Surviving your 20s is a bitch already but having an ADHD brain running interference makes it even more fucking challenging. Mareya captures that entire damn cocktail of hormones, heartbreak, shame spirals, and small personal victories as she stumbles her way out of girlhood and into something harder, louder, and more honest on Glitter Tears. This EP lives in the space between pretending you’re fine and admitting you’re absolutely not – dancing through anxiety, dissociating in club bathrooms, apologizing too much, hating your reflection, then slowly, painfully learning how to take your power back without asking permission.
Sonically, Glitter Tears leans into pop, pop-punk, and alt-pop textures that feel shiny on the surface and bruised underneath – guitars with bite, hooks that stick, and lyrics that refuse to be polite about what’s actually happening upstairs. Mareya has said she was uncovering the illusion that it feels safer to hide behind beauty than to show internal battles and you hear that tension everywhere across this project. Some songs feel like time capsules of a single emotional moment, others feel like survival tactics dressed up as bangers. By the time you reach the end it’s clear this EP isn’t about perfection or recovery arcs that tie up neatly. It’s about staying alive long enough to tell the goddamn truth.
Born in New Zealand and now based in Naarm/Melbourne, Mareya is a genre-bending producer, songwriter, guitarist and vocalist carving her own lane of empowered, mental-health-driven pop. Her debut single Need You Now hit No.1 on the Brazilian Dance iTunes Charts and Top 20 in Australia, with international radio support across Europe, the UK, and the USA. She has shared stages with DJ Morning Maxwell, Phil Ceberano, and supported pop icons The Veronicas alongside Morning Maxwell. Now signed to Tomboi Records, Mareya enters a defining new era with Glitter Tears – a fearless, emotionally charged collection exploring mental health, identity, womanhood, and resilience. Glitter Tears positions Mareya as a voice for a generation navigating mental health, identity, and self-reclamation in real time.
The EP kicks off with In My Head, a dance track that spirals straight into the messiest part of your brain and refuses to let you out. It captures that manic, claustrophobic loop where you’re “slippin’ in and outta the thoughts that I have” and begging yourself to “get outta my head” while knowing damn well you’re stuck there. The beat moves like your body wants release, but your mind keeps pacing, “spinnin’ all around like I’m manic instead,” replaying the same fragments of memory and loss until even the word “had” starts sounding hollow. There’s something quietly devastating in lines like “wonder if I’ll ever get away from them” and “wonder if I’ll ever get out of here,” because they’re not dramatic, they’re exhausted. This track understands that healing doesn’t arrive with a clean drop or a triumphant moment. Sometimes you’re just dancing while dissociating, moving forward down the river bend while your thoughts keep dragging your ass back. It’s anxiety you can grind to, spiraling dressed up as release, and honestly, it hits way too close to home.
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Up next is Ugly, a soft introspective ballad that crawls straight under your skin and sits there with your worst thoughts. The theme is radical self-exposure mixed with terror. Terror of being seen without the mask. Terror of being loved and then abandoned once someone clocks the mess underneath. When she admits “it’s so ugly how I feel sometimes” and follows it with “don’t want you to see it so I act fine,” it reads as a bathroom-mirror confession you weren’t planning to make. This song understands how women are trained early to curate themselves into something palatable, to “master the art of the mask” because things “get dark when I take it off.” The ugliness here isn’t physical. It’s emotional. It’s shame. It’s the quiet panic of knowing there’s a whole interior world you’re scared will make someone leave if they see it clearly.
The track goes deeper and way more honest when it zooms out to the systems that built this self-loathing in the first place. “Society fucked me up from a young age” isn’t dramatic; it’s factual, and when she follows it with “this shit be really fuckin with my head,” you feel the exhaustion baked into every line. The bridge unravels into jealousy, overstimulation, fear, and the brutal truth of growing up as a girl who never felt safe. “Don’t touch me, but touch me” says everything about how trauma and desire coexist in the same body. By the time she apologizes for “hating on my body” and admits “it’s so hard to not see ugly,” the moment is brutal clarity. This is self-awareness in its rawest form. Vulnerable, messy, and painfully real. Honestly? This is the kind of track that makes you sit still, breathe, and feel less alone in your own head.
We reviewed the next track several months ago and it still hits like a mirror you didn’t ask to look into. On ADHD & Me, Mareya dips her toes into pop punk and captures the chaos, charm, and constant self-negotiation of living in a brain that never shuts the hell up, all wrapped in a bright, bouncy alt-pop package that feels deceptively fun. The lyrics say the quiet parts out loud, from “I talk too much, I overshare / I interrupt you, make you think that I don’t care” to the gut-punch of growing up misunderstood and mislabeled. It nails that familiar mix of humor and hurt, the way you laugh through the mess because crying gets exhausting. This song tells the truth and keeps its edges intact.
