“I don’t know what to say / I feel lost and confused / I want someone to love / But everyone’s being used.” This is the opening line from Gabriel Mayers’ Sixty Charisma Scented Blackbirds, a track which landed Mayers in the public eye after it appeared on the shortlist of the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Mayers’ breakout track was featured in the Josh Fox directed documentary How to Let Go of the World: and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change back in 2016, and the singer-songwriter’s career hasn’t been the same since.
Mayers is a self-identified latchkey kid who grew up in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. With an absentee father, Gabriel Mayers and his mother got by thanks to the income she brought in working as a front desk attendant at the police department. Growing up poor and riddled with self-doubt and low confidence, Mayers was a sheepish youth who struggled to make social connections. It was not until he was about 17 years old that he began to break out of his shell. Mayers’ first attempt to do this came in the form of teaching himself guitar. “I got into music to talk to girls. There was a girl in my class who liked Nirvana, and I started listening to their songs,” he recalls. Although his musical career began under rather innocent circumstances, Mayers dreamed of making it into something bigger. To gain experience performing and improve his skills as a guitarist and a songwriter, Gabriel Mayers took to busking in the New York subways. “I had to play early mornings year-round, trying to get better and hoping the right person noticed me,” he reflects.
Sixty Charisma Scented Blackbirds was Mayers’ love letter to his mother after she passed. It tackles how he felt about and dealt with her death. At the time of writing it, he did not think it would elevate his career in the way it did. After the song was selected to soundtrack Josh Fox’s documentary and was shortlisted by the Academy, Gabriel Mayers was put in a position that allowed him to tour the United States and perform alongside artists like Francis Starlite and Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio. Now four years deeper into his career, Mayers has two studio albums and two live albums under his belt. His melancholic, stripped back style is reminiscent of artists like Michael Kiwanuka or a millennial Bill Withers. Along with the music he is working on, Mayers also has a reoccurring podcast, The Gabriel Mayers Show, where the Brooklyn artists shares his music and covers of artists who inspire him, Like Nirvana and Fiona Apple. “I just want people to feel that they have listened to music that is pure,” Mayers shares.
Mayers’ new single, Fundamentals of Flight, is due for release this winter. To keep up with Gabriel Mayers, follow him on Instagram and listen to his music on Spotify.