This image may contain Clothing Sleeve Apparel Human Person Long Sleeve Hair Face Woman Blonde Female and Teen Two years ago Ava Max made a mistake that ended up becoming a defining signature. She was in the middle of cutting her hair while at the same time baking cookies when she caught a look of herself in the mirror. It was funny cause I was actually experimenting with different haircuts and colors pink hair blue hair all that kind of stuff she said. Nothing felt like me. One day I cut my hair my actual hair cut it on the right side and I remember I had something in the oven—I think they were chocolate-chip cookies. And I run downstairs without cutting the other side. As she recounted the anecdote it was easy to imagine her telling this story again and again over the next five years. I run downstairs and then Im like Oh my God the cookies almost burnt. As Im going back upstairs I see in the mirror my reflection and the haircut and . . . I literally tilted my head like why does this feel like me? It felt like me like I had found myself.
It is an unusual haircut one side chopped as a short bob and the other left long and loose. The hairstyle is reflected in her logo as well which morphs the A of Max to reflect the do. She boasted that the style has its own name now—the Max Cut—and that it pleases her when she gets odd looks from strangers when shes out in public. At the grocery store people were giving me weird looks and Im like O.K. Im happy. The weirder the looks the better this decision is.
Max is in the middle of a grueling promotional cycle traveling the country—her Instagram stories serving as a travelogue of sorts—on behalf of her first pop hit Sweet but Psycho. The song held the No. 1 spot in the U.K. for four weeks hit the top of the charts in over a dozen other countries worldwide and is No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard emerging-artists chart its been rising on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 currently at No. 32 and has reached the U.S. iTunes top 10.
The song is unabashedly pop reminiscent of Lady Gaga or Katy Perrys early output. While that almost cheesy pump it up perfect-for-the-treadmill sound would be considered outré by some in 2019—when more languid melancholy and R&B-infused tracks dominate popular music—Max did not seem to be too concerned. She seemed well-aware of the improbability of the songs meteoric rise We knew the song was special but we did not know it was gonna take off like this obviously because this was a phenomenon. This does not happen to an artist that no one knows from nowhere right? she said folded up on a sofa in Manhattan this January a few hours after performing on the Today show and a few days after appearing on The Late Late Show with James Corden her first late-night-show performance.
While it may seem as if Max appeared out of nowhere she worked tenaciously in order to arrive at this moment and Sweet but Psycho came after years of attempts to break through. Ava Max was born Amanda Koci in 1994 to Albanian-immigrant parents in Milwaukee. When she was eight her family moved to Virginia. Her mother was an opera singer her dad played the piano her uncles were in bands. She was a Britney Spears fanatic who wanted to pursue pop music.
As many a stage mother has done before Maxs mom moved her 14-year-old daughter to Los Angeles in 2008. Shes like Were moving to California . . . because theres nothing to do in Virginia for your career. But Max found the city overwhelming and a year later they were back in Virginia where she would remain for her teenage years. Im happy nothing happened back then so I could actually have a normal childhood she said.
She eventually moved back to California a few years later in hopes of igniting that career. She started making music with a friend of her older brother one of the few members of the family without musical inclinations Max said hes an entrepreneur. That friend was the producer Cirkut who alongside Max Martin and Dr. Luke was responsible for Katy Perrys Roar and Miley Cyruss Wrecking Ball with Dr. Luke among other titanic hits that shaped the 2010s pop sound. Though Cirkut and Ava Max recorded a bunch of songs together it was a modern-day cosmic event that spurred her ascent a song that the two uploaded to SoundCloud.
Im not even kidding you Max said We got e-mails from record labels wanting to talk just from that song. Over the past year Max has sung on David Guetta and Jason Derulo tracks and released some one-off singles—including the bombastic effervescent Salt and a re-interpretation of Barbie Girl titled Not Your Barbie Girl—but none gained traction until the Cirkut-produced Sweet but Psycho was unleashed.
A successful pop star needs more than just the music though a fact Max seems highly aware of. When she was 13 she had come up with the middle name Ava for herself which she eventually started using as a first name. I never felt like an Amanda she said.
When she was signed by a record label she decided she wanted a last name to go with it—and thought carefully about what exactly she wanted that last name to represent. Max came about because it felt very masculine and I feel a little masculine sometimes like 5050 like my hair she said. I wanted something with the feminine that Ava has and Max has masculinity so I added those two together.
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