FEATURE: Spotlight: Maude Latour — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Maude Latour

__________

AN artist I cannot believe…

PHOTO CREDIT: Braylen Dion for The New York Times

I have not included in this feature yet, Maude Latour is a name to watch. With a voice similar to that of Phoebe Bridgers, the Swedish-born artist is a sensation. She lived in London and attended Hong Kong International School before attending the Brearley School in Manhattan. She graduated from Columbia University this year as a philosophy major. Beginning songwriting at age fifteen, Latour released her first E.P., High School High, in 2018. She is a self-described as a "worshipper of the overly lyrical metaphysical world”, she puts her experiences with heartbreak in songs that are dream-like. Detailing living in New York, Maude's music contains a universal quality. I want to open with a quick profile from The New York Times from July:

“Name: Maude Latour

Age: 22

Hometown: New York City

Now lives: In a four-bedroom apartment near Columbia University, with the same four roommates she has lived with since freshman year.

Claim to fame: Ms. Latour is a singer-songwriter whose plush indie pop grapples with impermanence. She writes about composing a letter to her future self, cleaning a bedroom that always gets messy and, on her recent single “Trees,” mourning the loss of her grandmother, whom she searches for in the space between branches. Ms. Latour filmed the song’s music video during her final semester as an undergraduate at Columbia this spring, between classes on Virginia Woolf and the history of philosophy. “I’m majoring in, ultimately as a philosophy major, life being fleeting,” Ms. Latour said.

Big break: A self-described choir kid, Ms. Latour began songwriting at 15 and uploading her music to Spotify at 17. In March 2020, during the early pandemic lockdown, Ms. Latour posted a video of herself singing “One More Weekend,” an upbeat rendering of an early college heartbreak, to TikTok, where it has been viewed more than 455,000 times. (It has more than 28 million streams on Spotify.) In 2021, during her junior year, Ms. Latour was applying to summer jobs when record labels approached her. She signed with Warner Records and released an EP, “Strangers Forever,” last October.

Latest project: Ms. Latour went on a North American tour this spring, squeezing in six shows during spring break and the rest on weekends. Ms. Latour said she cried onstage at Bowery Ballroom in Lower Manhattan, while dedicating her song “Lola” to friends in the audience who are survivors of sexual assault. (“Keep my girls protected/ I’m turned on when I’m respected,” she sings.) “Diderot says you can’t have authentic emotions onstage,” said Ms. Latour, referencing the French philosopher’s “Paradox of the Actor.” “I was like, ‘What?’ All I do is go onstage and feel and bleed out my emotions in front of people.”

Next thing: Later this month, Ms. Latour will play Lollapalooza, her first festival, on the same day as Metallica. “I’m on the same stage as them, so their drum kit and stuff is going to be behind me,” she said. Ms. Latour is also working on an EP she described as a queer coming-of-age set in the “enchanted forest” that is New York City. “The way I feel at the old age of 22 is so much more complicated than when I was 19,” she said. “I’m trying to grow up with my music.”

Borrowed threads: Ms. Latour’s iridescent, Y2K-era stage outfits are a joint effort between herself and her four roommates. The magenta corduroys, rhinestone belt and rust-orange Nike jacket she wore on tour were sourced from her roommates’ closets. Wearing her friends’ clothes helps ease Ms. Latour’s nerves. “I feel hugged by their presence,” she said”.

I will move on to an interview from Alt Press. Comparing her to Lorde, they headlined the interview saying Maude Latour navigates the blurred lines of female friendships. It is fascinating finding out more about the extraordinary artist:

“I have not featured yet, Maude Latour reminds me a lot of Phoebe Bridgers. She has that similar huskiness and smokiness in her voice. She has released three E.P.s to date. This year’s 001 was released in September, and I think it is her most complete work yet. I wonder whether an album will come next. Latour was born in Sweden. She lived in London and attended Hong Kong International School before attending the Brearley School in Manhattan. Latour graduated from Columbia University in 2022 as a philosophy major. Taking up songwriting from the age of fifteen, she released her first E.P., High School High, in 2018. A hot and supremely talented name to watch through 2023, I wanted to bring in a interviews from this year with Latour so that we can find out more about the remarkable artist.

“Her effervescent pop songs (think Lorde’s “Green Light” and Hayley Kiyoko’s “for the girls”) provided the ultimate high-energy escape for users scrolling for the next sticky earworm. “People on the app are so funny — when they love something, they love it so much,” the 22-year-old singer says. It was evident for Latour in the nearly 100,000 fans she quickly amassed.

