Maalavika Manoj is all grown up. And we’ve followed along on what has been quite the rollercoaster ride — from her first band (Bass-in-Bridge) as a soft-spoken 17-year-old a decade ago to her first single in 2016, Dreaming, to her first full-length album, Caution to the Wind, released last week. More recently, she released a lockdown-inspired single, Age of Limbo, featuring a video with crowd-sourced drone footage of empty streets from 12 countries. Excerpts:
You started writing Caution to the Wind two years ago.
The journey with this album began in February of 2019 when I approached Arnob Bal to produce it. We started an intense four-month demo-ing process, which helped us get on the same page since we were both from two different worlds, musically. We worked on it over the next two years, through protests, floods, breakups and new beginnings, and it really started to feel like the album was writing my story the same way I wrote it to begin with.
Which song on the album holds the strongest emotion for you and why?
Really? Not Really. It’s the oldest song on the album and reminds me of a time when I never thought I would get as far as making an album I would be proud of. I felt like no one fully understand what I was going through. This song reminds me of the beginning of the climb.