Mali’s suitcase years inspired her sophomore album. But she’s glad they’re over

It’s fitting that the day we interview singer-songwriter Maalavika Manoj, better known as Mali to her legions of fans, she is travelling. We meet at her Mumbai apartment just hours before she flies to her home city of Chennai to talk about Where Was I?, her just-released second album, which she describes as a “10-track portrait of restlessness and return”.

Written between 2020 and 2025, when she moved “about six times” from Mumbai to Chennai and back to Mumbai with a detour in Austria, it “traces the emotional packing and unpacking that comes with never quite settling”. The inspiration might be distressing, but in Mali’s hands the record sounds almost comforting. Lyrics about toxic relationships (social-media-referencing first single ‘Saviour Complex’) and being blindsided (the Kacey Musgraves-ish ‘So Good’) come wrapped in lush 1970s- and ’80s-evoking pop-rock arrangements that bear her love for acts like Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles (“My dad was a huge fan; he used to have a nightclub called HFO, or Hell Freezes Over”), and The Carpenters (“a huge influence from my mom”).

If she was struggling internally, you couldn’t tell because her career has been thriving—2021 saw the release of her critically hailed debut album, Caution to the Wind; she began 2023 by taking the stage at the first edition of Lollapalooza India, and ended it by embarking on a nationwide tour. In 2024, she performed at SXSW in Sydney, had her single ‘Semi Automatic Butane’ played on a Fortnite radio station, and won Best India Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards. Last year, she opened for Ed Sheeran in Bengaluru just a few days after getting married.

The next few months already seem packed, with appearances at the inaugural instalment of Home festival in Goa this December, the Foo Fighters’ Mumbai show, and LaLaLa fest in Indonesia in January, plus two confirmed dates in the UK in May. Hopefully, she’ll find time in between to tour Where Was I? and plot the trek so she avoids dawn-time starts, her aversion to which is documented on ‘Flight Mode’.

The 33-year-old Chennai-born, Mumbai resident talks to The Nod about the process of making the record, her definition of success, and where she finds herself today.

This album documents the first half of the decade for you. What were the most significant things you remembered?

The most significant was the pandemic. That’s the first thing that disturbed my status quo. Between June 2020 and August 2024, I moved about six times. Small and big moves. Like Chennai: I first moved from Mumbai to my parents’ house, where I stayed for about five months, and then I moved to my own place, which was an apartment that my aunt owned, for like a year or so. Then I moved back to Mumbai to a friend’s place for like a month or two, after which I was travelling for a few months. I was seeing someone who lived in Austria, so I spent three months there. Finally, I got back to Mumbai to a rented apartment that I shared with Lala (guitarist Apurv Isaac). By this point of time, I was really emotionally spent and was like ‘not again’. Not another set of boxes, not another IKEA trip, not another set of Urban Company people to deal with.

But now when I look back, those were the best years of my life, moving in with my best friend, figuring things out again. The other thing that happened during the pandemic is that I ended a really long relationship, so the version of Mumbai that I came back to was like an alternate reality. It was like same place, different people, different energy.

What was the hardest song to write?

True to its title, the hardest was ‘Roundabout’, which I wrote during the pandemic, about a car accident I had. I almost abandoned the song. The first version didn’t have a chorus. It was what my friend Arnob [Bal], who produced my last album, described as an anti-pop song. He gave me the confidence [to finish it]. He called me and said, “Just send me any version, I’m bored, I want to work on it.” Something about him telling me that made me feel I should try and resurrect it. I rewrote it, I think, twice. The final version is the one that I worked on last year.

Why did it take so long to crack?

[It needed to have] the right mix of sweet and salt. I [had to figure out] how to bring some elements of positivity and nostalgia to it. It’s not just about an accident. That’s the catalyst for it, but it’s also about how everything in 2020 felt like you were on a road and then something comes from the other side and almost kills you.

‘Flight Mode’ is about feeling burned out from touring and having to get up to catch a plane. Are you a morning person?

No, absolutely not. I’ve never been one. For school, I had to wake up at 6 am. So, I said I’m going to make sure that I choose a life where I don’t have to do that. I like silent time. What I can’t stand is people who are active and energetic and enthusiastic in the morning. That gets on my nerves.

The music videos for ‘Saviour Complex’ and ‘Spaceship’ have been DIY art and craft projects. Have you always been good at making things?

I’ve always loved it. When I was a kid, that was my favourite thing to do. I’m a very jugaadu person. Usually, the times I get inventive is when something’s broken. I find a solution to quick-fix it. That jugaad was taken a step further with these music videos.

For ‘Saviour Complex’, I really wanted to shoot a music video on a boat. [But] the sailing season ended at the end of May. When that didn’t work out, I looked on YouTube and noticed that people were making all kinds of things out of cardboard, like little rally cars. I opened Blinkit and saw they were selling these rolls of thin packaging cardboard. I was like, all right, maybe we don’t need to make a three-dimensional boat. All it needs to be is a facade. Once I had a kind of plan in place, I called everyone [in my band] and was like, hey, who’s up for this? We all sprawled out for about a week and just painted, coloured, cut. I think my dreams were smelling of Fevicol after that.

Because that went so well, we all said, it would be so fun to just meet up and do this. We spoke too soon, because we ended up doing it again for ‘Spaceship’. While making all these props, I was just thinking it’s actually kind of poignant that all of this is being made out of cardboard, because the whole concept of this album is boxes. Cardboard for me is this material of transience. We find it in very makeshift spaces.

What’s your definition of success, and has it changed over the years?

Longevity. How long can you stay in it? And being a female artist, I think you’re thinking about that a lot more. I definitely wonder about how the image of me being a married woman would sit as an independent artist. This last album has been about the chaotic years, and I wonder what the next album will sound like, in the face of this thing in my life. I think about reinvention, and I’ve had the ability to do that a couple of times in smaller ways. I wonder what my songs will sound like in my fifties.

You’ve called Where Was I? an album “about feeling like you’re all over the place and then realising you were right where you needed to be”. When did you get that realisation?

There were times while I was in the middle of the chaos that I realised, whether I like to admit it or not, that these are the best years of my life. There were moments where I would just catch myself in a place or in a conversation [and think] I’m going to look back on these years fondly.

Now the further away I am from that, I realise, yes, they were chaotic times, but they were really beautiful years. It all looked like a sitcom, living out of this Bandra apartment, and people just walking in and out. There were people at home even when we were not. Friends would just stop by and say, “I’m taking a shower because I just finished the gym,” or “I need to kill time for three hours because I have a rehearsal in Bandra, can I order food to your house and just watch TV?” It became this sort of halfway home place, and it was really beautiful, because there was always activity, always madness. When I cooked, I would cook for no less than six people.

The album talks about where you were. Where are you now?

Right here, trying to be present. Now, for me, home is many different things. Today, I fly to Chennai to be with my parents and have sets of clothes there. Somehow, when I go back, I am back to being 16 again, because there’s something about my childhood home that takes that out. When I go to Bengaluru and stay with a friend, his place also feels like home in a different city. In Delhi there’s a different one. As cliched as it sounds, home is a feeling. I have so many Swiggy and Amazon addresses… Once when I was in Chennai and I decided to order a lasagna for myself, it ended up going to the house in Khar I lived in, and my ex-flatmate was like, did you send this? These things happen when you live in many places. That’s the beauty of it, I think.

Mali’s sophomore album 'Where was I?' is available to stream here