INTERVIEW: Maisie Peters launches first ever Australian and NZ tour and new music: "As you get older, you become more assured and more convicted in what you're saying."

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Sonny McCartney

Maisie Peters is very quickly becoming one of the UK’s biggest breakthrough talents of the last few years. First writing music when she was 12, she moved onto busking on the streets of Brighton in 2017 and a mere two years later she was headlining at some of London’s biggest live venues.

Last year, she released her debut album You Signed Up for This which was a beautiful collection of electronic pop that celebrated the joy and the pain of growing up and most importantly girlhood - a topic that is either derided or ignored in popular music but which Peters, with her insightful, observational lyrics has made her trademark. The album soared to number 2 on the UK albums chart and Peters has to date racked up over 845 million worldwide streams.

In 2022, Peters has released four new singles, the most recent is ‘Not Another Rockstar’ which adds punk-rock to her electropop soundscape.

“I wrote ‘Not Another Rockstar’ about my very debatable track record with men,” Peters says. “The song aims to make fun at me and my decisions and them and their guitars, and it feels right that I wrote it with Ines who is my best friend because she was literally rolling her eyes at every line like ‘too real’. I hope everyone comes out of this song realising the true rockstar was in fact me. Obviously. No longer the rockstar’s girlfriend, we are the whole rockstar these days, girls.”

Peters has also announced she will be touring Australia and New Zealand for the first time ever in February and March next year. Alongside touring as the support act for Ed Sheeran’s + - = ÷ x Tour (pronounced ‘The Mathematics Tour’), Peters will also be performing a number of headlining shows across Australia and New Zealand, starting in Wellington on February 2 before closing in Perth on 11 March.

A charismatic, relatable and supremely talented performer, Maisie Peters is the full package and her tour is going to kick off 2023 with a blast. We recently caught up with Maisie to chat more about the upcoming tour and her latest music.

Hi Maisie it is so very wonderful to chat to you today. You have just the most absolutely fun new single out ‘Not Another Rockstar’, it's so fun and I'm loving the pace of it as well. It's very, very snappy. Talk to me about this gorgeous, gorgeous thing.
I wrote it about a year ago and it's literally just a song about my terrible taste in men. I wrote it with two of my friends, Ines Dunn and Joe Rubel, they are amazing songwriters and producers that are amazing and my best friends. So it was a very easy song to write. We were just all discussing my trials and tribulations and the song sort of wrote itself. I remember singing the line ‘not another rock star’ and being like, ‘is that too on the nose? And Ines was like, ‘no, I think it's good’ and lo and behold, the whole song existed. We just had the best time writing it, obviously you can tell. Just a lot of laughs.

It's so fun. It's faster as well. How did you approach it with that high energy because I imagine it started with you and a guitar and a melody?
Yeah, it started with Joe playing that baseline and I was probably playing a guitar as well, just in the studio, and then it just built from there. But really, the core of the song started with that bass and then everything just appeared around it really naturally. It was a full thing by the end of those days.

Gorgeous. You have always injected so much fun into your music and there is a lot of songs about relationships: problematic relationships, possible relationships, embarrassing moments. You talk about projection, which we all do, but teenage girls are notorious for and what I'm loving hearing is you're now doing it as you yourself are getting older. It’s from an older perspective, but you haven't lost that playfulness. How has that creative process been for you changing the way you write and deliver music as you yourself are getting older and seeing those relationships from the other side?
You end up writing with more nuance and more experience and with more confidence, because as you get older and you understand more, you know what you want to say and how you want to say it. I'm always keen to make sure that I never lose my sense of personality or my sense of humour or the sense of this wink to camera with whatever I'm saying. I always want there to feel like there's balance to it. As I get older, you just discover more and more how to convey all the things you're feeling and in a way that feels the most real.

Absolutely. And I imagine also, as you're writing more from experience, you sort of realise that there's no such thing as one true love. There's about 12 of them!
Yes. Obviously, I'm someone who writes a lot of songs about love or relationships, and getting older, has been discovering what those different types of relationships are. I'm definitely a cynic, but I'm simultaneously a cynic and also someone who wholeheartedly believes that you could have been with somebody for two years and not be in love, or you could have spent two dates with someone and you can be in love. I wholeheartedly believe in both. So getting older is looking at all of those different types of relationships and being able to make music out of all of them.

