Solo Artist M.A.G.S Releases Newest Single "SINS"
By Tiara Grace Starks
Elliott Douglas aka M.A.G.S. has over 260k+ monthly listeners on Spotify. His most popular song, “Drugs”, from his self-titled 2017 album has over 21M streams on Spotify. I spoke with Douglas about the inspiration behind his newest single, “SINS”, which dropped on May 5, not being tied down to one genre in his work, inspirations, and what it means to be a live performer in this current age of streaming supremacy. After previously touring with The Happy Fits, Snarls, Oso Oso and Blvck Hippie, M.A.G.S. will be supporting the rock band Sleeping With Sirens on their current tour.
Ease Up:
Anyone who reads this, if they want to get reintroduced to you, who is M.A.G.S.? What does it stand for? Where do you originate and how did you come up with this musical persona?
Elliott Douglas:
Sure. Well, my name is Elliot. I'm originally from Buffalo, New York, and I've been living in Los Angeles for about close to six years now and started performing as Mags back in 2014. I came up with the name in the shower. There's kind of a long backstory to where the name comes from, but the short version is Maggie is my grandmother's name, and I had had sort of like this, I would say, like an epiphany one day. I also have a friend who has a sister named Maggie, and she would call her ‘Mags’ as a nickname. So I remember telling the name to the label I was working with at the time when I first made my first EP, and they came back and told me that there was another artist that was called Mags and I needed to change my name. At the time, I was pretty set on it, so I was trying to dream up how I could make it different. And then when I was in the shower, I had the idea to make it into, like, an acronym, put the periods in between, and when my A and R at the label was like, what does it mean?
ED:
On the phone? I kind of just blurted it out. I was like, “marijuana and good sex”. Just kind of as like, a joke. It was kind of just like a little inside joke for a long time. But I'd say in recent years, I've embraced it a lot more and it's really just kind of like what it is.
EU
I remember I was looking through what you've done in the past, and I was like, wasn't sure if that was like I knew it might have stood for something or if that was, like, something else. So that was really cool to get the insight into what it really means, for sure. Yeah. So I guess jumping into your single Sins, your new single, which is really good. So you say that you weave a lot of imagery and philosophical musings into your music with “SINS” specifically. What was the inspiration behind that? What made you want to write this song?
ED:
“SINS” is one of the few songs that I've written that is about, or I should say, centers around my relationship with God and the church. My dad was a pastor, so growing up, I was just raised in the church before I was born until I was about 17 or so, almost 18. We were in the church multiple times a week. I remember at some point in my teenage years, kind of just like, actually it might have even been before that, probably like eleven or twelve, just kind of having some questions. I brought a friend to church one time and the church I went to was a Pentecostal church and so there's a lot of ‘hooping and hollering’ and people falling out and it's also very music-based. So I had brought a friend to church the one time and it was just kind of just a random chance. We had a service where there was no sermon, there was no nothing. It was just music and it was a lot of people being slain in the spirit and a lot of antics. I remember him leaning over to me after this happening for about two, almost 3 hours and he's like, “what's going on right now?”
ED:
I couldn't explain it. I was like, I've been exposed to it for so long and I kind of accepted it, but I didn't really know what was going on. I think, was sort of a point in my life where I realized that I guess maybe been taking some of the religious aspects just at face value and not really asking the questions about do I actually believe this? Is this something that resonates with me? I believe in God and I can see how God works in my life and how he's provided for me, what he's done for me and my family. But there's a lot of the man-made stuff about Christianity that I never really agreed with. As I've gotten older and when I started writing songs, this was the one song where I felt like I kind of wanted to address those things. And I think especially in the church, you're kind of presented with a lot of guilt. You're presented with a lot of opportunities to make the right choices or right choices, but they are presented as if you don't make this choice, then you're living in sin and then you spend most of your teenage pre adult life sort of trying to carry this guilt that you didn't ask for.
ED (Cont’d):
Then you end up just sort of feeling like shit all the time because it's human nature to when you're about 17, 18, 19, like wanting to maybe have sex with a girlfriend or maybe you have friends at school who are smoking weed or whatever. It's like none of those things are bad if they're responsible, I don't think. I think it's all about how you're brought up. And I was brought up in this sort of sense that a lot of the things that I do now were presented to me as things that were bad and that I shouldn't do them. So I wrote this song sort of as a catharsis to sort of undo my programming and just let myself be a person and not feel the guilt and the shame for those things.
EU:
I actually listened back to a few of your other tracks too, because I've noticed that you don't really contain yourself into one specific genre, so your songs kind of differ in stylistic leanings. I heard like, pop and folk and lo fi vibes. So was this purposeful from the start or did you find that you felt that it was more fun to incorporate your voice into different genres?
