FEATURE: Spotlight: Maisie Peters — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Lillie Eiger

Maisie Peters

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EVEN though…

I have included Maisie Peters’ music in various playlists, I have yet to spotlight her in any big way. I feel that, as she has had a busy 2021, that I should do that now. Her amazing debut album, You Signed Up for This, is out on Friday (27th August). It looks like she is playing Manchester’s Gorilla tonight. Make sure that you grab a copy. Released on the Gingerbread Man label (Ed Sheeran’s label), it is one of the best debut albums of this year. I think that Peters is going to be a major artist very soon! Her music is so original and memorable. I say that about many artists, though it is especially true of the Brighton-born artist. I feel it is important to source a few interviews so that one can learn more about the amazing Maisie Peters. At twenty-one, we are going to see music come from Peters for many years. For someone so young, she sounds so accomplished and confident! In 2017, Peters released her debut single, Place We Were Made (August 2017) and Birthday (November 2017). She started to gain traction and attention the following year. Her loyal fanbase - ‘Daisies’ as they are called – are excited to receive You Signed Up for This. It is an album that will get a lot of positive reaction!

The first of four interviews that I will bring in is for Why Now. Peters spoke with them earlier in the year about her music and upcoming debut album:

“The Brighton-born musician has a very intimate relationship with her fans. A relationship which feels very generation Z, cultivated during an age of social media and instant communication. Peters regularly retweets memes from fans desperate for her first album, has hopped on Zoom calls with devotees, and set up a lockdown book club.

She first created her YouTube channel in 2015 at the age 15, and has grown up with an ever increasing legion of loyal followers. “One messaged me the other day and said ‘Your lyrics still mean as much to me as they did when I was in school. I feel like I’ve grown up with you.’ It blew my mind because I’m only 20. But I’ve been on the internet making music for the past five, six years now.”

Her songs have amassed a quarter of a billion global streams and she has delighted fans (and critics) with two EPs ‘Dressed Too Nice For A Jacket’ in 2018 and ‘It’s Your Bed Babe, It’s Your Funeral’ in 2019. Taylor Swift is also a fan, commenting on a recent video: “My ears have been blessed”.

I ask whether she channeled any lockdown melancholy into the album. She said: “There are not any songs explicitly about the pandemic in the album. But I think music has definitely shifted tone.” She does make one promise: “There will be no pandemic pop!”

With vaccine passports being debated, and the prospect of outdoor music gigs on the horizon, Peters is already planning her first night out after lockdown.

“I would metaphorically run out and play a show. But logistically speaking, you can’t just run out and play a show,” she said. “So what will actually happen is on that day, I will go to the pub and stay there for about three days. And then come home, make some more music and stay in my bedroom.”

“That’s gonna be the irony. I’ll probably still spend loads of time in my bedroom”.

Peters chatted with NOTION when promoting the single, John Hughes Movie. She was also asked about the album and what she wants her legacy to be:

“You pull on your personal experiences and stories from your circle for inspiration, so I wonder how the past year has been for you? How has it impacted you creatively?

I think it’s changed for everybody the way they create. For me, I actually found it mostly really great creatively because it made me a lot more self-sufficient. I just wrote heaps more on my own, returning to the way I started making music, just alone in my bedroom. In terms of inspiration, I’ve always been someone that’s able to be really inspired by many things. In a way, this has been really interesting to me because suddenly everything is about words now that you can’t see anybody anymore. Words – written, spoken, telephone and video chatted. For me, words are the most important thing. I’ve written countless… so many songs the past year, I haven’t found a lack of inspiration at all. I’ve been very inspired, which has been great.

Your debut album is expected later this year. What can you tell us about it?

Well, I mean, I can’t tell you much. As much as I would like to, my manager will kill me [laughs]. I like to think it’s going to be what everybody came for when they signed up for me. But it’s also what they didn’t know they came for, but will also enjoy. I think it’s a good mix of that and the music I’ve made so far. The person that’s made those songs is the same person that made this album and the same person that wrote “John Hughes” and the same person that had a YouTube channel when she was 14. Like, it’s all the same people. But it’s also me at my current creative peak. But I guess, you know, with all the culmination of years of experience, in music, and in life, I think it’s kind of a combination of both.

You’re very active on social media. How do you navigate the blurred lines between keeping certain stuff in your private life and what you put out in the public sphere as an artist?

