Okay so I went through this whole phase in college where I was basically auditioning to be someone’s girlfriend at all times. Like genuinely performing. Laughing at shit that wasn’t funny and texting back with that right amount of chill. And the fucked up thing is it works. People love the edited version. They love you when you’re easy. Turns out hot messes are only charming when they’re contained. So you just keep going, until one day someone says something that pisses you all the way off and you go completely feral about it in the group chat at 2am because you finally ran out of nice. I have done that. More times than I will ever admit sober. ‘Take Me As I Am’ found me and I felt every second of it.
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This is the title track off Mary’s new album and it opens with “someone asked me ‘would you ever wanna go to space? / the moon might be a place where all my talents go to waste’” which sounds random until you understand the whole song is about having something to offer that nobody knows what to do with. The pop-punk production is scrappy and driving, sharp basslines with rock energy that goes hard as fuck. This is alt-rock you want loud enough to annoy the neighbors. Mary said the song was born from “my ongoing need for validation and love” and I am not going to pretend I don’t understand that completely. She keeps going: “the constant stretching out, trying to feel chosen and reassured and desired.” Yeah. That sentence has lived in my head since I first read it.
The first verse is a rundown of being out in the world as yourself and watching it backfire in real time. “A couple months ago I wrote a song nobody liked / too sad and too abrasive to be anybody’s type” and that lands because we know that feeling of putting something real out there and catching shit from people about it. Then “a creep liked my looks enough to chase me down the street / I freeze up, give a smile, I’m not sure what to say / am I supposed to thank him and tell him ‘he’s so sweet’?” and okay we have ALL done that freeze-smile thing where you’re furious and scared and you just… smile anyway. Like we’ve been so thoroughly trained to make men comfortable at our own expense that it’s basically a reflex at this point. She called that out in four words. “God, I wish I stayed inside again that day.” And it makes me insane every single fucking time. All of that builds toward the chorus – “Take me as I am / I’m not so nice but I’ll be nice to you / please give me a good review / I’m not so nice but I’ll be nice to you / whatever you want babe, I will do.” She’s telling him who she is and offering to compromise every bit of it to make him happy. Whatever you want babe. That’s a white flag.
Then the song shifts temperature entirely and she drops into a confession mid-song. “I’ve been keeping secrets: there’s somebody I like / they’re plucking all my strings and make me lose my mind / being in love is a science I’ll never understand / how is it that a loser should ever get to take these hands?” She is down BAD and already talking herself out of deserving it in the same breath. That self-deprecating spiral is so relatable it’s almost uncomfortable to listen to. She throws out “hit me up / let’s overthrow the government / hit me up / whenever I get relevant” which is chaotic and funny and kind of heartbreaking all at once. Call me when I matter enough. Then “disappoint them, tortured souls, they’re high as fuck / turn that shit to gold” and that’s the move. Take the mess and the self-doubt and alchemize it into something worth a damn. The second verse is where she goes fully chaotic in the best way. “I’ve never been the most honest lover / I didn’t stand out to that sexist fucker / move into a minivan / I’ll serve you soup straight from the can / trust me babe, I have a plan / you’re hotter than the weatherman / move into a minivan.” The minivan offer is genuinely chaotic and I respect it completely. When you’re that gone on someone you will say the most chaotic shit just to make them stay.
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Look, Mary Middlefield spent fifteen years as a classically trained violinist before a breakup redirected her entirely. The guy dumped her while she was carrying his goddamn groceries. So she picked up a guitar, taught herself Radiohead riffs, and started writing through it. Within a couple of years she went from winning SRF3 Best Talent in Switzerland to playing Glastonbury and the Paris 2024 Olympics. Radio stations called ‘Sexless,’ her 2023 track that’s basically a raunchy admission it’s been a while since she got laid, too aggressive to air but BBC Radio 6 and Radio X put it in heavy rotation. The math isn’t mathing for those other stations, but glad for the rest of us. Her debut album Thank You Alexander and the EP Poetry (for the scorned and lonely) built her a fanbase that is absolutely feral for this shit. Will You Take Me As I Am? is her second full-length studio album, mastered by Grammy-winner Randy Merrill, and she is very done shrinking to fit someone else’s idea of her. She said she wrote this album “asking for love in a thousand different ways, sometimes gently, sometimes desperately, sometimes without realizing I was asking at all.” Then she asks the whole question out loud: “if I unveil everything… will you take me as I am?” Yeah, Mary. We’re asking the same thing.
By the end of the song Mary has done everything she swore she wouldn’t like compromising herself for someone she wants. The self-awareness running through all of it wrecks me a little. Hell, I’ve been there and I’ll probably be there again. This song is the honest accounting of what wanting someone actually costs you and most people are too proud to admit it but their therapists are billing them for the time anyway. I mentioned spending last year performing the edited version of myself. Turns out the hot mess version is way more fun. Mary Middlefield just made a whole album about it and honestly that’s the validation I didn’t know I needed.
