A Chat with Mya Angelique (24.07.25)
With her first EP, paper girls, a seven-track journey through growing pains, glitter, and the brittle armour of being put-together, up-and-coming pop singer-songwriter Mya Angelique takes listeners into the gorgeously complex realm of teenage girlhood. The songstress, who draws inspiration from contemporary superstars such as Olivia Rodrigo, Gracie Abrams, and Maisie Peters, combines pop-rock textures, contemplative narrative, and a cinematic yet painfully honest coming-of-age mentality. We chat with Mya Angelique about all things music.
OSR: paper girls is such a vulnerable and cinematic debut. What inspired you to open your story with this particular collection of songs?
Angelique: I think I needed these songs, like I needed to write them to be able to come to terms with growing up and all that comes with it.
OSR: You wrote many of these tracks at just 15. What was it like revisiting those feelings now, years later?
Angelique: It was surreal, honestly. At 15, everything feels like the end of the world, so sometimes when I listen to these songs, I think to myself, ok, settle down, that was a little dramatic, but they also serve as a great reminder of who I was and that I’m not that girl anymore. Even if sometimes I do still feel like her.
OSR: The title track ‘paper girls’ is such a delicate unravelling of identity. Can you talk about the moment that song came to life?
Angelique: Funny enough, ‘paper girls’, was one of the first songs I wrote for this project. I’ve been writing songs my entire life, but I remember, in the moment, feeling like this song, ‘paper girls’, was different. It felt different, special in some way, like it was something I had been trying to say for a long time, but I could never quite find the right words for it until it just came spilling out one day.
OSR: ‘girlhood’ is at the heart of this EP. What do you think people often misunderstand about teenage girls?
Angelique: Girlhood isn’t simple or superficial, and while it might seem like we’re being overdramatic, sometimes it honestly feels like survival.
OSR: ‘sixteen’ and ‘glitter’ both touch on self-comparison and identity. How do you personally navigate those feelings in real life?
Angelique: I grew up acting and doing musical theatre, which I loved, still do, but it also meant I spent a lot of my childhood quite literally pretending to be other people. I think that made it harder to figure out who I actually was. Even offstage, it sometimes felt like I was still performing, still trying to be the version of myself that other people expected. That’s where a lot of paper girls come from, the exhaustion of always being “put together,” the blur between real and pretend. I found that there comes peace with being comfortable in those feelings because they too pass.
OSR: You cite influences like Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams. How did their work shape your songwriting, and how did you find your own voice through that?
Angelique: They are both incredible artists and writers with their own unique voice, and that really spoke to me. I started listening to them early on in their career, which is sometimes a rarity considering the magnitude they’ve reached, and no matter how big they get, every lyric, every word feels personal. It made me feel like I couldn’t do “too much” as long as I was being true to myself. I really admire that and hope that someone out there, even if it’s just one person, feels that way about one of my songs someday.
OSR: You’re classically trained and now studying music composition at Berklee. How does that technical background influence your pop songwriting?
Angelique: I think my background helped me immensely with how quickly I am able to write songs nowadays. Music has always been part of my life. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to do this, when I couldn’t write a song, and I think that’s because music has always been there. It’s been a blessing because now writing is just engraved in my head, I don’t have to think about if this melody works or not, or if this certain rhyme will work, because it’s just second nature, it flows.
OSR: Were there any songs on paper girls that scared you to release, either because they were too personal or too bold?
Angelique: Well… I was a little scared to release most of it, but particularly the ‘sixteen’ and ‘teenage girl nationality’. With ‘sixteen’, I didn’t know if it was too forward and would rub people the wrong way, and that scared me a bit. And with ‘teenage girl nationality’, I didn’t know if people would get it, I was scared that it would be like one of those inside jokes that you and your friends find hilarious but go over everyone else’s head. Funny enough, the most personal songs I have, like ‘quick brush’ or ‘the comedown’, I found a calm in releasing them, maybe it’s because I was more confident that other girls would find it easy to relate to.
OSR: As a Puerto Rican artist, does your cultural identity show up in your music in ways that listeners might not immediately notice?
Angelique: While I don’t discard the possibility of showing some of my cultural identity in a future project, I would say that there isn’t much, if any, that a listener could pick up on in paper girls. paper girls is a reflection of my adolescence, which, like I’ve previously mentioned, was majorly influenced by American media, and I took that into consideration when building this EP.
OSR: What do you hope someone feels or realises the first time they listen all the way through paper girls?
Angelique: I really hope they feel identified, and that maybe, just maybe, they feel a little less alone.
Many thanks to Mya Angelique for speaking with us. Find out more about Mya Angelique on her Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Spotify.