It would be a year-and-a-half until Latour was back on campus at Columbia University, and when she returned as a senior, plenty of her classmates had heard her music (thanks to TikTok, of course). “People would pass me notes in the library saying, ‘Oh, love your music,’ or I'd go into the library and people would be whispering my name,” she recalls.

The New York-based pop newcomer, who went to an all-girls school growing up, has become known for using her music to reflect on the complexities of female friendships and sexuality. In February 2021 she tweeted, “its really the binary/phallic constraints on love and emotion that cause us to put love into boxes. feminine love is fluidity, boundaryless, friendship and romance blur, it is true feeling and it has no ends.”

In March, she shared “Lola,” an ode to her best friend. The TikTok where she played the song for Lola happened to receive more than 220,000 likes. One commenter wrote, “Maude really out here blurring the line between friendship and relationship,” to which she replied, “i wish i could tell u the whole story. This song will have to do in the meantime.” Another asked if the single would be “playing when you walk down the aisle to Lola,” and queer icon FLETCHER declared, “i’m so here for this.”

“I've been an advocate for this, blurry, indescribable love that's friendship, but [it’s] so much deeper, and all of your relationships are confused by it.” Latour describes her historically all-girls school as “a place where all these feelings mush.” She’s still navigating these complicated relationships, which she’s “starting to realize are not fully sustainable” as she grows up and develops deeper feelings. She described these relationships on TikTok as a “complex lovefriendblur.”

Focusing on these friendships has continuously proven to be significant lyrical fodder for her. “I'm not in love right now,” Latour confidently declares. “But I am nurturing friendships. It took me a second to realize that they need as much care as a romantic relationship. If it’s done right, this gets to be a source of love and life for you for years.” As she figures it out, she calls her music “an actual real-time reflection of how I'm feeling.”

On her latest track “Probabilities,” Latour seems destined for superstardom, ready to join her icons, including No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani. Her upcoming EP is slated for release Sept. 30 and follows her 2019 EP Starsick 2021 EP Strangers Forever.

Rather than romance, she has other things to focus on — like preparing to embark on a major tour. She’s hitting the festival circuit, playing Lollapalooza, ACL and Music Midtown. Her shows, which she describes as “rave parties,” have created an incredible community for her. “It’s this intangible world, and promoting and sharing comes to fruition in a concert,” she says. “[The music] gets the closure it needs, and it's cool to meet people and be a real person off the screen.”

She also plans to write songs daily, spend time in the studio and watch Love Island — a notoriously time-consuming endeavor. Latour is focused on crafting “perfect pop songs and a sonic universe, the way No Doubt does, or the way that every artist I love has done.”

Latour, however, will need to navigate some change, though along the way. Much of her music and video content — largely shot on the Columbia campus — has been directly linked to New York. With a whirlwind year ahead, she’s bracing for a departure from the city she’s called home for the past several years. “I've lived my life through the lens of New York City for so long,” she notes. “Once I lose New York as the backdrop for everything, I'm curious what will replace it”.

I will wrap up with an interview from Ones to Watch. There is no doubt that Maude Latour is going to be among the most important artists coming through next year. I hope that shew tours in the U.K. at some point:

“Ones To Watch: Hi, it’s so great to meet you! Congrats on the success of your current headlining tour! How does it feel finally being on tour as we emerge at the end of the pandemic?

Maude Latour: It feels so much better than I ever could have imagined. I was nervous; I've never done more than one show in a row. But it has been so fulfilling, and I'm so happy about it. It's so fun, and I'm learning so much about myself. I feel like I'm truly finding my purpose and it’s such a spiritual experience. I can’t wait to get so much better at it and push this medium of live performance. I know it’s my mission and what I'm meant to do, so I'm so ecstatic about it.

Your tour is arranged strategically because you're also a student at Columbia University. What is it like being both a full-time student and a breakthrough artist? It seems like an extremely difficult balancing act.

I'm definitely glad that it’s almost over, but it’s actually fun! I like being busy, and I love school. I love being in college, it’s such a privilege and I totally try to soak up every moment of it. The shows also keep my focus on what I'm going to do after college and it brings together so many of my college friends. It’s such an integrated part of my college experience at this point. We're having a party for the song coming out. All the music videos are made with my friends. My friends help me run every event that I do, they help me make every TikTok. Being an artist can be really lonely sometimes and it’s just been such a collaborative coming-of-age project for all of us. I feel really lucky.

PHOTO CREDIT: Anna Koblish

I'm sure you're looking forward to graduation in a few weeks! Do you have any plans or bucket list items that you want to do once you leave university?

