Mae Stephens on turning ADHD into a superpower, going viral with ‘If We Ever Broke Up’, & giving intrusive thoughts a tiny voice

Mae Stephens keeps her tiny brain in her house, although if it were up to her, she would have gone bigger. Confused? Once you step into the wonderfully chaotic mind of the UK singer-songwriter who shot to fame with her viral hit, If We Ever Broke Up, it all makes perfect sense.

The giant brains in question are the pink and green co-stars from her recent music video for her brand new single, Tiny Voice, appearing as a manifestation of Stephens’ battle with her intrusive thoughts.

“I wish I could take that thing home,” she says of the biggest brain costume used on set, speaking to Headliner from her home studio and songwriting room. “I still have the mini brain – I try to keep a trinket from every music video I do. I wanted to keep the medium brain, too, but I can’t justify having a five-foot brain in my house. I’ve got my tiny brain, which is still a story in itself,” she laughs.

Unbeknownst to her at the time, December 2022 would see her life change. Stephens teased her song If We Ever Broke Up on TikTok, and within weeks, the catchy snippets exploded across the platform. By January 2023, the track had gone viral, catching the attention of EMI, who quickly signed her. 

The full single dropped in February 2023, reaching the top 20 in the UK Singles Chart and marking her breakout moment. At the time, Stephens was living a normal teenage life, working at her local ASDA. When her music started gaining traction, she decided to hand in her notice, ready to see where the journey might take her.

“It was the weirdest encounter,” she says, thinking back to that moment. “They all knew I did music to an extent, but when I actually handed in my notice, there were a few people who were bitter, and it left a bit of an awkward silence. But most of the people I worked with were so supportive and genuinely shocked that I got an opportunity like this, especially given how hard it is to break into the music industry. 

"It was such a huge moment, and so many people came up to me – some brought flowers or chocolate, and even a few regular customers congratulated me,” she smiles, adding that one of her best friends is one of her former co-workers.

“I was so emotional leaving, even though I was going from the supermarket to a record label! I even wanted to do an extra shift because I loved working with them. Although the sound of the old tills still lives in my head,” she adds with a theatrical shudder. 

“The keyboards were ancient; they never updated the system, and the memory of those keys still makes my spine tingle. I can still hear the telecom sounds and the announcements; it’s so bizarre,” she laughs. “I have dreams where I’m back at ASDA, and sometimes I get random moments where I feel like I should remember my old school IT password. It’s so bizarre what the brain does.”

TikTok fame can catapult artists into the spotlight overnight, but the speed of that rise doesn’t always leave time to develop live performance skills. Stephens recognises how crucial small gigs are for honing her craft, crediting grassroots venues as the perfect training ground – not only for learning how to perform, but also for collecting a few memorable stories along the way:

“I massively have my parents to thank for that,” she says. “My dad, in particular, insisted that as we were building a catalogue of music, we needed to gig a lot on the side. It really taught me the performance side of being an artist and how to handle difficult situations – I’ve had my fair share of horrendous pub gigs. One sticks in my mind: people were rowdy and drunk, and three coppers accidentally maced their own eyes. There were a few chaotic situations like that. 

"Those experiences taught me to crack on no matter what, carry on professionally, and just brush past setbacks. They also helped me learn to connect on stage, which was essential, leading up to doing festival loops in my first year. Being a 17-19-year-old girl with a keyboard in the middle of a pub full of middle-aged football fans was a real eye-opener. It taught me to have a steel mind and keep going, no matter the cost.”

If We Ever Broke Up was the first uptempo song Stephens wrote, and she recalls immediately falling in love with writing something more bouncy and playful than the Adele-esque ballads she usually wrote. “It felt like a new chapter in songwriting after being stuck in a medieval-ballad phase for so long. That track was a roller coaster, and it opened the door to a new era.”

The success of If We Ever Broke Up saw Stephens embraced by big names across the global artist community, from live shows with BLACKPINK, P!NK and Tom Grennan to collaborations with Meghan Trainor, The Chainsmokers and Alok. Today, she’s racked up over 500 million streams and has achieved a Top 15 UK single, Gold certification in both the UK and US, and #1 chart positions in Japan and China. She admits that it’s still sinking in:

“I’ve gone from singing in pubs and open mics to signing a record deal, being everywhere at once, and travelling. It's been an insane journey. I’ve only really just had time to process it all,” she considers. “My dad has been in this with me for about 10 years – he’s literally my lifeline. 

"We went from open mics and small gigs to signing with a label – our biggest goal. For a girl and her dad from a small town, that seemed nearly impossible. We’d been told for years it couldn't happen."

When the song blew up on TikTok and Stephens started doing label interviews, she and her father found themselves in disbelief at the pace of her trajectory. 

“One of my core memories is sitting across from him, signing to EMI, and both of us eating cupcakes to try not to cry,” she recalls. “We were trying to get that lump in the throat down, you know? We just looked at each other and thought about all the years of praying, dreaming, and working toward this one goal, and we’d made it through the front door. I think it was also the shock of realising that it wasn’t the end goal. It was a door that leads to another door – the only way I can describe it is like the door factory in Monsters Inc.”