I think, personally, I just decided very early on that there were some things that I would talk about, and some things that I wouldn’t. I would say I do I share a lot of my life, but I’m also very stubborn about what I won’t share. I think that’s important. Having basically grown up on the internet, and having been a person who shared her life since I was a teenager, I’m really grateful that past me decided to do that. Social media is a mind chasm of good and bad. It’s definitely been hard because being an artist this year, more than ever, there’s a huge, like pressure to be on social media as much as possible, but also you’re not doing anything, you’re just in your bedroom all the time. You’re trying to be entertaining, and you’re trying to keep people interested and invested, but obviously, everyone’s been struggling the past year. It’s been very tricky mentally, so yeah, it’s definitely been complicated. But I would say that I have the best fans and the nicest social media; it’s such a wonderful place. So I’ve been lucky.

Looking back, how do you think you’ve grown personally and musically since your first release back in 2017? Are there any words you’d use to describe yourself then versus now?

I guess back then I was a lot more naive. But I think in a really amazing way. I love all the music I made back then. There’s a real sound of purity. I just have no idea what I’m doing and I think that’s amazing. You can never go back again. There’s like a wide-eyed romanticism of making music and being a songwriter. And now, I think there’s been growth. I’ve grown up as a person and musically I’ve grown. Obviously, I love the music I make nowadays but I’ll probably never make better music. *Pauses* I don’t know, that’s not true. But there’s a level of that, where it’s like, you’ll never make better music than the music you made when you didn’t have anyone to make it for. And I think that that’s always true to some level. But I love past me, I love now me, and I’m excited for future me.

And then lastly, what do you want your legacy to be? If you had to capture the thing that you want to be remembered by?

Ha, I feel like 20 is quite young to make a legacy plan [laughs]. I hope I’m making music for all of my life, so in 10 years time, ask me the same question again and I’ll give you an answer”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Lillie Eiger

Around the same time, Peters was featured by LOCK. I have selected this interview, as it is interesting hearing Peters discuss being back at her childhood home in East Sussex – and what being back there did for her creativity:

“If you could be any character from a ‘John Hughes Movie’ who would you be and why?

I think I’d love to be Sloane Peterson , Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend because he is the dream man. Also I would like to be Ferris Bueller’s sister because she kisses Charlie Sheen at the end, and that’s really iconic. One of the two.

Has being back in your Sussex family home over lockdown inspired your work at all?

Definitely. Going back for lockdown at the start of 2020, was amazing in terms of creativity. I was back in my childhood bedroom, which made me begin writing songs, the way I used to when I was a 14-year-old. It was just me on my own with my guitar, with my parents bedroom right next door and them saying, “Shh, Maisie it’s 10-o-Clock, go to sleep.” So I would creep down to the living room with my guitar and laptop and sit on the other end of the room, in the hope I wouldn’t disturb them. It was very cool to go back to being in that space, I don’t know when else you would get the chance to do that in life. Being back in my bedroom, with the knowledge I have now, as a 20-year-old, was amazing.

Your songwriting has also led you to be the only british artist to have a song featured on the Birds Of Prey film, with your song, ‘Smile’. Obviously that’s a massive achievement, how did you end up being a part of that film?

I had a friend who works in Atlantic Records for America and he was involved in creating a Birds Of Prey soundtrack, so he just sent me the brief. Think empowering, Cardi B vibes. He basically said, if you want to have a go, then run with it. It probably got sent to hundreds of writers. Me and my friend Ben who goes by the name Two Inch Punch, he is a producer and we just spent the day writing this crazy Cardi B-esc pop song. We were obsessed with it by the end of the day, we actually listened to Cher, when she’s in a sound clip saying, “My mum says I need to marry a rich man, and I say mum I am a rich man” we had that looping the whole day in the studio. It miraculously got to the guy’s who were making the sound track and they miraculously liked it. The whole time I kept expecting somebody to say, “Ok but it’s not actually in the film.” But that day never came, they really liked it and it ended up in the film. I actually went to see the film two or three times, it’s actually a really good film too, and not just because my songs in it.

You try to step away from this pop-star image and you’re known for being very down to earth with your fans. Why is this so important to you?

I would say that I think it’s important to convey something that’s real to people. Now more than ever it is so easy to compare ourselves, it’s easy to look at someone else’s life and feel like you can’t ever achieve what I have, which you absolutely can. However you decide to present yourself on social media is entirely your own business, but for me it’s important to show everyone that I am in fact just a real person. I’m in many ways the same as all of my fans. I have good days and bad days. Sometimes I look great, sometimes I don’t. Being real is very important in a world where lots of things aren’t”.

