board. I am excited beyond words to work with and for the Aurision team and everyone else in this amazing community. If you have any comments or suggestions for me, you can find me @mnvmno across all socials - I always welcome feedback. I’m Ocho, and you’ll be seeing a lot more of me soon (hopefully). 🙂
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