Date Signed: August 2025
Label: Million Stars Records
Type of Music: Singer-Songwriter
Management: Jason Hradil
Booking: Eric Dimenstein, Ground Control Touring
Publicity: Joe Sivick, Missing Piece Group - joe@missingpiecegroup.com
Legal: John Seay, The Seay Firm
A&R: Conor Oberst
Web: mariataylormusic.com
Before she could even properly form sentences, Maria Taylor was hunkered down in a make-believe cardboard studio her father built for her, armed with a tape recorder and a microphone.
“I started writing songs before I could fully speak,” she says, reflecting on a career that spans from those childhood tapes to a professional stage debut at 16. “I still have lots of these tapes, and they are hilarious. Lots of times my dad would come in and join me on guitar.” Despite her obvious drive and passion for music, she divulges that, “I was always painfully shy,” admitting a lifelong tug-of-war with her relationship to performing—the hours before a show being “the worst,” the moments after being “the absolute best feeling.” Still, her endurance remains a quiet testament to the idea that courage isn’t the absence of nerves, just the refusal to surrender to them.
Her sound, she explains, hasn’t so much changed as matured. “Even when I want to write something that sounds different, it just sounds like me…I feel like my sound hasn’t changed since I was a little girl,” she says. “Sometimes it’s frustrating,” she continues, “but I feel like how my sound has evolved is just how I’ve grown as a songwriter.” And that growth is evident in her latest record—the album itself is the product of patience: many of the songs began in 2020 and were shaped across five years, with bass and drums recorded in Omaha alongside Mike Mogis, strings arranged by Nate Walcott in Los Angeles, and final production and mixing handed to Ben Brodin—a cross-country patchwork stitched into a cohesive whole.
The deal with Million Stars Records came not through industry speed-dating but through friendship. Conor Oberst, a longtime collaborator and former partner (and founder of Million Stars Records), co-wrote a few tracks and later listened to the finished album with Taylor outside his house. He looked up and casually offered, “maybe Million Stars should put this out….” Taylor recalls that she “was so excited, but I wanted to make sure he meant it.” So she suggested that he take the night and sleep on it, “Of course, I didn’t sleep at all, and I tried to make it till about noon the next day and then texted him, ‘so did you really mean it?’”
He did. Now, as she prepares for select record release shows, Taylor is balancing the “absolute best feeling” of performing with her “number one job” as a mother. For Taylor, the future isn’t about the hustle; it’s about the fit. “I’m just trusting the universe and hoping some good shows and opportunities present themselves,” she says. After all, when you’ve been singing your heart out since the cardboard-playhouse days, you know exactly when the music feels like home.