ED:
It's funny you say that because my sister texted me yesterday and she asked for a Dropbox folder and it has probably close to 200 songs in it that I made with my brother when we were kids. That was like, pretty much all we did. In addition to being raised in church, I was also home schooled. So I spent a lot of my time at home. Just like I have an older sister, a younger sister, and a younger brother. And everybody, we all are musically inclined, we'll say. But my brother and I used to just as a way to entertain ourselves, we would make joke songs. And a lot of those joke songs, they kind of differed in genre. And sometimes it would just be like, let's do a country song just because it's funny, or let's do a song that sounds like the Rolling Stones, but make all the lyrics really messed up and just silly, just silly stuff. So I would say I spent the majority of my time at home at a certain point, just like, recording all sorts of different genres, or at least my own perception of what I think they would sound like.
ED:
It's like, “oh, you hear a pop song on a commercial and you're like, let's just try and make that song, but change the lyrics and make it kind of a little off”. I think that sort of eked its way into my more professional music making where I don't really think about what genre is this versus do I like it or does it make me feel anything? You know what I mean? I think when I started M.A.G.S, I was kind of going off of using a band that I had been in previously as a reference point as to what my sound was going to be. Some of my early music, I think, was more informed by that band that I was in when I was in Buffalo and trying to be a part of the Buffalo scene and trying to fit in and have people like my music. After I moved, I kind of realized I didn't need to do that anymore. When I moved to LA, I also started listening to different music. I think the other thing about living in Buffalo was I definitely sort of was a product of my environment. A lot of the music in Buffalo was centered around post punk or hardcore. I was sort of just like in that world of like, I want to make music that sounds like this. Then [by] moving to LA and realizing there's kind of a whole universe of different music to listen to, I opened myself up to a lot of different stuff and that has also made its way into my sound.
EU:
When listening to your music, I hear similarities to other artists. But I wanted to ask you, do you have any specific musical inspirations for you?
ED:
Yeah, I think at the end of the day, this is a question I get a lot, and I think people really want to know how do you come up with these ideas? Is what they're really asking. It's like, where do you get this? Because it reminds you of a bunch of other stuff, but it doesn't really sound like anything else. And growing up, it's like I was listening to a lot of bands that were signed to Equal Vision Records like Circa Survive or Coheed and Cambria, The Fall of Troy, these kind of left of center kind of indie bands or like bands that were one thing but also had a bunch of other stuff mixed in. I remember seeing a quote or like an interview with Anthony Green from Circa Survive. He was talking about when they were doing that band, it's like, we just kind of wanted to be Nirvana but you listen to Circa Survive, it doesn't sound anything like Nirvana or like, Deftones, even. He's quoted DefTones as like, a big inspiration for him and Anthony Green is one of my big inspirations too.
ED (Cont’d):
When I listen to him talk about his influences, I check those influences out and I'm like, oh, that makes sense to me. So I think for me, it's like a lot of my influence is drawn from the people that I was playing music with when I was coming up. So that band I was talking about previously, the guitarist was really into, like, Arctic Monkeys and The Strokes, but also, like, Every Time I Die, which is a band from Buffalo as well. It's all just like riffs and very guitar-driven music. But I didn't really listen to those bands at the time. I was kind of in my own world as far as music goes, but when I started to expand and listen to some of the music that my influences were influenced by, I was like, oh, wow, this is where it comes from. It's not that I got it from him, it's that he got it from somebody else, and so on and so forth. But I think for me right now, I listen to Duster, like, every single day. I put it on when I'm like when I don't want to think anymore, I tend to be a bit of an overthinker.
ED:
So Duster's albums usually help me quiet my brain a lot. Then on the flip side, I've been really liking JPEGMAFIA a lot lately, which is the polar opposite, but he's got that energy and he's just like talking his shit. I think he also makes most of, if not all, of his own beats too. He just kind of has this really unique ---I think of it as like a collage. He's got these weird samples and he's kind of just like just talking about whatever over it, you know what I mean? To me, that's somebody who doesn't really care about what people think. He's just making the music that he wants to make. So to me, that's like a really good energy to have when you are approaching art and stuff.
EU:
Yeah, definitely. I also see that you're going to be supporting Sleeping with Sirens on tour. Congratulations!
ED:
Thank you.
EU:
What has been your previous experience like touring and playing in live venues? Do you feel more comfortable playing live or do you like the idea of just people streaming your music? Some artists are the opposite.
ED:
Yeah, I mean, the thing is for me, I use streaming every single day and I know all of us pretty much use streaming every single day, but I don't think that it's actually the best thing for music. I think going to shows is because when you get to see a band or an artist perform their music the way that they want to present it, I think it can really inform how you perceive the music when you listen to it after the fact. Plenty of bands I've seen that I didn't really care about their music, before I saw them. Then seeing them, I was like, “wow, I have a whole different perspective on what they were trying to do on the album.”
