INTERVIEW: Maisie Peters releases new single 'Maybe Don't': "The world sees female artists in a very one-dimensional way... women are put in boxes much more than men are."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
British singer-songwriter Maisie Peters is at the forefront of the latest wave of new singer-songwriters emerging from the UK. Producing warm, intimate indie tinged pop which tell meaningful stories, she has accumulated a quarter of billion streams worldwide to date and earned praise from Taylor Swift after she posted a cover version of Swift’s ‘Enchanted’ on Twitter.
Peters has been writing songs since before she was a teenager and started her music career by uploading songs to YouTube when she was just 15. She released her first single ‘Place We Were Made’ independently in 2017 and after it and the follow-up ‘Birthday’ became viral hits, she soon found herself with a record deal with Atlantic Records. Her debut EP Dressed Too Nice For A Jacket was released in 2018, which was followed last year with It’s Your Bed Babe, It’s Your Funeral.
She recently released the new single ‘Maybe Don’t’ which features Canadian singer JP Saxe, a gentle, pulsing guitar track about the conflicting emotions of being too scared to commit to a relationship. It follows up her single from July ‘Sad Girl Summer’ which is a empowering anthem to getting over being in a relationship with ‘a loser’ wrapped up in tropical beats which echo the lyrics of moving on in style - “You don't have to have another sad girl summer / Raise your glass, let it go” - by perfectly evoking parties on sun-kissed beaches and letting go. Peters’s reputation as a supremely talented artist and songwriter continues to grow and as she works on her debut album her profile is only going to get bigger. We recently caught up with Maisie to find out more.
Hi Maisie! I want to give you a massive socially distanced high five for your last solo release ‘Sad Girl Summer’. What a great track. Where did this song come from?
Thank you so much! This song came from a really fun day in LA with a couple of my friends. We just came into the studio that day and I think there was just a real ‘good times’ energy which is not often in the Maisie Peters studio, I will be honest. It's not a classic emotion! I came up with the title ‘Sad Girl Summer’ because somebody had said it to me over brunch. And i was like ‘oh that's kind of funny’. So I came into the studio and then we just had so much fun creating the whole story and the narrative and it really reminded me of old, Christina Aguilera songs and songs that tell a story like ‘Papa Don't Preach’ [Madonna] - whole narrative vibes. That was really fun for everyone because it's not often that you get to do that and step into somebody else's shoes. All of my friends keep asking me which one of us is married to a marine? Who got divorced? I'm like no, it's not you. It's not all about you!
It's such a great song and the video is beautiful as well, I'm guessing it happened in lockdown, in your house?
It was, it was in my parent’s house. It was so much fun. It was me and the directors thinking how can we make the ultimate girl gang but the lockdown addition meant all of my girl gangs are spread very far over the world. It was just trying to figure out a way to get everyone together for that real power of all of us and just fighting the good fight of hating terrible boys. So, yeah... we kind of just got... I got in touch with everybody and we just FaceTimed everyone and got them to do little things with their sunglasses and their hats. One of my friends lives in Jakarta and some people were in America, London, Brighton… So, it was really fun to get everyone involved.
Oh, it’s gorgeous. Also, you've just dropped ‘Maybe Don’t’ with JP Saxe. That is collaboration of complimenting voices and sounds. Listening to I feel like your voice is like thicker than usual. It's such a beautiful mix and it sounds like the title sequence to an indie romantic comedy. How did that come about and how do you feel about it?
It was really amazing to do. He was playing in London right before lockdown, so, it was one of those moments where it could have almost not happened which I think is funny. He was like we should meet up for a day to do some writing but he had to go to Paris pretty soon afterwards. So we only had like a couple of hours in the studio and it was just done really quickly. I was so nervous because I love JP, I think he's one of the most talented people in music right now. But we managed to get the song done and we managed to record it in the same room which is why my voice sounds kind of different because you’ve got the nice vibes of us doing it together. It all just worked, to create a really amazing special explosion of good.
You were an incredibly successful busker and then an even bigger YouTube star but word on the street is that you started out in a killer high school band singing Beyoncé covers.
I genuinely have no idea how you found that out! That's never come up in an interview ever.
