plum blossom (revisited) tour- a reflection into the past

What were you like at seventeen? 

The answer to that question is often one filled with an awkward pause before replying with some form of  “I was naive and didn’t understand love,” or “I was still learning about who I was in the midst of high school,” or even simply, “I was awkward, and I look back and cringe at myself and my actions.” Maybe your answer is a mix of all three, or something completely different. I was a high school student who didn’t know much about the world beyond her suburban hometown, navigating the challenges of adjusting back to what people considered “normal” after the pandemic. If I had been asked that question, I probably would have given an answer similar to the last statement. 

However, for mxmtoon, what she was like as a seventeen year old was drastically different. As she experienced teenage love and struggles with mental health, she wrote her feelings into plum blossom, an EP released in 2018 filled with songs she had written at 16 and 17.  Songs like “i feel like chet” expressed her sentiments of falling in love too fast, “hong kong” being a love letter to her family that lived abroad that she never truly got to see. As a mixed Chinese girl, colloquially known as “wasian,” her music was immediately relatable to young women and Asian Americans, expressing stories of life that fans could innately relate to. Her EP became beloved all across the internet, making her a viral sensation, her fame only accentuated by the rise of TikTok and her hit song “prom dress.” 

Now, five years later (and five years wiser), Maia, an Oakland born artist, has decided to revisit the EP that kick started her career. The songs, originally recorded in her parent’s house, have been transformed with plum blossom (revisited) into a beautiful story of maturity and growth as the young artist has grown into adulthood. To go along with a revisiting of her first EP, mxmtoon announced a small, intimate acoustic tour across the United States, with a stop being in her hometown region- the Bay Area. 

Cafe du Nord was the perfect place for an intimate night with just mxmtoon. With no opener and two ukuleles, Maia made it obvious that the night was a celebration of the new EP, getting to revisit songs that were meaningful to her. “stuck” was a song that the young artist revisited in her newest EP. This song in particular stood out to me, as Maia sang about the feeling of being pulled in two directions, a sentiment that many mixed race individuals feel when growing up in their lives, something I empathize with myself. “the idea of you,” a song that was also revisited from the plum blossom EP, depicted the story of falling in love with the idea of someone without really knowing them, striking a cord with the infatuations with someone within your high school or college classes, falling in love with the version of that person you created in your head. 

Within her set, mxmtoon’s quirky attitude turned the audience into a community of people getting together to experience music. Rambling about the meanings of songs and going off on tangents about how Northern California will always be better than Southern California (a sentiment I don’t entirely agree with), Maia made it clear that the evening was meant to be one where she could engage with her fans. From simultaneously cracking everyones’ knuckles together to screaming “YIPPIE” at the top of one’s lungs, there was not a moment within the concert that wasn’t filled with laughter. The night was filled with pop culture references, as the young artist raved about the new Lego Fortnite experience, what TikTok audios had filled her head (in particular the song “Whistle” by Flo Rida and the infamous Josh Hutcherson edit that came alongside it), and her love of Studio Ghibli, which she proudly emphasized with a Kiki’s Delivery Service corset top. 

While her revisited songs were the focus of the night, Maia also performed some songs from her repertoire that she often didn’t get to play acoustic. “sad disco” and “mona lisa” were two of these songs, both off of her newest album rising, released in 2022. The songs were a contrast to the pining nature of the songs off of plum blossom, taking a more upbeat approach to the concepts of depression and wanting to be desired by someone else. The struggles of young adulthood were depicted throughout all of the songs within the set, and told the story of Maia’s life as she grew as both an artist and a person. To wrap out the intimate evening, the small set was finished with “prom dress”, mxmtoon’s most popular song, and the classic “Riptide” by Vance Joy, which Maia stated “was the staple of any ukulele artist’s song collection.” 

The concert was a wonderful acoustic celebration of how a person can change and evolve with their music over the span of five years. The concert allowed for the audience, alongside mxmtoon, to reflect upon the change that has occurred since the original plum blossom EP. The night within San Francisco was a wonderful and personal experience getting to explore what music can mean at different stages of your life, and was a wonderful way to wrap up my semester. 

Article by: Ashley Mauldin 

Photos by: Ashley Mauldin