“Hopefully he’d say he fell in love and fumbled, haha,” Maria Lane tells me midway through our interview. It is the kind of verdict that could end an argument or begin another song. Her third album, I Love You Always, takes its name from the final words of a goodbye text; Lane’s reply eventually arrived as a ten-minute title track.

The Brooklyn singer-songwriter is documenting a romance that grew out of a long friendship, giving the album two losses to account for. Across fifteen songs, tenderness keeps sharing space with suspicion, yearning and the occasional flash of melodrama. Lane speaks candidly about holding the microphone in a story involving two people, the conversations she could only finish through music and the private history tucked inside her homage to Jeff Buckley. We spoke with her about the words that stayed, the friendship she still mourns and the stories waiting beyond this relationship.

Hi Maria, it’s great to speak with you. People tend to hear “I love you always” as romantic; to me, those words can also leave the recipient carrying an obligation they never accepted. How did they land with you?

Hi! Thank you so much for having me!

I think those words started off as a romantic sentiment. I had actually signed one of the letters I wrote to him with “I love you always,” and when he sent me his final goodbye text, he ended it with those exact same words. It almost felt like my own words were being thrown back at me.

I think the word “always” is interesting because it suggests permanence, even when the relationship itself isn’t permanent. Maybe it means you’re always going to carry love for someone because of the impact they made on your life, even after you’ve let them go. I think that’s how I’ve come to understand it.

How much of this album was written for yourself, and how much was written for one particular listener?

I think all of these songs were written for myself. I was really trying to process the love and grief that came from losing both a friendship and a romantic relationship with the same person. Songwriting has always been a way for me to make sense of my feelings, especially when I don’t necessarily have the words to communicate them in the moment.

But I would be lying if I said I never pictured him hearing the album. What’s interesting is that the record was heavily influenced by some of his favorite artists. I remember when I wrote “when we let go of our hug,” I knew I wanted it to have a Coldplay-inspired sound. That song was actually written before things ended between us, so he heard the original voice memo when I first wrote it.

When it came to the album as a whole, I also really wanted to reach a new audience, particularly listeners who love Jeff Buckley, Radiohead, and that ’90s alternative sound.

I think there’s something beautiful about how specific songwriting can be. Even though I’m writing about my own experiences, someone else might hear a lyric and feel like it was written about their life. I think that’s one of my favorite things about making music, finding something universal in something so personal.

Do you miss the friendship more than the relationship?

Yes, absolutely. It started off as a friendship, and I think it can be difficult to find a friendship with a man where you feel completely safe and understood without there being any romantic expectations. I always felt that safety with him.

I think it takes a special kind of person to exchange ten-minute-long voice messages with, or someone who genuinely wants to sit and listen to full albums with you. Our music tastes aligned so much, and we’re also both poets, so words were a really important part of how we connected. We were both very big on words of affirmation, too. I think there was just a mutual understanding between us that felt really special.

I don’t think we would’ve developed the romantic relationship we did if we hadn’t had that friendship first. That was our foundation. We had years of knowing each other, sharing music, having conversations, and just being part of each other’s lives.

I think losing someone who was both a friend and someone you fell in love with is a very particular kind of grief, because you’re not just mourning what could’ve been romantically, you’re also mourning the person you used to turn to.

At what minute of the title track do you come closest to saying the one thing you kept out of the text conversation?

I think at 3:18, the lyric that stands out to me is, “I don’t wanna cut the chord, our love is too deep to ignore, don’t have me crying on the bathroom floor.”

What’s interesting is that when he sent me his final goodbye text, which ended with “I love you always,” I actually never responded to it.

I think in a way, the entire ten-minute song became my response. There were so many things I wanted to say, and instead of sending another text, I poured all those feelings into the music. It’s almost like an unsent letter, and maybe my way of finally saying “I love you always” back.

I want one studio story from I Love You Always: the take sounded finished, everyone else was satisfied, and you still heard a problem. What kept bothering you?

Oh gosh, I think “showing up in my dreams” is a good example of this! It actually took us a while to get that song set in stone. Originally, it had piano and more of an electronic sound, with a lot more harmonies and head voice. I remember feeling like there were just too many harmonies, and although it sounded pretty, something about it wasn’t sitting right with me.

We ended up stripping back a lot of those layers and leaning more into a Sufjan Stevens/Radiohead-inspired sound, taking it in a more acoustic direction. I remember using “Futile Devices” by Sufjan Stevens as one of our reference tracks because I really loved the intimacy of that acoustic sound. Justin and I both felt so much better about the song once we made that change, and it felt much closer to what I had envisioned for it.

I think sometimes it’s easy to keep adding things to a song because you think it’ll make it sound fuller, but I’ve learned that sometimes less really is more. Especially with this album, I wanted the production to leave room for the vulnerability of the writing, and I think the final version captures that so much better.