Shows how much of a stalker I am!
Wow. That is so impressive! Yes, the killer high school band. We were exactly like all high school bands. Two girls. Two guys. The love triangles ran deep! Fleetwood Mac but small-town English version and none of us were doing any drugs. It was just a group of my friends. We went to the same little high school. we would go to the music room and do Beyoncé covers and play function gigs. it was a very hilarious time in my life. It was really fun though. It was an iconic time and I'm just very impressed that you found it.
You've previously spoken about the unattainability of pop stars particularly female pop stars thanks to the media creating a structure that keeps them not only out of reach but also almost incomprehensible as human beings. Whereas in your music, you champion those insecurities. the dorky laughing moments, the heart on your sleeve. Was that intentional or was that something that you found missing from the music that you grew up listening to? That kind of attainability, that comfort?
100 per cent. That's so nice, thank you for picking up on that. As a woman in music - and I’m saying this with a caveat that I am obsessed with every single woman in music - I think whatever you're doing, if you’re doing it because you wanted to do it, then more power to you. For women, the world sees female artists in a very one-dimensional way where it's ‘oh, okay, she wears this, so she's this’. There can be absolutely no other aspects. Sometimes it feels very much like women are put in boxes much more than men are and are made to be just one thing much more than male artists are. For me it was really important to get across that I am I'm a multi-faceted, real-life person and I am kind of dorky. I loved history at school, umm, but I also really like flares and I can totally walk around at home all day in my pyjamas that I haven't washed in 3 weeks. But I can also walk around in like a whole bodycon ensemble because we're very dimensional people which sounds hilarious to have to confirm, but I feel like you do have to do that. For me, I love the fact that I'm super engaged with my fans, because I love them. I feel we're just very similar people. We just all really get on and they make fun of me because I’ll just constantly leak my music and I just can’t keep the element of surprise. I think it's really important that they do all see that it is possible to be a musician and to be taken seriously and to be good at your craft and also, not take yourself too seriously.
In 2017, you released your debut singles ‘Place We Were Made’ and ‘Birthday’. Then your first EP Dressed Too Nice For A Jacket which by the way, that title is so many shades of wonderful. How do you feel that your sound has developed along with your own personal growth?
I think that's an interesting question. I think it's just grown very naturally because I've gotten older and your taste expands and streamlines. Nothing's taken like a sharp turn, I think it's more been more of a natural curve, into what I want to make in that moment in time. I think you can hear the steps in all of the songs. But I do think I've gotten a lot more confident sound wise and it's a lot less blindly following around in the dark, which there was a lot of that a couple of years ago. You get occasional gems but you get a lot of misses. But now I feel like there's slightly less misses because I am more focused. You just know more, what I want and what i don't want. That's just growing up really. But growing up making music which I've been really lucky to do.
You do write such incredibly honest music, and a lot of that comes from observation, where did that desire for you to champion the girl come from? Was there ever a part of you particularly when you were younger going ‘oh god, maybe I shouldn't be this exposed’?
Umm... no. I honed my skills as a writer when I was between the ages of 12 and 14. Not a lot is going on in your life when you're 12 and 14. So you just naturally get very good at stepping into other worlds and other shoes and writing from a different place. I think that it's interesting because everybody assumes that my music is very autobiographical, which it is to an extent, but I'm definitely not the most autobiographical out of all of the artists I know. I'm probably more on the side of taking an emotion that I have felt before - be it jealousy or heartache or bad bitches - and then delve deeper take it onto different pathways where maybe i haven't been, details that haven't been my life. For that reason, especially when I started putting out music, it was always not easier but a different feeling because it wasn't laying my whole being right there. It was taking parts of myself that felt very vulnerable and very true and giving them life and giving them their own world.
Lastly, before I leave you what is on the horizon for you?
Wow. Good question. It's a very uncertain world right now. There's going to be loads of fun things to do with the release of ‘Maybe Don’t’ with JP Saxe. Videos and hopefully merch. Loads of other really cool things that I'm really excited about. So let's go with that first.
‘Maybe Don’t’ by Maisie Peters featuring JP Saxe is out now via Warner Music. You can download and stream here.
To keep up with all things Maisie Peters, you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
