Maxwell isn’t supposed to be talking — at least not to me. When I catch him on the phone on a Wednesday morning in November, his press agent tells me that I’m lucky to be speaking with him. Normally, the singer takes vocal rest on the days that he has shows, and on this night, he has a performance at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio.
But because he canceled our initial interview the day before, Maxwell feels duty-bound to make it up to me — even though it means breaking his rule.
“I mean, it’s not such a big deal,” the 43-year-old tells me when I finally get him on the phone. “I’ll still warm up and gargle and do the whole thing.”
Except that it is a big deal. Four years ago, Maxwell had to cancel a six-day tour due to vocal hemorrhaging and swelling in his throat. He underwent surgery to repair the ruptured vocal chord and has since fully recovered — but if you look online, you’ll find bevies of fans bemoaning the slight change in Maxwell’s voice.
“I think [it has changed],” Maxwell says of his once-saccharine-falsetto-turned-throaty-whelp. “I actually like it more. I just feel like it has more life to it.”
Though the plan is to talk about his music and current King and Queen of Hearts Tour with Mary J. Blige, I can’t help asking Maxwell, who was a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter, how he feels about the presidential election results.
“I’m a little upset that it all worked out the way it did,” he tells me. “I feel sorry for us, for America, on some level. Not specifically because Trump is now president, but more so because of what it speaks about in terms of how people feel about women.”
For someone who has been singing soul- and R&B-tinged odes to women for almost three decades, Maxwell’s remark is not surprising. Even though he’s only referenced a woman by name once out of all his five albums, you could call Maxwell an aural Casanova of sorts. Females are a central tenet of his music, which more often than not revolves around themes of searching for love, falling in love, losing love, or finding everlasting love.
But the funny thing is that little is actually known about Maxwell’s private life, especially in the love department. The most recent article tying him to a woman dates back to 2014, although when I ask Maxwell if he’s single, he responds: “Ummm, I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say I’m single.”
In fact, getting married and starting a family are inching closer to the top of his to-do list every year, he says.
“That’s probably the next thing that will most likely happen,” Maxwell says. That is, after he releases the third album of the BLACKsummer’snight trilogy.
Following the lukewarm success of his third album, Now, in 2001, Maxwell stopped putting out music and disappeared from the public eye, only to re-emerge in 2009 with a freshly shorn ‘do and a new album, BLACKsummer’snight. Clocking in at nine tracks — the shortest of all his albums — the record showcased a new direction for the romance-obsessed artist and won him his first Grammy Award. In place of the diaphanous, feather-light, and mostly electronic-concocted melodies of his previous works, there was a stronger sound, one backed by a raucous 11-piece band less intent on seducing than celebrating.
Four years later, the second installment of the trilogy, blackSUMMERS’night, saw the light of day, sporting a similarly unbridled energy.
“[The band] knows how to infuse the music with a modern twist, so that I’m not replaying myself or getting caught up in a trend,” Maxwell says of his decision to ditch the delicacies of neo-soul for his more lively — or, as he calls it “progressive” — soul sound.
He’s now working on the remaining record in the trilogy, although that, like all of his other albums, will be a long time coming. But it’s something he wants to get done sooner rather than later, because once it’s complete, he can move onto the next stage in his life: starting a family.
“You become super pragmatic when you become a parent, and I can’t take those risks that I would take as a single person if I was responsible for other people,” he says. “That’s why I want to get it out of my system now.”