Funny enough, I did a tour earlier this year and I played my whole new album from top to bottom. And it's not out yet, obviously, but I played the whole album just because I wanted to give a sneak preview as to what people can expect. I felt like the reaction to the new music was so significant and people haven't heard any new songs, but they're acting like they've been listening to them for, you know, weeks or months prior. I think that's the power of the live experience. People will still resonate with songs they haven't heard before if you present it with the right energy.
EU:
I definitely am pro-live performance and I think now, especially in this post-COVID world, that more people are going out and wanting to actually hear their favorite artists live and not just in their bedroom.
ED:
Yeah. I will say I owe a lot to streaming though, because when I put out my first two projects, I was living in Buffalo and I was only playing, like, local shows and I wasn't really expecting to do much outside of Buffalo, if I'm being totally honest. I didn't really have a trajectory to move to La and blow up or anything like that. I wasn't really thinking like that. I was just like, I want to impress my friends and I want to make records and stuff. And then when I got the opportunity to move out here, a lot of things changed really quickly and I owe a lot of my ability to tour now to people streaming my music on Spotify and people following me on Instagram and all that. For me as an artist, it's like as much as it feels like a chore to get on Instagram and post or like, whatever, that's how people consume at this point. That's how people become aware of things that they might like. So it's kind of a double edged sword, but at the end of the day, I think you should just come see a show and go from there.
EU:
Well, you're definitely making an impact on Spotify. I know you have like over 260,000 monthly listeners, which is great. So I guess with this specific single, “SINS”, you kind of spoke about it a little bit earlier, but what do you want your current listeners and even new listeners to kind of grab from this? What do you want them to feel?
ED: I think there's a lot of people out there who carry a lot of stuff with them from their past and I think there's a lot of people out there that are running from their past. I think I'm one of those people. Out of the mistakes that I've made or the decisions that I've made, it's like those things tend to come up at times when my mind is weak or when I feel like I have doubt in myself. Those things just hit me. I think ‘sin’ to me is sort of like I said, I think I used the word catharsis earlier, but it really is sort of just like an acknowledgment of those things. What I want people to feel and experience when they hear it, it really is just sort of like the absolute visceral energy of the song. You know what I mean? The lyrics are there, basically. I wouldn't say they're secondary, but I think the song itself has a different kind of energy from anything that I've released previously. I've definitely gone in a bit of a heavier direction, actually. I wrote this song back in 2015.
EU:
Oh, wow.
ED:
It's a really old song, actually. I wrote this song around the same time that I was writing the self-titled and it felt like it didn't really fit. I was playing it live, I was playing it at shows, but it felt so, like, out of pocket. It's like playing all these other kinds of tracks and then it's like, this one's got these crazy breakdowns and all these guitarists. I kind of just put it away. This was actually the song that started the album-making process for this new album. When you hear it, it's like just know that what's coming after is even crazier. I put a lot of different textures and a lot of different stuff on this album. I didn't want to shortchange myself as far as what I can do for sure.
EU:
That was definitely going to be my last question, too. What's next? Where do you see yourself after the tour is completed? The album is going to be prepped. Do you see anything else happening in the near future?
ED:
Yeah, I'm talking about doing more tours. I've got a couple that I'm about to announce, actually. Additionally, I think for me, I just can't slow down. That's not because it's like this thing inside me. It's like I actually can't slow down because if I do, I end up getting super depressed. I think that's true for a lot of creatives. It's like if you're not producing and you're not constantly creating and going towards the next thing, it's easy to stagnate and just kind of think like, “Why am I even doing this? I'm not doing anything right now. Why am I even doing this?”. I'm in the process right now of kind of planning out the rest of the year and planning out next year even. I've got some projects that are coming after the album that I'm really excited about and ultimately, I think that this is just kind of an interesting time in music. We're in a really interesting time where people expect content, but I think I want to present my best self at all times. A little bit of perfectionist in me, I suppose, but I don't think it's a bad thing.
ED (Cont’d):
I definitely have high standards for my music and I take my time when I make stuff. I put a lot of thought into it, so I got some stuff coming and it's going to even be different than what I'm about to put out. Yeah, I'm always trying to subvert expectations and I think the best way to do that is to experiment and not to listen to what people want. I don't really care what my fans want. I make the stuff that resonates with me at the time. And I don't know, I think my real fans are going to be able to hear me in anything that I put out. I think by having a lot of different stuff to grab onto, it opens the door for a lot of different ears to resonate with it.
You can follow Elliott Douglas aka M.A.G.S. on Twitter, Instagram, and stream his latest single “SINS” on Spotify. M.A.G.S. will be performing live starting on May 16 in Little Rock, AK.