The Marías healed and uplifted me in my darkest hour

The year 2025 put me through hell and back, but music has been my escape throughout the years.  Music has always helped me with emotions, feelings, and explanations I didn’t know how to give people or myself, but last year, that was more true than ever, and there was one sound I played on repeat: The Marías.

The Marías are a famous American psychedelic-soul band, with main singer María Zardoya hailing from Puerto Rico, and drummer Josh Conway coming from Los Angeles. The Marías are known for a sound that blends jazz, funk, Latin influences, and bilingual lyrics in both English and Spanish. 

The Marías formed around 2016 in Los Angeles when Zardoya met Conway at a gig he was running sound for. They later started writing songs together and began a romantic relationship, which led them to make the band The Marías, recruiting friends as well. Their group eventually included keyboardist Edward James, guitarist Jessie Perlman, and bassist Carter Lee, who joined later on. 

The band’s greatest album, Submarine, came out on May 31, 2024. Their album was inspired by the breakup in 2022 of Zardoya and Conway after being in a relationship for over a decade, though their breakup was only officially announced around February 2023. This breakup led to themes of heartbreak and self-discovery to emerge in their music. They also said that Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film Three Colors: Blue visually inspired their music. 

In an interview with Variety, Zardoya said that when creating the album Submarine, she and Conway embraced individuality and working through challenges with therapy, while discovering a more authentic, less codependent way to work together.

The Marías sing and express experience with so many emotions that I think teenagers these days struggle to understand. For example, The Marías helped me through the toughest time in my life, losing someone I loved and falling into depression for a little while because of the struggle my family was and is still going through now. The lyrics  “Maybe I lost my mind, no one noticed,” really stuck with me from the song “No One Noticed.” 

When I was at my lowest, and my sister was going through so much more mentally than I was, I sometimes felt that no one paid much attention to how things were affecting my mental health. But I also hid my emotions from everyone, pretending I was fine and suppressing my feelings even from myself, not realizing at the time that I was depressed. So many teenagers in this generation are afraid to be open with their feelings and get the help they need. I know I did. 

Statistically, 1 in every 5 teenagers experiences a major depressive episode in a given year, and over 80% of those teenagers listen to music daily as a coping mechanism for stress, anxiety, and sadness, with studies showing that music helps with emotional expression. Studies show that music significantly reduces depression in 69% of teenagers, according to a study in 2016. 

There is so much backstory and meaning behind the lyrics The Marías chose with feelings of loneliness, connection, desperation, and a sense of “okay, this isn’t going to work, I’m going to leave without a trace,” said María in another interview with Genius.

The song “No One Noticed” came to María one morning as she picked up her guitar. The windows were open, the birds were chirping, and the lyrics were flowing out of her, she said. She made the song over time and sent it to her producer, who then said they wanted something “upbeat, something people can dance to,” which obviously this song doesn’t have. However, María didn’t care what the producer said and leaked it herself, and everyone fell in love with the song.

The lyrics portray the feeling of someone going through the toughest moment in their life, and no one notices or seems to care, so they feel invisible to everyone. She goes on, “It’s getting old, all alone, may have lost it, I have lost it,” talking about feeling so tired of an emotion or a way you’ve been feeling for such a long time, wishing someone would understand what you’re going through. Sometimes, even when this happens, it doesn’t get through to them, even if you scream it out loud. This lyric sticks with me so much because for so long, that’s how I felt when dealing with my own emotions and feelings of being misunderstood.

Sometimes, I was blamed for things even when I wasn’t in the room or when I was trying to help, or told I was making things worse, which made me feel like I was going crazy. That feeling of loneliness and self-isolation, because I felt like that’s what I deserved, broke me. I concealed my emotions, put on a mask of a smile when in school, pretending I was fine.

But the second I’d get home and was alone in my room at night, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking, and I felt so alone. Listening to The Marías, as well as many other artists, made me feel less alone, like I wasn’t the only person to feel that way. 

I know people who feel the same way about The Marías and María’s lyrics, just like I do, and I know there must be so many more people who feel that way. The Marías are so much more than just an American psychedelic-soul band; they are the friends and listeners for those who need a voice to soothe and console them in their darkest hour.