A huge adjustment followed, and Stephens coped by detaching her personal life from her artist life. At work, she'd dress up as ‘Mae Stephens’ – all big hair, bold makeup, layers of jewellery, and wild clothes – and then she’d come home, strip it all off, face the mirror, and not recognise herself.

“That became a real problem during the transition into Mr Right and Make Me Your Mrs,” she admits. “I didn’t have time to figure out who I was outside the music, and that took a massive toll. Your personality, your home life, everything ends up on social media whether you want it to or not. For someone neurodivergent like me, who struggles with sharing and social situations, it was overwhelming. 

"When you’re in the moment, things move so fast – releases, photoshoots, content – and there’s no time to think. My mind was constantly racing, and I completely lost sight of myself. It was a massive turning point in becoming an adult, learning to handle it all at 17–18, and realising how sudden and intense everything can be.”

It’s a far cry from her schooldays, where she was bullied for her ADHD. Music provided her escape, and today, she embraces her diagnosis and finds it helps her songwriting, rather than hinders it.

“I do have a tendency to go off on a tangent,” she warns. “ADHD brain doesn’t stop for anyone! My brain goes at 100 miles per hour, just to get everything out. I think ADHD is such a superpower. I can have several trains of thought at once, or sometimes just one train of thought and nothing else. It really depends on which side of the crazy my brain’s on that day. 

"When I’m focused and passionate about a song, I can really knuckle down. I’ll write an ungodly amount of lyrics, revise sections without getting too attached, and just keep going. A lot of neurotypical people struggle with demo-itis, but for me, because I see how many directions a song can go, I don’t get it too badly,” she reasons.

“I’m usually happy to go back, tweak sections, or completely recreate parts if needed. I also have an absolute addiction to harmony, and I think my neurodivergence plays a huge part in that. I can hear these eight-part harmonies in my head as I’m building them. It’s so bizarre to explain, but I can literally hear each layer of sound – where they rise, fall, and how they blend to create this huge, infectious wall of sound. 

"It all depends on which side of my brain shows up that day. Some days, the ideas flow endlessly; others, I can’t think of a single lyric or melody. It’s definitely a blessing and a curse.”

Her new tongue-in-cheek single, Tiny Voice, sees Stephens reveal the intrusive thoughts that she struggles to keep locked away, from an illogical desire to eat parts of a chemistry set, to a teenage compulsion to draw penises on a toilet wall.

“We debated the wording,” she immediately volunteers. “I now tend to refer to these as ‘impulsive thoughts’ rather than intrusive, because intrusive implies harm to yourself or others. It was important to get the vocabulary right, because TikTok can be an army of keyboard warriors, so Tiny Voice highlights the randomness and impulsiveness of our minds in a safe, funny, and relatable way.”

Written by Stephens and Pablo Bowman (Louis Tomlinson, Anne-Marie) and the track’s Grammy-winning producer Lostboy (Kylie Minogue’s Padam Padam, Sabrina Carpenter, Calvin Harris), the song's message is to show that everyone has these thoughts.

“I have a constant inner monologue, and I’ve only recently really clocked it,” she reveals. “It never stops, and I get ungodly intrusive thoughts – some of them horrendous. Tiny Voice is all about that tiny version of you that sits on your shoulder or in the back of your head – the thoughts you don’t share or act on, but are always there and annoyingly loud. 

"For some people, they’re quiet, but for me, it’s like they’ve got a megaphone in my ear. I wanted to make it light-hearted. Our brains can do incredible and horrendous things, and I like exploring both sides”

She certainly has fun with the concept in the song’s music video, which – giant dancing brains aside – sees her drinking from a school chemistry set, drawing on her clothes, eating bird seed, defacing toilet cubicle walls, painting her childhood Barbie house bright green, eating a can of cold beans, and throwing an ice cream at a darts board.

“A lot of the lyrics are inspired by things I’ve actually done, wanted to do, or been very close to doing,” she smiles. “People have said to me, ‘This is so random. This makes absolutely no sense. There's no correlation in any of this, like eating a tin of cold beans, or…bird seed is really crunchy, and I don't like it. But I tried it! 

"I wanted to show how impulsive and strange our thoughts can be, and maybe make people feel comfortable sharing theirs. Sometimes thoughts pop into your head that feel really abnormal, and it can isolate you, so it’s good to normalise how random our minds can be.”

Stephens reveals that while she has an album in mind someday, for now she is concentrating on releasing singles and building up a catalogue of material before diving into a full body of work. She teases that her next single will be slightly more geared towards an older audience and that it will have a hint of Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy about it. Although aged just 22 herself, this could mean its intended audience is anyone over the grand old age of 25.

“I love having a diverse fan base – I’m a chronic people pleaser,” she confesses, explaining that she doesn’t want to focus exclusively on making music that only appeals to Gen Z. “It’s not a huge switch or a complete change in direction; it’s just branching out to connect with a wider age range,” she assures Headliner. “It's got an edge. I’m really excited because I don’t think I’ve released anything like it yet. I feel like it might be a one-off. I’m just testing the waters a bit,” she grins.

Photographer: Hannah Burton