You've got some beautiful sad songs as well, but there's always a perspective shift, and because of that, I imagine them when you're playing them live you can see them from a different place. You deliver them from a different time and place as opposed to just like ‘this is my breakup album and this is really sad, but I'm kind of over that guy now’. You write from personal experience, but at the same time, it's like you're looking at it with fresh eyes all the time. Is that what you instinctively go into write or does that just come naturally to you?
I think it's probably instinctive. I just write how I talk and how I think and so there is a sense of humour in it and in everything, in the way I talk I think... it's the Brit in me. Even with my saddest songs, and then the next album, even with the saddest, or the most vulnerable songs, there's always a hint of that wry smile, and of shaking it off a little bit, rolling your eyes a little bit. There's a quote that I always live by and it is ‘heartbreak is funny to everyone, but the heartbroken’. That's definitely a message that I think about a lot when I make new music.

That's so true. It's that fundamental rule that everything has to be funny otherwise, it's just depressing. There's got to be humour in everything otherwise it will destroy you.
Of course. I think sadness is the funniest and the most real music is one that displays both.

Is it like when you find yourself crying, but then you catch your reflection and then you're distracted about watching yourself!
Yeah, or you take a photo of yourself crying and you're like, this is the funniest thing I've ever seen. Honestly, I have some iconic photos of me having a mental breakdown and my friends still circulate them all the time because they're just so, so unhinged!

You've got this almost country style to your music, because it is based on storytelling. I know you're a big reader, you've got a book club, has that always played a part with the way you approach music, the literary world and the storytelling world?
Definitely, I'm so inspired by prose and by books and authors, like Joan Didion, Margaret Atwood and Donna Tartt, and all these women. I'm really inspired by the worlds they create. I think songs are just like tiny little worlds.

Gorgeous. And you are always a huge champion not just for female writers, but also female artists, which I think is incredible and it's incredibly important. Things can be difficult in the industry for female artists despite the fact everyone says there's a change happening, there's words being said but maybe not action. How have you found the last couple of years with regards to your voice in the industry and the people you're working with?
As you get older, you become more assured and more convicted in what you're saying, and you'll learn to try and to believe in yourself when you know what you're speaking up for is the right thing. I definitely discovered that in the last few years. But there's always battles and you're always facing new challenges and so I just surround myself with a lot of really great women and other women in music and, and there's lots of WhatsApp support groups going on all the time.

I love that. I love to hear of the clubs app.
It is, it is a big club vibe!

You just finished a massive tour. First of all, how did that go?
It's been amazing. This tour has been incredible. The shows we've played, the audience we've met have just been second to none and some of the best shows I've ever played. It's been crazy.

And next year you're heading over to Australia. Obviously you've got such a huge fan base here, so people will be singing your lyrics back to you, myself included. What is your favourite song to play live?
I'm really enjoying playing ‘Blonde’ right now because it's our set closer and I just think the girls go feral, and I for one, love it. So I'm really enjoying it. I just stomp around very angrily throughout the whole song and I exorcise a lot of demons. So, I'm gonna say ‘Blonde’.

‘Not Another Rockstar’ is out now via Gingerbread Man Records/Warner Music. You can download and stream here.
To keep up with all things Maisie Peters, you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter.

Read out six page interview with Maisie Peters in issue 11 of Women In Pop magazine

Maisie Peters will be touring Australia and New Zealand in February and March 2022.

MAISIE PETERS HEADLINE TOUR DATES

3 February - San Fran, Wellington
8 February - Tuning Fork, Auckland
16 February - ​The Northern Hotel, Byron Bay
21 February – ​The Triffid, Brisbane *SOLD OUT*
28 February – ​The Metro, Sydney *SOLD OUT*
4 March - ​Prince Of Wales, Melbourne *SOLD OUT*
5 March – Prince Of Wales, Melbourne *SOLD OUT*
11 March - ​Freo.Social, Fremantle

SUPPORTING ED SHEERAN TOUR DATES

17 February - Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane *SOLD OUT*
18 February - Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane *SOLD OUT*
19 February - Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane *New show
24 February - Accor Stadium, Sydney
25 February - Accor Stadium, Sydney
2 March - MCG, Melbourne
3 March - MCG, Melbourne
7 March - Adelaide Oval, Adelaide
12 March - Optus Stadium, Perth