I still haven't comprehended that I'm graduating. I will do some tours, I want to make an album and I want to pretend that I'm in college forever. I want to have fun forever and mainly be with my friends!

I know that you've lived all over the world and moved around a lot in your formative years. What ultimately drew you back to New York?

I've lived in Sweden, London, New York City, Hong Kong, and am now back in New York. I don't know where I'm going to go after college, I was thinking LA but I might not be able to leave this place. I don't know!

I physically don't know how to leave New York. It's just constant inspiration. I love the four seasons, I love the feeling I have here. I actually feel like I'm a part of this city. I feel so much love and pride in this city, and I love how small I feel in it, I feel so tiny. I love New Yorkers, and I love the people, they are so cool. I want to hang out with them forever. It just feels like home. I know it really well, and I feel like myself when I'm here.

Has New York influenced your creative process?

Yeah, the sublimity of feeling so small and being a part of a large city; I definitely have this taste of being a part of something bigger than I can comprehend. I got a sense of independence when I was really young and went to high school here. I was jetting around the city by myself around thirteen and it made me have all these experiences that showed me that life is the story, and I wanted to write about it. I think the project that I'm currently working on is definitely a tribute to the city, so I have to be here to write about it!

What are other things that you draw inspiration from when it comes to songwriting besides your immediate environment?

I think I keep writing about friendship, and I think it’s because my friendships are such an enormous emotional relationship in my life that have been different from romantic relationships. Friendships that I care more about get prioritized before anything and loving someone in a friendly way. I think that I've written a lot of songs about friends and it’s because I went to an all-girls school in high school and that was a place where the lines of friendship and romance blurred for me. And sometimes they turn romantic but it’s really about this love that can't be defined, which is a theme that I keep coming back to.

Do you feel that your creative process has changed between your first EP Starsick and your most recent EP Strangers Forever?

Yes, it definitely has. My last EP I wrote in my room and now these songs are just coming from living a little more instead of sitting down to reflect. They are coming out from living in the real world. They're definitely becoming harder to write. They haven't been the same journal entry songs, and it’s a little more of asking what is the most important thing to me. When I was sixteen, I wondered if my songs would get more complicated when I turned twenty, and when I turned twenty, I wondered how I'll keep making this medium when I turn 22. And now that I'm 22, I feel many different feelings. A lot of the things I used to say aren't as simple as I thought, but I realized that I can grow up in this medium and in songwriting.

When I listen to my old songs, the feelings still resonate, much more often than the words do. But sometimes I'll hear the words and be like wow, I knew that about myself, without really knowing it, and now I really know it and I can't believe I could tell then. In "Furniture," there's a line "I wanna sing until I drown / because when the music gets loud / and I'm singing in front of a crowd" and I wasn't singing in front of crowds then and now performing is such a thing. It was more of a dream and now I'm singing that line in front of a crowd, so that has been really crazy.

Speaking on the growth and trajectory of your music, you're releasing your new single "Lola." Was there something you wanted fans to take away from the single?

This is my favorite song in the entire world. This is actually really me giving my best offering that I can give, and I can't even imagine getting it off my chest. Of course, so much of this song is attributed to the friendship that I've had with this girl named Lola. We've been best friends and inseparable for years and it’s also a friendship that has complicated parts. Parts that weren't just friends and now we were just friends, but I wrote it at a time when I was figuring out what we were. It’s definitely attributed to this ambiguous friendship that I keep meeting with more than one person. It's really how love feels to me, and I'm not sure if it’s because I'm a fluid bi girl, but I want us to embrace all the ways that love appears to us. I thought this project wasn't going to be as focused on love, but it’s actually more about love than anything I've ever written.

This song is also about the girls and queer people that I love. I wanted to write a song about protecting my sisters, my real sister, and my friends. When we share this power, when we support each other and have each other’s backs, the ferocity and this fierceness of women and queer people working together and protecting each other... there’s nothing more powerful than a confident girl and a confident person. I think that it has the magical power to make whoever hears it feel their power.

"Lola" is all about the women in your life that you feel connected to and have an affinity for. Who are some of the women in the music industry that you are currently listening to?

Watching Doja and SZA win their Grammy made me cry, so definitely them. Everything is going to change whenever SZA releases her album. Doja was really the music when I listened to when I was going through a breakup and writing my last album. I just remember thinking that she made me feel awesome and not sad and small, and that is my favorite feeling when it comes to music”.

A truly amazing artist who you need to get behind and follow, Maude Latour is going to be a big name soon enough. I discovered her a little while ago, but I think this year has been her most productive and accomplished. I know she will put out some amazing music next year. Every music fan needs to be aware of…