Mae Martin

About Mae Martin

Mae Martin isn't primarily a musician, which makes writing about them for a music platform a bit sideways. They're a comedian and actor who's built a career on uncomfortable honesty and a particular talent for making anxiety look both devastating and absurd. But music threads through their work in ways that matter if you're paying attention.

Born in Toronto in 1987, Martin grew up in what they've described as a chaotic household with a mother who was deep into recovery culture. They started doing stand-up at thirteen, which is either impressive or concerning depending on how you look at it. By fifteen, they'd moved to London and started working the comedy circuit there, developing the kind of self-aware, rambling style that would eventually define their work.

The thing about Martin's relationship with music is that it shows up as cultural shorthand in everything they do. Their Netflix series "Feel Good" used needle drops the way some people use punctuation – Aimee Mann's "Wise Up" appears in a moment that lands exactly right if you know the song. They've talked extensively about growing up obsessed with Eminem, memorizing every word of "The Marshall Mathers LP" as a queer kid in Canada, which tells you something about how they processed identity before they had language for it.

Martin's stand-up special "SAP" from 2023 is probably the most music-adjacent thing they've made. There's a bit about boygenius that's less about the band and more about what it means to watch other queer people make art that would have changed your life if it had existed earlier. They get the specific loneliness of loving music that isn't quite for you, then finding music that is.

They've done podcasts with musicians – conversations that tend to skip past the promotional stuff and land somewhere more interesting. The episode with Tegan and Sara touched on the weird math of being a young queer performer, the ways you learn to hide and perform at the same time. Martin's good at asking questions that assume intelligence in both directions.

Currently, Martin's between projects in that way people are when they've made something successful and haven't figured out what's next. "Feel Good" ended in 2021, and they've been touring stand-up, writing, showing up on panel shows. They're working on new material that apparently involves their recent move back to Canada and the particular claustrophobia of your thirties.

If you're looking for albums or singles, you won't find them. But Martin's work sits in this space where comedy, queerness, and music fandom overlap in ways that feel specific and true. They talk about music the way people who actually listen do – not as background or brand, but as the thing that explained them to themselves before they could do it on their own.

Mae's shows feel less like concert and more like extended hangout with someone who's really good at noticing things. Crowd is mixed comedy fans and actual music people. They don't do much banter between songs but the songs themselves do the talking. Low energy isn't the same as low engagement—people actually listen.

Known for Bullshit, Are You a Cow?, Flat White, The Cure for Loneliness, Good Kid

See Mae Martin Live