OCEAN CITY — When singer-songwriter Mary Devlin released her first professionally produced single a few years ago, she was hoping to find an additional way to break into the music industry, such as maybe a desk job somewhere.
Now she is working in the music industry, doing social media full-time for some major companies and she just released her second professionally produced single, “reduce you.”
That new single, according to the 2015 Ocean City High School graduate who has been singing since she was a young teen, is about a combination of experiences and people she has met over her life. It has evocative lines, including a man “turning casual cruelty into rocket fuel.”
“It’s about phonies,” she said. “I’m really that type of person who can’t handle fake people.” The song “is sort of about growing up and taking a bit of power back in a situation like that. It’s sort of saying now that I’ve grown a little bit, I can tell exactly who you are, what kind of person you are and I’m not going to fall for it any more.
“I’m just gonna try to keep moving with my life and you can keep moving with yours.”
Devlin worked with Brandon Ireland, the same producer whom she had on her first single, “lover’s hands.”
“He’s fantastic,” she said. “He really just brings songs to life. I come to him with the lyrics and the melody chord progression and he just turns it into something amazing.” Devlin also credits Michael Auble, who plays with bands in the area including Molly Ringworm, for his drum work.
“I just tried to pull from my resources here in South Jersey considering we have so much talent here,” she said, noting Auble just released a single as well.
Devlin said her writing process usually starts with her “fiddling around on the guitar, trying out different chord progressions and kind of waiting for a melody to come.
“It’s kind of silly, but you have the melody going and you kind of just start humming nonsense words at first,” she explained. “And then you start thinking about what’s going on in your life, what’s been on your mind lately, and you start putting different words to that.
“Eventually you’ve got a song,” she said, laughing. “I know that’s not a very good explanation, but it’s funny, a lot of artists go that way.”
Interviewed a few years ago when releasing her first single, Devlin said she wanted to find a way to work herself into the music industry. That has happened.
She is doing social media full-time for big companies such as Universal Music Group and Capitol Records and has been working with the John Lennon estate.
“It’s been really exciting and it’s been going very well,” Devlin said. “It’s not necessarily the office job that I expected but I’m just very grateful to be working in the music industry.”
She has been enjoying the work, which has gotten her invited to some special events, such as Sean Lennon’s birthday party last October. “I got to hang out with a lot of Universal Music execs and at the end of the day, everyone’s a music lover, so it’s just fun to hang out with them,” Devlin said.
She does plan to “hunker down and push myself to release more often.” Even with the several years between releases, her followers have grown from around 38,000 on various platforms to almost 90,000.
Devlin, who grew up in Ocean City and was attending Rowan University when interviewed for her first single, now lives in Philadelphia. Her music can be found on Spotify and other streaming platforms.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff