On the first Thursday of every month, a singer named Maxx sets up at Strassmann’s, a small bar in Berlin, and opens the floor. Guests call out requests; she plays them. It is not the kind of gig that makes anyone rich, but it is the kind of room where, as she puts it, what you do is genuinely appreciated.
It was not always this comfortable. For years, walking on stage meant walking into physical pain: stomach cramps triggered by adrenaline the moment she grabbed the microphone. “I still don’t know what ultimately solved it,” she says. “Maybe it was routine.” Today, at thirty-three, she steps on stage calm. We sat down with her to talk about how a song gets made, what Berlin gives and takes from its musicians, and why the most important thing she teaches is that your voice matters.
A voice before words
There was no lightning-bolt moment. Music was simply there first.
Maxx: My grandmother always says I was singing before I could speak. Singing has always been part of me, and in a way it has also always been a coping mechanism. The decision to do it professionally came later, in my final school years, when someone in my class wanted to apply to the Pop Academy. That made me realize studying music was actually an option for me.
E&M: And how do songs come to you now?
Maxx: It’s completely different every time. Sometimes I start with a melody, sometimes with lyrics, sometimes only fragments of text that stir something in me. I have one song where the lyrics sat in a drawer for years until a piano idea that didn’t fit anywhere else suddenly locked in with them. It’s important that songs have time to mature, because when I write, I’m also processing personal themes.
Writing instability into the music
If one song captures how Maxx works, it is “Flesh and Blood,” written during her university years in the Netherlands. It deals with disappearing into depression, and with finding the strength to say: look at me, I’m still here. The instability is not only in the lyrics; it is built into the rhythm.
Maxx: It starts with a strange odd-meter groove, something like 7/5, with a repeating 3-2-2-3 subdivision that creates this unstable, off-kilter feel. I used it underneath the verses because they were supposed to feel unstable. In the pre-chorus the song shifts into 4/4 but keeps traces of the earlier pattern, until the chorus finally lands in a tight, stable beat. At that point the whole emotional situation stabilizes, before slipping back into that wonky rhythm afterward. I’m especially proud of that one, because I captured the theme both lyrically and musically.
The listener experiences the disorientation of depression, and the brief stability of being seen, without needing to parse a single lyric.
A city that wants you to choose
Maxx did her preparatory studies in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, in a program rooted in the East German professional musician tradition, where she heard repeatedly what was supposed to work commercially.
Maxx: At the time everyone was expected to write in German, and writing in English was heavily criticized. Ironically, that pushed me toward English; it gave me more freedom. That’s something I like about Berlin: the audience is so diverse you can write in English as a German artist. But this scene sometimes struggles with the idea that you have to be completely this or completely that. The middle ground can be difficult. To stay on that path, you need a lot of trust in what you do.
Her favorite rooms reflect that middle path: Artliners, Akanuwa Bar, the jazz basements she still wants to play, like A-Trane and B-Flat, and her monthly residency at Strassmann’s.
The economics of staying independent
Maxx belongs to the generation hit squarely by streaming: too young to have benefited from the CD economy, old enough to remember what was lost. She wrote her bachelor’s thesis on the value of the musician in the German music industry. Her summary is blunt: “It’s enough to make you want to run away. You really have to be in it out of passion.”
E&M: Can you live from music alone?
Maxx: The times we’re living in are difficult, and since the pandemic this profession has become even harder. I teach a lot, and I’m lucky I genuinely enjoy it. I’m preparing workshops in sound healing, and I help people work through things via vocal resonance. But performance is still central, and I’m in the studio recording new material.
E&M: Has the way music is valued changed?
Maxx: The hardest step is crossing into the commercial sphere. Once you function well commercially, everyone wants you, because everyone can make money from you. But labels no longer invest in artists the way they once did. I know artists who were told by majors: build yourselves up first, then we’ll work with you. The development process is no longer what people want to invest in.
And it’s only a matter of time before streaming platforms fill up with AI-generated music. I have to admit, reluctantly, that it doesn’t sound that bad; for the consumer market, that’s already enough. So I watch that with concern, but also some hope when I look at Gen Z. We already saw the return of vinyl. I’m still hoping some kind of shift might happen.
Don’t let anyone take your voice away
In her teaching, Maxx keeps meeting the same person in different bodies: someone who arrives saying, “I actually can’t sing, that’s what I was always told, but I still want to try.” Often these are people who were taught to suppress themselves. So her message to a younger generation is less about music than about permission.
Maxx: Your voice matters. Your expression matters. Your reality matters. That doesn’t mean your reality is the only one. But don’t let anyone take your voice away from you. Use your voice, use your thoughts, use your creativity. Let them flow. That is an incredible gift.
It is advice she has lived: through years of performing in pain, through a scene that told her which language to sing in, through an industry that invests only after the work is done. Still here. Still flesh and blood.
Show Comments