Mxmtoon: Authenticity in the City of Weird
March 10th, 2025 - Portland, OR
If anything can be said about Maia, better known as mxmtoon, it’s that she’s unabashedly herself. This raw authenticity and whole-hearted eccentricity has always made her a joy to watch onstage, but the vibrancy of her personality is paired perfectly well with Portland, Oregon.
Originally from Oakland, mxmtoon first started writing songs as a teenager in her bedroom, fiddling with and producing them in GarageBand. These initial tracks would lead to her rise to stardom through YouTube. In fact, social media has been a trend in terms of mxmtoon’s success, as her hit single “prom dress” blew up on TikTok. Of course, while social media and the Internet don’t define artists, it makes sense that both are incredibly important to mxmtoon’s career considering how rooted her shows are in Internet culture.
mxmtoon is part of Gen Z and the crowd that gathered at Wonder Ballroom on March 10 showcased this. Though the all ages portion of the floor was packed, the twenty-one and up crowd came in full force for the singer. After all, a good chunk of Generation Z have crossed the threshold to America’s drinking age. mxmtoon herself is twenty-four going on twenty-five, something she brought up during her show as she reminisced on her teenage years.
The Internet isn’t just part of mxmtoon’s generation, her crowds, or a well-worn guide for her career, it’s the core inspiration for her music. Her touring album, liminal space, was inspired by the haunting creepypasta of “the backrooms.” Though the album paints deeper metaphors about being caught between life’s stages, the album is also chock full of references that only the chronically-online will understand.
mxmtoon performs on the plum blossom (revisited) tour at Barbosa in Seattle, WA. Photo by Megan Lorich.
liminal space’s first single, “i hate texas,” is not the most referential of the tracks on the album, but it’s a perfect showcase of mxmtoon’s love for references and her earnestness. “I’m playing life offline while you play shooters” may not seem like the most apt metaphor to the parent’s present in the March 10 crowd, but to the Gen Z gamers that filled up the rest of the crowd, it makes perfect sense.
“i hate texas” felt clunky to me on first listen. In fact, it’s my journalistic duty to inform you that I’m biased towards the older end of mxmtoon’s catalogue. After all, my first time seeing her live was during the plum blossom (revisited) tour. This intimate series of concerts in tiny venues showcased just Maia and her ukulele, as she performed songs off the plum blossom EP that kick started her career. With a successful career backing her, mxmtoon had the opportunity to produce the songs from her adolescence in all of their glory, leading to the plum blossom (revisited) EP. Hearing these songs in a new context was interesting, but the older versions of the songs sit in my Spotify like a reliable bong to turn to. The drug? Nostalgia.
So, with not as much love in my heart for mxmtoon’s more produced tracks, seeing mxmtoon perform her hits with a full band was destined to be an entirely different experience than my first time seeing her. I knew that “i hate texas” would act as sort of a litmus test for the concert. After all, the beginning of the chorus has always felt clunky, with Maia singing: “I swear to god, if I run into you/And you don’t even know the half of it,” before continuing the rhyme concretely for the rest of the chorus.
Hearing that line when I first turned on the single automatically made me cringe, but hearing it live absolutely killed. mxmtoon puts her whole body into every lyric, especially during her more upbeat tracks. A full band ushers in higher energy, which mxmtoon has always had in spades. Throughout the March 10 show, mxmtoon would throw her entire body into lyrics while essentially headbanging to her heartfelt, poppy, songs. Once again, her intimate plum blossom (revisited) tour still saw a high energy Maia, as she requested each tour stop to crack their knuckles simultaneously.
mxmtoon didn’t make the stops on the liminal space tour to undergo this experiment, but she did encourage them to all shout “Yippee!” simultaneously. She pointed out a concert goer dressed as Pim from Smiling Friends, an endless subject of her TikTok account. She called out how gay the Portland crowd was after hearing them sing “HOT TO GO!” during set change. And, in true mxmtoon fashion, she revealed that one of her first songs, “cliche”, was about a Minecraft situationship she had at fourteen.
mxmtoon performs “feelings are fatal” initially off her plum blossom EP at Wonder Ballroom in Portland, OR. Photo by Megan Lorich.
mxmtoon performs “VHS” off her album liminal space at Wonder Ballroom in Portland, OR. Photo by Megan Lorich.
mxmtoon performs at Wonder Ballroom in Portland, OR. Photo by Megan Lorich.
But the show also had its more somber moments. “VHS,” once again off liminal space, was accompanied by home videos of mxmtoon throughout her childhood. A song not just about growing up, but more so seeing who you’ve grown into, the video accompaniment was the perfect touch for the performance. “cliche” wasn’t the only song that had a backstory reveal. mxmtoon wrote “feelings are fatal” as she grappled with coming out as bisexual. This new information recontextualizes the song, which when assumed to be about a heterosexual crush, simply seems like yet another pining love song. Her duet, “now’s not the time,” with opener Luna Li was also incredibly touching. Seeing two artists perform a song they’ve collaborated on tends to make the performance feel more complete. As the penultimate stop for Luna Li on the liminal space tour, the duet she shared with mxmtoon truly hit home.
The apex of the entire concert was a culmination of both mxmtoon’s artistry and heartfelt approach to songwriting with her love of her generation. A sign close to barricade requested the first single off of her album dawn. Maia was more than happy to comply, rousing the crowd to sing-a-long to her song “fever dream.”
Her performance of this track brings about an absolutely ecstatic energy when combined with a crowd. “fever dream” may be about mxmtoon’s experience with her music career, but lines like “I want something more than/More than restless mornings” are intensely relatable. It’s a track that feels like driving through a metropolis with the windows down. Put that track in a sardine packed ballroom and it’s a moment you won’t forget.
Wonder Ballroom was bid goodbye with “dance (end of the world),” a song off mxmtoon’s 2022 album rising. Though the album was successful, “dance (end of the world)” seemed like an unusual pick for a closer. The track isn’t off liminal space and isn’t as popular as other upbeat tracks by mxmtoon like “prom dress” or “mona lisa”, which were played earlier in the set. Still, it was a fun jam that got the crowd moving yet again.
mxmtoon proves that she’s capable of both intimacy and artistry while staying balls to the wall goofy. Every crowd that sees her, whether it be in a venue like Wonder Ballroom or opening for AJR on an arena tour, gets to see mxmtoon be her authentic self on stage. Portland welcomed her with open arms because she was herself and she gladly welcomed the crowd right back.