Do make sure that you order a copy of You Signed Up for This. I can see Maisie Peters creating beautiful, uplifting and hugely affecting music for decades more. She is someone who will also have an interesting acting career. She strikes me as someone who will be in great films and T.V. series. Whether that has entered her mind I am not too sure. RIFF magazine spoke with Peters earlier this month. Now based in London, I wonder whether Peters will be playing a lot of the city’s venues to promote her album (she has a few dates already booked):

“It took three tries, but Maisie Peters finally got her drivers license, using her parents’ car, naturally. However, soon after that, the singer-songwriter moved back to London, where she hasn’t needed a car. In fact, she hasn’t driven a car—not even once—since passing that third driving test.

Instead, the 21-year-old ferocious songwriter has accelerated her career even further. Just in the past year she’s signed to Ed Sheeran’s label (Gingerbread Man Records), written and curated the soundtrack to Apple TV+ show “Trying,” and is now about to release her full-length debut album, You Signed Up For This. Of course, she’s already got enough material for another album and she’s currently working on more and more.

She’s also found time to take up bicycling as a hobby with her London roommates, riding through Victoria Park or London Fields using the city’s app-based bikeshare.

PHOTO CREDIT: Atlantic Records

“I’m not a great cyclist, but there’s something so fun about hopping on a bike, weaving through London and trying not to die,” she said, laughing. “Maybe I’ll get a real bike. We’ll see. … My driving skills, probably, are a little bit ropey right now, but technically I can drive. Legally, I can drive.

Peters video-called from a scenic recording studio in Suffolk, where she was visiting friends and filming for a project, to talk about the new album, the “Trying” soundtrack, and what she’s learned from Ed Sheeran, now a good friend.

RIFF: How does your single “Psycho” compare to the rest of your album; thematically or musically?

Maisie Peters: I think, sonically it’s pretty different. It was the last song we wrote for the album, so it was me trying to—in that day, one of the last sessions of the album—do something I hadn’t done. … Your album’s basically finished and you’re thinking, “What can I add? What can I write right now that will make the album [stand out]?” [With] “Psycho” … I really, really wanted to do something that felt fun and big, and we could dance to it, and we could have a good time. I think that a lot of my album maybe isn’t so much of those vibes, and that’s fine. There’s a breadth to the album, which is great. But this song; I really just wanted to go full Carly Rae Jepsen, Girls Aloud, Abba. I wanted to make a song that I could play this summer—I’m playing festivals—and feel good. … The past few years [there’s] been a lot of anxiety and sadness and various feelings of various natures. I really wanted to start this summer and start this phase, [with] a real song of solidarity and dance and joy and sort of humor and good times”.

What can listeners expect from the rest of the album?

Maisie Peters: I think people can expect songs that they’ll love and songs that they’ll recognize as being a continuation of music that I’ve already made. “Psycho” was pretty unexpected, and there are definitely other songs on the record that won’t be what anyone’s expecting, necessarily, so I like to think that’s a good amount of both.

How’d you end up with Ed Sheeran on his label, Gingerbread Man?

Maisie Peters: We both have lots of mutual friends and mutual collaborators [like] Joe Rubel, Fred Gibson; writers and producers that we both work with intensely. Really, he reached out about writing together. I went up to Suffolk to where he lives, and we wrote for a few days, and actually those songs ended up on the record, and the first two we did. We really just clicked and connected as friends and collaborators, and he’s so humble and so down to earth and so friendly and easy to love. Musically and as artists, we work in very similar ways and write in very similar ways, so it really just felt like an obvious thing to do to continue working together and building that relationship.

From the time you first started writing music, it’s taken you nine years to release an album. How long will the second one take?

Maisie Peters: I guess we’ll see. I write a lot and I’ve already been working on the next album and the next bunch of songs. I was talking about it with my band this morning, and we were talking about the idea of putting out mixtapes while you’re on tour and just constantly releasing, which I’m really excited about. I’d definitely say for sure, prepare yourself for more music next year. I think it would be pretty unlikely that I wouldn’t release anything. I’m really excited to work on the next batch of stuff, and I’m really excited for this album to come out, and I just think it’s gonna be a really fun few years”.

Go and follow the incredible Maisie Peters. Following her on social media, I can tell how thrilled she is that her debut album, You Signed Up for This, is mere days away. It has been a while in the making, so she is going to be thrilled to see it out in the world1 I love her music and know that she has a very busy and productive career ahead – and, as I say, we will see her on the screen before too long. Go and show one of our best young artists…