featuring @_rileymax
Colorado-born singer-songwriter and multimedia artist Riley Max is entering a new chapter with “Year One,” a poignant folk-pop single that transforms a difficult period of personal growth into an intimate and deeply reflective musical experience. Accompanying the release is an inventive music video that blends live-action footage with stop-motion animation, creating a visually compelling extension of the song’s emotional journey.
At just 21 years old, Max is already establishing herself as a multidimensional artist whose creative work spans music, animation, visual art, film, and theater. Her debut album, ROY G BIV, was written and recorded when she was only 18 and went on to receive widespread acclaim from outlets including Atwood Magazine and Guitar Girl Magazine. Now, with her sophomore album slated for release this fall, Max is continuing to push her sound forward with a distinctive blend of folk, indie pop, and singer-songwriter influences reminiscent of artists such as Joni Mitchell and Maggie Rogers.
“Year One” was written during Max’s first year at Harvard University, where she found herself navigating a period of significant mental and physical challenges while adjusting to the independence and pressures of college life.
“I wrote ‘Year One’ when I was having a really tough time during my first year at Harvard,” Max shares. “I was coming back from having some issues with my vocal chords, and I was dealing with a lot of other mental and physical health issues, as well as being completely and totally responsible for my life for the first time ever. It was a lot.”
The experience left Max questioning when — or even if — she would feel like herself again, both personally and creatively. Looking back, however, the song has become a marker of how far she has come.
“I wasn’t sure when—or if—I was ever going to start feeling like myself again, musically or otherwise. So this song means a lot to me, because every time I listen to it I remember how far I’ve come.”
The accompanying music video adds another layer to that story. Combining real-life footage with stop-motion animation, the video reflects Max’s instinct to explore her experiences through multiple creative mediums. The animated portion originated in a class she took at Harvard last year, and she immediately recognized its potential beyond the classroom.
“I knew immediately once I finished it that I had to turn it into a full music video, because I was really happy with the way it turned out,” she explains. “It was so rewarding to be able to express my feelings through such a uniquely creative medium, and it really made me fall in love with stop motion animation even more.”
That newfound passion has already influenced what comes next. Max plans to pursue a stop-motion thesis during her senior year, further merging her musical and visual storytelling practices.
Currently a rising senior at Harvard University studying Art, Film and Visual Studies, Max has cultivated an artistic life that extends well beyond songwriting. She serves as music director of The Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones and has appeared in a variety of musical theater productions. Her love of storytelling can be traced back to an early fascination with 1990s romantic comedies and a childhood surrounded by the sounds of 1980s music.
Her creative work also includes a background as a cover artist and comic creator for the Harvard Independent. These experiences, combined with her work as a composer, are informing her upcoming undergraduate thesis, which will take the form of a fully animated short film.
For Max, these different disciplines aren’t separate creative pursuits — they are interconnected ways of telling stories.
The visual world of “Year One” offers a particularly fitting example of that philosophy. The video’s animated segment is currently on display at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts as part of the exhibition No Slop, No Second Screen: Animation—the hard-won image, giving audiences an opportunity to experience Max’s visual work beyond the context of the song.
With “Year One,” Max turns a challenging chapter of her life into something both vulnerable and creatively expansive. As she looks toward the release of her second album and an increasingly ambitious body of visual work, Riley Max is emerging as an artist unwilling to be confined to a single medium — using music, animation, film, and illustration to explore the many ways a story can be told.
- Email: neill@outloudculture.com
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- @neill.outloud