A breakup album gives its author the microphone while the other person remains silent. How comfortable are you with that imbalance?

I’m comfortable with it because I think there’s a difference between telling your side of a story and claiming that your perspective is the only one that exists. I’m writing from my own experiences and emotions, and I think I’m allowed to express how something affected me.

I’ve always approached songwriting as a way of processing rather than placing blame, but I also think there’s a lot of accountability on this album. “twist the knife” is a good example of that. There was another girl involved, and when I asked him about the nature of their relationship, I was told there was nothing going on. But I had a strong intuition that there was more to the story, and I think the song really captures the hurt that comes from feeling like someone isn’t being completely honest with you. You can’t outsmart someone with strong intuition.

I actually don’t think he would’ve expected me to address something like that so directly in my songwriting, but I went there.

I also think it’s important to recognize that there are two perspectives to every relationship, and I’m not trying to speak for his experience. I’m simply sharing mine. I don’t think the album portrays him as a villain, either. There was a lot of genuine love and tenderness in that relationship, and I wanted to preserve that alongside the grief.

I’m not sure what he would say if he had the opportunity to give his own context to the album. Hopefully he’d say he fell in love and fumbled, haha.

Your singles carry wonderfully dramatic titles: “6 feet deep,” “twist the knife,” “i don’t want another man.” Away from the songs, are you equally direct during an argument?

Oh god, I hate arguing! Haha. I’m really not an angry person at all. I’m very big on communication and trying to approach people with kindness, even when my feelings are hurt.

I think I can be much more dramatic in my songwriting than I am in real life. When I’m writing a song that involves a conversation, it’s usually a conversation I’m either unable to have or afraid to have out loud. In a way, songwriting becomes a more extensive form of communication for me because I can really sit with my feelings and articulate things I might struggle to say in the moment.

I’d much rather sit down with someone and have an honest, vulnerable conversation than argue with them, but I think music gives me a space to say the things I don’t always know how to say face-to-face.

The Jeff Buckley homage interests me because reverence can make singers cautious. Where did you allow yourself to become reckless on “last goodbye”?

I think the recklessness came from how emotionally vulnerable I allowed myself to be. I realized while writing “last goodbye” that I was experiencing my own last goodbye, and the person the song is about is actually the person who introduced me to Jeff Buckley. “Last Goodbye” is one of both of our favorite songs.

I ended up rewriting parts of my song to call back to Jeff’s a little more intentionally. In a way, it felt like another form of communication with this person because I knew how much that music meant to both of us.

Vocally, I really wanted the performance to feel raw and emotional, because that’s exactly how I feel when I listen to Jeff sing. There’s something so romantic and vulnerable about his delivery. He’s not afraid to yearn, and I love that about him. I think the second chorus, where I’m hitting an E5, is a good example of where I allowed myself to really go there emotionally. It wasn’t necessarily about the difficulty of the note, but the intensity behind singing it. I wanted to give myself that freedom to be completely emotionally exposed without worrying about whether it was too much.

I think that’s what makes his music so special to me, and it felt really meaningful to pay homage to him on a song that was already so personal.

How did the first person who heard the ten-minute title track react?

I think technically my producer Justin was the first person to hear it, haha! He heard the original voice memo, and I remember there being some excitement around the challenge of producing a ten-minute song. I think the biggest question for us was, how do we make a ten-minute song feel like it’s worth being ten minutes long?

We pulled reference tracks from artists like Radiohead, The Cure, and Jeff Buckley, and really thought about how the arrangement could evolve throughout the song to keep the listener engaged.

I think it ended up being such a rewarding experience creatively because we weren’t necessarily trying to make the song shorter. We wanted to give it the space it needed to tell the story.

Let’s leave the former lover behind for the final question. What currently makes Maria Lane happy enough to write about?

I will be so honest when I say it’s really hard to write happy songs, haha. I mean, I love writing love songs. I love loving, and I love pouring all these little specific details about people into my writing. I think what’s interesting is how the format of those songs changes when the relationship does.

But I also really love writing songs inspired by fictional characters and their stories. “Carrie White” is a good example of that. I actually have older songs I’ve written about Max and Lucas from Stranger Things, and Dani and Jamie from The Haunting of Bly Manor. I think that’s where my background in acting comes into play, because I love stepping into someone else’s shoes and exploring emotions and experiences outside of my own.

I also find so much happiness and inspiration in absorbing other people’s art, whether that’s going to a museum, reading a book, watching a film, or discovering a song that really moves me. I think experiencing art makes me want to create more of it.

Ultimately, I think what makes me happiest creatively is storytelling, whether it’s something I’ve experienced firsthand or a story that’s moved me. There’s something really exciting about knowing there’s always another story to tell.