Welcome to Mary Ann’s world of RnB

Mary Ann Alexander’s influences include Michael Jackson, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, AR Rahman, and even Tibetan chants

Like many kids from her generation, growing up involved watching a lot of Disney Channel and "VH1 RIP VH1", she remarks for Mary Ann Alexander. Hannah Montana's double life of being a pop star and a normal teenager was inspiring, as were her outfits. And, there were other young stars like my Justin Bieber, who Mary Ann feels was wrongly hated on. "When Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas got together, it was like whole two worlds colliding," she exclaims. There were also state-level Margamkali performances she participated in. It is an ancient ritual round dance of the Saint Thomas Christian (Nasrani) community in Kerala where dancers perform in a circle around a lighted brass lamp (Nilavilakku) to retell the life and mission of Saint Thomas the Apostle.

But there were many other layers, just like in Carnatic music that she trained in for a while, that led Alexander to be the Gen Z RnB whiz kid from India, who has caught the attention of international musicians. In 2025, Mary Ann was the only Indian artiste to be selected for the Jameson Distilled Sounds 2025 programme, curated by Grammy Award-winning American RnB artiste Anderson Paak. Paak mentored 20 artistes from across the world and genres, for a week in Ireland. Another Grammy-winning artiste, Kehlani, whom she met at Lollapalooza Mumbai in January, is one of her many Instagram followers. An Instagram comment by SZA under one of her impromptu performance videos at Washington Square Park also gained more attention for Mary Ann in the US.

Her influences include listening to Michael Jackson with her dad "Beat It is etched into my brain", she says. Her father would also play Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar, AR Rahman, even Tibetan chants on his cassette player. Her father has sung for over 80 films and jingles in Malayalam, Tamil, and other languages. He even encouraged her to explore recording studios when free, guiding her how to hold her headphones, stand around the mic, and not miss a beat in live performances. But like many other Indian parents, a career in performance arts was not presented as the first choice to Mary Ann.

"I had a really tough time deciding what I want to do in standard 11, the pressure just builds up. I have a lot of interests. I love food. I love visuals. I love packaging, so many things. So, I just thought to myself, ‘What do I do? Do I become a tattoo artiste? Do I become a chef? Do I start a café? What's going on?' I was not encouraged to pursue music. So, I wanted to find a plan B," she says. So she studied visual communication at St Joseph's, Bengaluru (where she is currently based). But music continued to be her calling and she started recording.

"I was listening to RnB without even actually knowing RnB. Michael Jackson and Justin Bieber are RnB. There's a lot of RnB in pop music itself. VH1 would play a lot of African American music, and a lot of club music was also very hip hop and RnB inspired. These artistes were on rotation, I didn't know what it was called. I just knew I liked the sound," says Mary Ann. Kerala also played a big role.

"I grew up in Kerala. There's so much that I love to represent of where I come from. My place inspires me because there is so much abundance in nature, in Trivandrum, you can see the sunrise on the hills, and sunset by the beach. My grandmother was also super artistic, she loved to decorate, she loved to craft, he taught me how to do embroidery. It was a very culturally rich experience that I grew up with," she says.

While Mary Ann sings in English, she credits Malayalam and the culture of Kerala for drawing her close to the genre too. "Malayalam, spoken or even musically, is a very percussive and fluid language, at the same time. As a culture, we are yearners. We love love. Singing in the rain is not a foreign concept, we indulge in those kind of feelings when it comes to our art. I think that is very similar to the spirit of RnB. It kind of feels extremely natural to me."

Mary Ann's just finished shooting another music video, Too Much. Shot on a house boat in Kerala, this is the one she is most proud of. "I wanted to show the world a little piece of Kerala - the vastness of the water and because the song is about feeling that you're too much for somebody, but then when you realise that I'm everything I ever wanted to be, and this person just can't handle that," she explains.

As far as fashion goes, she loves pairing traditional Indian jewellery with a moodboard inspired by the world. Fashion from the 2000s remains one of her favourite era because of its maximalism, and Bipasha Basu and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan are forever inspirations. "Fashion today is global. People used to try and conform a lot to other people's expectations of how they should look like and also view themselves from a man's eye, or a male gaze. Now, people dress to feel how they want to feel."

2025
Attended The Jameson Distilled Sound programme