Getting Candid with Jonah Marais [INTERVIEW]
We’re getting candid in our interview with Jonah Marais.
Jonah Marais is a pop singer who got his start in the boy band Why Don’t We in 2016. The band reached massive career milestones over six years before announcing their hiatus in 2022. Now, Jonah is setting out on his own path as a solo artist, with a debut EP and a solo tour already under his belt and more new music on the way. This next single “Slow Motion” comes out November 15.
We talk to Jonah about finding his identity as a solo artist outside of Why Don’t We, the strong relationship he has with his fans, and why it’s so important to him to make the world a better place through his music.
Listen to the full interview with Jonah Marais on Name 3 Songs podcast and find a transcribed excerpt below.
Name 3 Songs: You’ve been in the entertainment industry for a decade now. This is honestly super impressive. You got your start on YouTube, you were in Why Don’t We for six years of your life, which is a very formative time period. Fast forward to now, it’s 2024. You released your debut solo EP this summer. You have more music on the way. What was this process like finding your identity as a solo artist outside of Why Don’t We?
Jonah Marais: Oh my gosh, definitely scary at first. I feel like as the band was sort of ending a couple years ago, it was just a vulnerable time of like, I don’t know what’s next. This is everything that I know that’s been successful in my life. I definitely had this faith like, all right, I didn’t come this far just to come this far. There’s definitely a next step here, but I didn’t know what it was. So it was just really trusting the process and trusting in myself and trying to step forward.
I reached out to some people that I really liked working with, during my time in Why Don’t We. And luckily, my friend Jason Koenig, who would give me advice from time to time – he did a couple of our music videos. Him and I just hit it off because we both like baseball and whatnot. And he would give me advice and I called him and was like, I don’t know what to do. Like, what do you recommend? And he is really good friends with Ryan Lewis, who did all like the Macklemore stuff back in the day. I grew up listening to them – Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. And I instantly was like, that sounds awesome.
So we got into the studio and Ryan has been incredible to work with. He opened up his studio to me. I’m actually in Washington right now at his cabin studio here. It’s been the three of us. We started working pretty quickly on everything. And it was definitely some of the hardest times of my life, just feeling like I didn’t know what was gonna happen next.
And then to push through that and come into this year of 2024 and start dropping things this summer. I actually just finished up my first US tour. And that was insane just to feel the love. I wasn’t sure how it was gonna go and it was so, so good just to be back on stage and give hugs again and all the things.
You hit so many things that we’re going to come back in this conversation. But I’m also curious because, obviously, you were in a boy band for six years where you were working with a group of other people, and there’s so many decisions coming in from different sides. Now that you’re doing your solo project, how has this collaborative process changed now that you’re fully in the driver’s seat?
During the Why Don’t We days when we were creating, I did write quite a bit, especially towards the end of the band. But it was always with this sort of feeling of like writing for a shared perspective. Or it’s almost like being a part of an entity like Disney Channel or like one of these like big, big things, you know. So it wasn’t necessarily like, okay, this is how I’m feeling today and I can write whatever I want to write about my life. That’s been the biggest thing – just feeling the freedom to speak my mind and know that it can come out however I want it to now.
Do you feel like you almost had to use a different part of your brain or push yourself to be like, no, actually, I can write things about me. I want to tell my own story.
Yeah, I think so. And also I want to give credit to the people that I’m working with too, because they’ve been so great just like giving me the space and freedom and asking the right questions and pulling it out of me. Because I think in parts of Why Don’t We, I was definitely not speaking up in my opinion. And so I’ve gotten better at speaking up. That’s for sure.
Do you think that that’s also a process of getting older and becoming more comfortable with yourself? And feeling more confident in sharing your self and your story?
Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s probably across the board with every human being. We all go through growing up and figuring out confidence and being able to speak our minds. So I think that’s definitely a part of it. I’m 26 now and I’m growing up and yeah, it’s feeling good. It’s feeling really good.
Why Don’t We announced the hiatus in the summer of 2022 and then you put out your EP this year, two years later. Were you able to have time for yourself to process everything you went through with the band and live life and experience things on your own before coming to your music?
A little bit. I think I was very much in a kind of a panic, like a free fall vibe. Like my life is not going well, what am I going to do? I need to put something out. I need to link up with the right people. It was definitely not like “the band’s done. I’m just going to chill out. This is great.” I definitely knew that I needed to be doing things.
So almost in a way, I’m getting a little bit of that right now because I got to put out music in the summer and then actually go on tour and see like, dang, we just worked really hard for something and it, it panned out and people came to the shows and this is really great.
So now I’m like, okay, I can feel happy. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s been a good last few weeks for sure.
It’s also like when you’re on this train that’s going full speed ahead – doing the band for six years is really intense. And so I’m sure for you, it’s like this is my identity, this is what I’ve been doing. How do I continue that by myself? How do I keep this going?
Yeah, I think that was a big part of the last couple years – is how much of my identity that I had wrapped up in being in the band, Why Don’t We was a lot. So kind of figuring out, who am I without that? And what are the things that I care about and want to talk about? And, you know, shine a light on like whether that’s mental health or just being vulnerable and speaking up and trying to open conversation. Not in a heavy way, but like, hey, let’s talk about it.
Yeah, definitely. You were saying, there’s so much pressure in a sense of when you finish something, you’re like, “Oh my God, like what is next?” There’s that scramble. And in thinking about that, I was thinking about Louis Tomlinson’s documentary and how he talked about wanting to take a step back and was putting out singles that weren’t really him, while he was trying to figure out what he was.
He said he felt like he owed fans like access to him again because of that mutual connection he had with his fans. And so I’m curious because it seems like you have a kind of similar relationship with your fans. If you felt like “I can’t just take myself away from them. I want to keep giving in that regard.”
Yeah, it’s kind of all that I know – it’s definitely such a real connection, talking through social media and DMs, Twitter, Instagram comments – and then actually getting to see them in person is a whole different thing. But it’s on another level than I’ve seen, where it’s like, I have some of the most meaningful moments in my life when I’m talking to them.
Like on this tour, I don’t wanna like go too deep into people’s personal lives, but like really special moments of a mom coming up to me and telling me that, you know, she’s struggling and sick and this is the only time this whole year that she saw her daughter happy and dancing around. And it was just like, if I can do that, I feel like that’s what makes everything else worth it. And that makes this all make sense.
As much as people have come up to me and say “you’ve helped me through a hard time,” it’s a two-way street and they helped me through hard stuff too. Like really, my times of feeling like the most alone and sad and depressed and detached from the world, knowing that there’s people out there that care and Tweet me nice things and are waiting for me to go on tour, like that has really helped. It’s a special thing and I do feel like it’s not like I can just stop. Like I couldn’t, I wouldn’t want to, you know?
Listen to the full interview with Jonah Marais on Name 3 Songs podcast available on your favorite podcast platforms.
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