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Singers turn memory, regret and longing into a mid-tempo ballad built on emotional back-and-forth
US-BASED singer-songwriter Maya has released Romanticise, a new collaborative single with Japanese singer-songwriter Rol3ert, along with an official music video of the mid-tempo ballad built around the concept of romanticising the past.
Co-written and co-produced entirely on the day of Maya and Rol3ert’s first session together, Romanticise is produced by beat maker and producer A.G.O. Anchored by floating synths and minimal beats, the single was produced to give space for both singers’ interlocking vocals.
Written from the perspectives of two people on either side of a relationship that has already ended, Romanticise draws on intimate, everyday details such as a guitar, polaroids, a hair tie, and a bunk bed to ground a deeply emotional story in something tangible and real.
The song captures the quiet human tendency to polish painful memories until they become beautiful and to long for moments that once hurt.
As a songwriter, I care most about how much of myself I can weave into a piece.
“I intentionally incorporated everyday objects from my own life while crafting a fictional story about two people whose relationship has fallen apart, leaving space for listeners to imagine parts of their story,” said Maya.
“Even memories filled with complicated emotions begin to look beautiful as they lose their sharpness. You may even find yourself longing for moments that once hurt”.
Voices between goodbye
The vocal interplay between Maya and Rol3ert is central to the song’s emotional architecture. Maya’s fragile, transparent tone opens the story, Rol3ert’s voice carries a quiet heat that shifts the perspective.
“We completed both the lyrics and the track on the spot during our very first session with Maya. So we really valued those in-the-moment flashes of intuition and impulse, and carried that mindset through to the very end of the process,” said Rol3ert.
In the chorus, the male voice reaches out to ask “Do you feel the same?” and receives only an ambiguous response. The back-and-forth mirrors the push and pull of memory itself: unresolved, bittersweet and impossible to let go.
The music video, directed by Taichi Nakazawa and set in an airport, extends this nostalgic, in-between feeling of a location that inherently evokes departure, distance and the bittersweet weight of goodbye.
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