According to the acclaimed creator Jeffrey Eugenides, “heartbreak is funny to everyone but the heartbroken” and Maisie Peters couldn’t agree extra. “We all get so fucking weird and evil,” she laughs. “What is wrong with us?”
The English singer-songwriter’s newest album The Good Witch is Peters’ “twisted” take on a breakup album — providing sass, snarling venom and serene empowerment throughout its glitzy 12 tracks. “I don’t know if it’s a positive album, but it’s definitely truthful,” she tells Alternative Press earlier than the primary of a collection of intimate gigs throughout the UK. “There are moments of real light to the album and it doesn’t take itself too seriously,” she continues, promising that the file isn’t truly that miserable contemplating the heartbreak that impressed it. ”This could be me being evil however there’s such enjoyable and intrigue in being so harm as a result of it means you cared a lot.”
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In truth, there’s a depraved humorousness to every thing Peters does. Taking to Glastonbury’s iconic Pyramid stage over the weekend, Peters wore a “girls’s hearts are deadly weapons” slogan T-shirt whereas her loyal coven of followers held up banners that proudly learn “our periods are syncing” and “we are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn.”
[Photo courtesy of Maisie Peters]
After a string of singles and EPs, Peters’ debut album You Signed Up For This was released in 2021 via Ed Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man Records and pulled influence from Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers, The Killers, and Carly Rae Jepsen with its intricate storytelling. Sonically, The Good Witch continues to build on those bombastic, emotional pop-rock foundations. The dreamy “Wendy” was impressed by Lana Del Rey’s 2017 shimmering monitor “Love,” whereas the confident “You’re Just A Boy (And I’m Kinda The Man)” takes heavy affect from the Shania Twain traditional “Man, I Feel Like A Woman.” Peters and her band usually play that upbeat, empowering anthem each evening earlier than going onstage and wished to seize that power.
“All my songs are, is a combination of everything I like,” explains Peters, who spent the journey to tonight’s venue listening to her personal unreleased music alongside her band. And sure, she beloved each minute of it.
The Good Witch additionally attracts inspiration from Lorde’s coming-of-age breakup album Melodrama. “It was important to me as a 17-year-old girl and it still feels culturally significant today,” Peters explains, eager to create one thing equally as grand however relatable. “I want The Good Witch to be as cohesive and special as Melodrama, but more than anything, I hope it can be important to somebody.”
[Photo courtesy of Maisie Peters]
Despite proudly carrying her many influences on her sleeve, The Good Witch seems like nothing besides a Maisie Peters album. It’s frank, it’s humorous and it’s reassuring whereas nonetheless embracing what her followers have come to name an actual “feral” power. On social media, she treats those self same followers extra like mates, whereas additionally encouraging deep dives into the broader world of The Good Witch and she or he’s often fan forged as the right help for Taylor Swift’s not too long ago introduced European Eras tour. An ideal match in our opinion.
Written following a mammoth tour supporting Ed Sheeran in stadiums the world over, there’s a giddy grandness to Maisie Peters’ sophomore album that’ll come to life at her “fun, explosive, big, and exciting” headline reveals later this 12 months. “Playing those big shows with Ed, it gives you a new context for what music can do and be,” she says. Her personal gig at London’s Wembley Arena is already penciled in for November after a prolonged US run.
There are loads of softer moments on the album as properly although, from the self-deprecating lyrics of “Body Better” that finds Peters evaluating herself to an ex’s new companion to the folksy “The Band And I.” “That’s the type of music I was raised on and I never want to leave that behind,” Peters explains, having began her profession as a busker earlier than going on to launch her debut single in 2017.
[Photo courtesy of Maisie Peters]
From cafes to stadiums, Maisie Peters has at all times used her songwriting to bounce between fantasy and actuality. Despite the fairytale title, The Good Witch is the primary physique of labor wholly impressed by her personal life. “I went through a lot and the past year has been really intense so I wrote about that, almost for my own sanity,” she explains. “There’s not a single song on the album that’s not true.” Even extra surreal tracks just like the dreamy “The History Of Man” or the luxurious “Wendy” are primarily based on what Peters was experiencing.
“I’m not someone who typically writes for catharsis, but it is cathartic to look back on how you felt. It’s almost the opposite of gaslighting yourself,” says Peters, whose songs by no means play down the emotional extremes of affection and heartbreak. Still, for a breakup album The Good Witch is just not pushed by anger or bitterness. “I think we were all surprised by that,” Peters laughs, earlier than calling the file a testomony to like when it’s good.
“Even if the heartbreak hurts, it’s hard to write anything too mean if the people were good and the love was real,” she explains. Peters went on a journey making The Good Witch, and whereas the album is characterised by “a lot of sadness,” she’s at present coming into a extra peaceable period she’s calling “war is over.”
[Photo courtesy of Maisie Peters]
There’s also strength in The Good Witch’s journey though, with the album touching on themes of destruction, power, femininity, magic, and fate alongside gender, even if that particular topic wasn’t intentional.
“Listening back to the record, tracks like ‘History Of Man,’ ‘Wendy,’ and ‘You’re Just A Boy (And I’m Kinda The Man)’ all play with the idea of what it is to be a young woman,” says Peters, who not too long ago turned 23. “A lot of my first album was written when I was 16 and is about girlhood and experiencing that coming to an end, whereas The Good Witch explores the idea of masculinity and femininity and the relationship between men and women. It’s something I’ve definitely experienced and had to think about because of it, so I’m not surprised it made an appearance on the album.”
“I just put a lot of pressure on myself to make an album that I loved as much as I still love my first album,” continues Peters, who knows how important that record was for the community of people that heard themselves in her songs. “I didn’t feel the need to prove myself to anybody though,” she adds.
Maisie Peters believes her music resonates with so many because “all human beings are really boringly similar,” she says, before laughing. “We all just feel the same things and we all think we’re special, and we’re not,” she continues with a shrug. “I just try and make music that means something to me.” That’s where the magic happens.
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