Maxwell Luke makes for a perfect stage name — and luckily for the 23-year-old singer-songwriter, he was born with it.
“On my birth certificate, you’ll find Maxwell Luke McMahon,” he says, though he’s always gone by his middle name, Luke, with friends and family. “But when it came time to pick my artist name, I thought it was right in front of me. Maxwell Luke had a ring to it — and I feel like a double first name is kind of gay, too.”
The gay connotations of his moniker are “sort of like a happy accident,” McMahon says. Now, of course, they’re a flawless complement to the unabashed queerness of his synth-rich pop music, but at the onset of his musical career, that wasn’t quite the case.
“When I started on my trajectory to releasing music, I wasn’t sure how gay it would become, and I wasn’t sure, I don’t think, how self-possessed I would be in that identity,” he explains. “I’m sure there’s an alternate universe where [my music] doesn’t sound gay at all, and that’s because I don’t allow that part of myself to be so forward-facing. But in this universe, in this one that we are existing in now, it is incredibly forward-facing. So I will attach all of the gay connotations I can to that name.”
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Beyond the undeniable catchiness of McMahon’s music, every one of his tracks tells a story, each uniquely relatable for queer listeners. In “Girlfriend,” he laments being a straight boy’s experiment; in “One Man Show,” he captures the giddy desperation of a crush-at-first-sight; in “Churches & Dive Bars,” he paints a portrait of two ex-lovers who drown their sorrows in very different vices: one religion, and the other alcohol. And no matter what story he’s telling, he does it with anthem-worthy melodies that make perfect fodder for shower singalongs (I speak from experience).
“I would say songwriting is at the very, very core of my artist project,” he says. “It’s where the passion really lies, and I think it’s where I fell in love with this as a career in the first place. […] I feel very inspired by my personal experience, and I feel very inspired by the way I’m able to use that and sublimate my personal experiences — good, bad, ugly — into words and lyrics and melody.”
McMahon’s musical role models include both the singer-songwriters and pop paragons of the past — icons like Carole King, Billy Joel, David Bowie, and Freddie Mercury — and rising stars of modern music, including Chappell Roan, Chloe Qisha, and Debbii Dawson.
“I’m really inspired by virtually any artist, whether they align with my musical styles or not, virtually any artist that feels like they have a real ownership of what they’re doing and the music that they’re making,” he says. “If there’s a real ownership of the artist project, and I see no separation between the personal and the artist, then I’m just so inspired by that.”
McMahon grew up in Orlando, Florida, an upbringing that led to his branding as “a swan from gator land,” a phrase he coined in his song “American Heart.” That swan imagery has spread from his musical persona to his everyday style: during this interview, he’s wearing a swan-shaped ring, while his room is decorated with both a framed swan illustration and a gold swan statue. “I have a problem,” he admits with a laugh.
Like plenty of queer folks, McMahon’s relationship with his hometown is … complex, to say the least. “My corner of the world in Central Florida definitely had this field around it, this fence around it, that felt like that might be all there is, and this is how everybody thinks,” he says. “The moments in the locker room that stuck with me as a young kid, the words that stung from the flag football coach, the things I overheard on the streets out with my friends going to the movies for the first time when I was in sixth grade — there’s definitely a pain there.”
But in “American Heart,” he reclaims the parts of Florida that he loves, while acknowledging the freedom and joy of striking out on his own: “Thought I wouldn’t give it up for the moon and the stars / But you can all watch me break my American heart,” he croons on the chorus.
“‘American Heart’ is a song that is not necessarily a middle finger in any way to your hometown, but instead just a declaration that you feel no desire to fulfill what you were led to believe were the right or justified expectations of how you should live your life,” he says. “After leaving, after being able to come into yourself, come out, have that second birth, have that second coming-of-age that so many of us experience, only then are you able to have a certain grace for where you grew up and the ways that it might have hurt you.”
“If there’s a real ownership of the artist project, and I see no separation between the personal and the artist, then I’m just so inspired by that.”
– Maxwell Luke
McMahon has always been a performer, he says, but it wasn’t until freshman year of high school that he discovered the power and fulfillment of creating his own music. He recalls writing and recording a song for the first time as part of a fundraising campaign for a friend battling a terminal illness.
“I remember finding a real purpose out of that, and just being so inspired by the reaction to something that I had created,” he says. “It felt so genuine, because it felt like the one area of performing or of music, of this passion that I had, that I felt was very natural. No part of me was compromising any of my hopes for my occupation, and so I got really excited about that.”
McMahon kept writing and recording music throughout high school at a since-closed recording studio called Studio 18, then went on to study music business and songwriting at the University of Miami and, after a year, at Belmont University in Nashville. That move to Nashville, he reflects, offered him a fresh start, both personally and musically.
“When I went to Nashville, I remember being like, ‘I’m gay, but I don’t need to lead with that, and I don’t need to wear that on my chest, and I don’t need to let everybody know,’” he says. At that point, his music, while still inspired by his own life, didn’t go into detail. His lyrics left out pronouns or any other references that would brand his songs as undeniably queer: “I was still, I think, excited by the ability to hide behind a veil of songwriting, a veil of words that were engineered to not share too much.”
But suddenly surrounded by strangers in a new city and feeling more embraced for his queerness than he ever had before, McMahon realized he was faced with a choice: “Am I going to continue living in the shadows, or am I going to finally accept all the things about myself that I was unwilling to previously?” he wondered.
And so, his music and his personal life took a turn in tandem. McMahon cites writing songs like “Girlfriend,” “American Heart,” and “Lucky Boy” — songs “that were so obviously, so undeniably about a queer experience,” he says — as a wake-up call for the way he wanted to move through the world.
“I almost can’t — but I will — articulate the euphoria that I felt when I not only wrote but also performed those songs,” he explains. “I felt, if I’m going to be singing about these things, if this is what I’m going to be writing and it feels this good to own these songs, then I have to live this way as well, and I have to embody these lyrics in my day-to-day life.”
“I can’t be as cheeky to whisper in the second verse of ‘Lucky Boy,’ ‘He touches himself to the thought of us,’ and not be that unapologetic about my gayness out at the grocery store,” he adds. “I just didn’t want to have any deviation whatsoever from the kind of fierce and fearless character that I started to play in my music.”
“If I’m going to be singing about these things, if this is what I’m going to be writing and it feels this good to own these songs, then I have to live this way as well.”
– Maxwell Luke
Now, McMahon is as unabashedly queer as his songwriting is. He considers it a case of life imitating art — and both his life and his art are all the better for it.
“I think the music really reflects what has happened, this almost metamorphosis in my personal life,” he says. “I think gay men, queer people at large, experience this second coming-of-age that we all get to talk about and share in. But I think a lot of people on the outside don’t necessarily realize, and that’s why that music feels so visceral when you feel represented in that way.”
“To be 21 years old, to be 25 years old, to be 40 years old, and to almost experience this second birth when you come out,” he muses, “when you fully come into yourself, when you practice this unadulterated, unapologetic ownership of who you truly are and have always been — I think that there’s such a shared story there.” ♦
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