Matthew Mayfield

Perseverance has always been at the heart of Matthew Mayfield’s music, but it’s in full focus here on his sixth full-length, PRIZEFIGHTER. His first album since 2019’s Gun Shy—the longest gap in his output since his first solo release in 2008—it’s a dark, harrowing record that reflects Mayfield’s world today, while casting its eye back over his two-plus decades career. It was almost immediately after his band, Moses Mayfield, was dropped from a major label that the frontman began that solo career, and while the rejection left him deflated, he learned a valuable lesson that that’s stayed with him to this day: if you get knocked down, just get up again. That, in essence, is the prizefighter mentality.

“I’ve always used that metaphor for being in this business for so long,” he says. “I’ve been making music full-time now for 21 years and it’s easy to feel like a prizefighter—you get beat up and bloodied and you need somebody in your corner to pick you up and tell you you’re going to win. Perseverance is something that was instilled in me by my mother. She’d use that word a lot, and still does, so it’s a very important thing for me.”

That’s been the driving force for Mayfield his whole career, and it’s kept him in good stead. After putting out his debut solo release, The Fire EP, in 2008, Mayfield got a call from the makers of Grey’s Anatomy, who wanted to use one of his songs on the series. He’s since had a number of other television syncs, including Hart Of Dixie, Charmed and Pretty Little Liars, but that first one really gave him a much-needed injection of self-belief. It’s something he carried specifically into this record all these years later. Because when everybody else, at the start of the pandemic, was indulging in their passions and being creative, Mayfield was struggling. Just a couple of months after it began, his relationship came to an end and his girlfriend moved out and took their dog with her. He kept trying to write, and kept failing. He did, however, have plenty of lyrics, after been encouraged by his therapist to write down and keep everything, whatever he thought of them. Later, when the music finally started flowing, he’d search through those crumpled up balls for lyrics. Mainly written during regular bouts of extreme insomnia and recorded with and produced by Paul Moak (Martha Wainwright, Reliant K, Dolly Parton, Gwen Stefani, Blake Shelton), PRIZEFIGHTER balances the identity of anti-hero singer-songwriter and rock’n’roll outlaw perfectly.

“For every song on this record, I found at least one or two great lines in those balls of paper that were perfect for what I was trying to say,” he says. “I was writing what I thought was garbage, but it turned out to be gold. You can’t be scared about whether it’s good or bad. You’ve just got to love yourself enough to try.”