A Universe of Genres in Miniature: Maya Delilah at O2 Academy Brixton
- Hannah Breen
- 27 minutes ago
- 4 min read
From my vantage point on the balcony at the O2 Academy Brixton, the sticky vinyl floors and faint crackling of discarded plastic cups did little to prepare the room for Maya Delilah. She dashed out after her accompanying trio, each dressed in matching white suits, a quiet declaration of cohesion. In the supporting slot before Lawrence, a band arriving at Brixton with a recent Grammy nomination under their belt, Delilah and her ensemble carved out a contained universe where a wide array of juxtaposing genres coexisted, without once feeling muddled. It was unusually expansive for a support set, and the audience – most of whom had arrived eagerly anticipating the headliner – found themselves quietly attentive despite themselves.
Immediately, it was clear that Delilah’s guitar isn’t just a prop; it’s a second voice, one that she commands with both precision and instinct. Her playing revealed both technical command and intuitive phrasing, her fingers moving with a fluidity that conveyed long-term familiarity. “Jeffrey,” an instrumental interlude from her debut album The Long Way Round, truly consolidated that sensibility. On the record, the track features Cory Henry on organ; live, the piano stepped into that harmonic role with architectural restraint, leaving ample space for Delilah’s guitar lines to breathe. Delilah’s approach drew closely from a lineage she references openly: the melodically centered, slightly off-axis language of John Mayer’s trio-era playing, an industry icon who has publicly acknowledged her talent. She used pauses as punctuation, allowing lines to taper off rather than fully resolve; her bends felt almost conversational, and her rhythmic placement sat just behind the beat, suggesting patience rather than tentativeness. It carried Mayer’s sense of melodic inevitability but refracted through a softness of tone that is entirely her own. Her inclusion in Fender’s Next Class of 2024 felt entirely justified, as her technical fluency, combined with a thoughtful approach to tone and structure, aligns her with guitarists who are as attentive to the architecture of a song as they are to its emotive surface.
The shift into “Squeeze” underscored Delilah’s versatility, revealing a different layer of her musical logic. Already an outlier on her otherwise more soft-edged debut, the track gained a sharper, more tactile intensity live. The bassline walked with flirtatious syncopation; the keys jabbed clipped off-beat chords; the drum patterns locked into a tight and shameless groove that pushed the room forward. Delilah leaned into a more assertive vocal presence, trading introspection for a confidence that sat comfortably within the track’s funk-leaning architecture. The arrangement’s rhythmic interplay between instruments and controlled propulsion echoed the compact, muscular tension of Herbie Hancock’s mid-1970s groove-driven work. Patterns repeated with slight inflexions as melodic lines pressed against the beat, and the collective pulse tightened and relaxed with intention. It was the moment when the audience’s energy shifted. Support sets rarely spark genuine movement, yet Delilah managed to coax the crowd into a tentative two-step, then into a coordinated clapping pattern with a precision surprising for a crowd not yet entirely warmed. The response felt earned, not incidental, and the applause that followed was noticeably louder than the politeness that usually greets openers.
This synthesis of genre elements is central to Delilah’s artistry. The Long Way Round, released in March 2025 via Blue Note Records, spans soul-inflected pop, country-tinged melodies, blues, gospel traces, and intricate, folk-leaning guitar work. The album demonstrates that stylistic multiplicity need not imply incoherence, and live, these varied influences converged into a coherent set that felt both expansive and deliberate. In framing this performance in the context of contemporary music discourse, one notes the subtle but important cultural interventions at play. Delilah is part of a cohort of young musicians who embrace technical sophistication and stylistic plurality. Equally notable was Delilah’s interpretive skill. Her cover of Don McLean’s “Vincent,” performed alongside a band member who covered guitar, maintained fidelity to the original’s lyrical and melodic essence while introducing minor vocal phrasing changes that made the performance unmistakably hers. Critical context only reinforces this impression of Delilah. In addition to her impressive debut album, she was recognised as one of Spotify’s 2025 “Artists To Watch” and praised by prestigious publications such as CLASH, The Evening Standard, and The Line of Best Fit, whilst BBC Radio 1 and 6Music have repeatedly supported her through Future Artists, Future Pop, and Unwinds segments. These accolades situate her as a highly impressive young musician whose craft has been acknowledged across both specialist and more mainstream platforms.
Later in the evening, she joined Lawrence for a rendition of “With a Little Help from My Friends” by The Beatles. The moment was an understated cameo within Lawrence’s set, yet it reinforced her adaptability and her capacity to integrate seamlessly into other musicians’ frameworks. In some ways, it also highlighted the accomplishment of her own set, transforming the notion of a support act from a peripheral presence to a substantive contributor to the evening’s musical narrative. Delilah offered a recalibration, suggesting that the communicative potential of live music remains intact when performers commit to integrity, both in their technical execution and in the curation of their set.
Delilah’s performance, considered alongside her debut album and critical reception, paints a picture of an artist who is simultaneously grounded and experimental. Fundamentally, Delilah’s artistry lies in her capacity to inhabit multiple musical worlds simultaneously. In a music industry increasingly dominated by spectacle, her performance was a quiet insistence on substance, a demonstration that attentive musicianship and thoughtful composition remain compelling. Even in the fleeting space of a support slot, Delilah delivered a set with headliner-level intention, leaving the sense of an artist quietly expanding her range and inviting the rest of us to follow along.
You can listen to Maya Delilah on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube and stay up to date with her upcoming live shows on Instagram.
Edited By Mahak Naddafi, Music Co-Editor