What makes it land is how it balances levity with honesty. The production stays playful and hyper, mirroring a brain in overdrive, then pulls back just enough in the softer moments to let the late-night spirals breathe. Lines like “yeah it’s past 5am and I can’t sleep again” and “wish I could call a friend / but I don’t wanna burden them” feel painfully familiar if you’ve ever been wired and exhausted at the same time. And then comes the payoff. By the end, the message flips outward, turning self-explanation into reassurance: “it’s not you, it’s your ADHD.” It’s generous, affirming, and weirdly healing. A song that dances through the chaos, then reaches back and says hey, you’re not broken. And honestly? That matters.
After testing the waters in the previous track, Mareya dives headfirst into mid-2000s pop-punk territory next with I’m So Sorry, and the track lives in that exhausted headspace where your brain won’t shut up even when the person you love is inches away. The theme is guilt spiraling into self-awareness. She opens unable to sleep, admitting “I can’t sleep in this bed / ’Cause I’m too in my head,” quietly panicking as her baby lies next to her, about to wake up. The breakdown is messy and unfiltered. She’s “crying, screaming,” drowning in the feeling that she’s “wasting my life” and forgetting how to help herself. The chorus loops “I’m so sorry that all I say these days / Is that I’m sorry while I’m wasting away,” because apologizing has replaced actual change, and she knows it.
The second half is where the song grows teeth. When she admits “he’s almost giving up on us,” there’s no blame, just brutal clarity. The moment is brutal clarity. This is the moment where love alone stops being enough. Lines like “I don’t recognise myself anymore” and “I can’t get up off the floor” capture the collapse, but the shift comes when she finally says “I hate that it took me this much to wake me up.” Instead of another hollow apology, she chooses action, promising “I’ll save myself, I’ll get some help,” because she’s sick of taking someone else down with her. By the time she admits she finally knows why everything’s been falling apart, the track stops sounding like self-loathing and starts sounding like survival. It’s raw, accountable, and painfully honest — the kind of pop-punk confession that doesn’t glamorize the mess, it names it and decides to live anyway.
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Fresh off the raw ache of I’m So Sorry, she turned her own breakdown into a manifesto on Happy Girl. The track lives in that specific hell where you look fine, sound fine, still show up, but inside everything’s cracking. When she opens with “Always been a happy girl / But somethin’ went and changed my world,” it captures the moment your whole identity slips out from under you and you’re stuck “struggling to be / the girl I thought was me.” That line about “kinda died (and I miss her so)” hits because it names the grief of losing a version of yourself no one else even noticed was gone. You’re still dancing, still smiling, but your head’s a warzone.
The song keeps circling the mirror, forcing you to look. “I looked up in the mirror and I didn’t wanna recognize” spirals into numbness, anger, and the brutal self-awareness of being “kinda mean to me.” She doesn’t soften the rage either, admitting she’s an “angry girl” crying glitter tears and trying to hide the fear, before finally snapping out of the self-hate loop. The turning point comes when she decides she’s done punishing herself and claws her way back with “I know that I can come right back to life.” By the end, the track explodes into defiant, campy survival energy, yelling “I’m back” like a spell she’s casting on herself. Happy Girl doesn’t pretend healing is quiet or graceful. It’s loud, bitter, glitter-stained, and earned. Falling apart, then dragging yourself back into the light with mascara smeared and zero interest in being polite about it.
“The song that closes the EP is the reclamation of power and truth that comes afterwards.” That line tells you exactly where Lady of Love lives, and trust me, she earns every second of it. This track is the moment you remember you’re the prize and stop negotiating that fact with anyone, including yourself. It opens as a mirror moment, eyeliner sharp, spine straight, muttering “yeah, fuck that” to every version of you that ever played small. Confident, intentional, and a little dangerous, the production snaps clean and bright, uptempo pop built to move your body while rewiring your standards. The hook locks fast, no coy messaging, no explaining. This song doesn’t ask for attention, it takes it, and suddenly you’re making eye contact with the version of yourself that stopped apologizing years ago.
Lyrically, it’s a warning shot wrapped in glitter. Lines like “you thought you had me down but baby I am ready” and “just look at me now” hit with zero tremble, while the chorus shows real teeth, promising “you think you can stop me then baby just watch me.” There’s power here, paired with softness that feels chosen, not forced. “Lady of love backs down to nobody” lands because it understands that strength without compassion burns out, and strength with it lasts. By the time she shrugs off chaos with “I don’t cater to your crazy ways” and admits she’s chasing greatness, not fame, the whole track feels like a recalibration. Lady of Love belongs on your pregame playlist, your mirror moments, and every night you decide to choose yourself on purpose. Loud, self-possessed, and deeply satisfying.
By the time Glitter Tears closes, the arc feels earned – not healed, not cured, but reclaimed. What starts as spiraling, masking, apologizing, and self-blame sharpens into clarity, accountability, and finally power. This EP understands that growth doesn’t arrive quietly and confidence doesn’t come without wreckage. Mareya turns vulnerability into armor, glamour into defiance, and pain into something you can move to. Glitter Tears refuses to lull you into complacency – it reminds you who the fuck you are when you stop shrinking, stop apologizing, and decide to stand back up in your own body. And honestly? That’s the kind of record that sticks with you long after the last hook fades out.
