Maisie Peters has had quite the weekend. Mere hours after the long-teased release of her second album The Good Witch, she took to the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury to play a collection of tracks that have seen her become one of the UK’s most exciting songwriters and seen her amass widespread acclaim from the adoring fans at her shows and countless listeners across the world.
Tracks such as ‘Body Better’, ‘Lost The Breakup’, ‘Cate’s Brother’, ‘Blonde’ and ‘Not Another Rock Star’, as well as ‘Psycho’, and ‘I’m Trying’ from her 2021 debut album You Signed Up For This, have racked up millions of plays on streaming platforms as well as across TikTok and YouTube, where she’s been documenting life on the road with her label founder Ed Sheeran (Maisie was only the second signing to Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man Records).
With so much time spent jumping between continents, it’s a surprise Peter’s has even had the time to consider a new album. As she sits chatting in Warner Music’s Dublin office ahead of its release, she’s surprised herself with how seamlessly it’s all come together. “Avril Lavigne has this whole thing where she’s dead and maybe that’s me?” she jokes, “Who knows, not me!”.
“It’s surreal” she adds when asked how it feels to be on the brink of her sophomore record, “It doesn’t feel like it’s really happening but it is really happening and I’m excited for it all to be out there, to tour these songs, play them live and have them out in the world”.
Peters’ career in music began as a teenager when she began writing and recording original songs which she would upload to YouTube as early as 2015 from her home in West Sussex. In 2017, she independently released her first single ‘Places We Were Made’ and followed this up four months later with her second single ‘Birthday’.
The success of the two singles saw Peters sign to Atlantic Records. After two EP’s with Atlantic, things had quickly gathered pace and Peters was named as the opening act for Niall Horan’s planned 2020 EU tour. The tour never took place, but Peters momentum continued as wrote and recorded the entire soundtrack for the Apple + show Trying, before leaving Atlantic for Gingerbread Man Records in July of 2021.
A mere two months later, Peters released You Signed Up For This, which debuted at Number 2 on the UK Album Charts, and saw the album’s singles ‘John Hughes Movie’ and ‘Psycho’ reach the UK Singles Chart. In 2022, she embarked on her first headline tour of Europe before joining Sheeran’s tour later in the year.
“It was the same but different” Peters remarks when contrast The Good Witch’s creation to her debut, “I was on the road a lot last year so I sort of managed to write within the gaps and it’s easier once you’ve made an album to make another so I applied everything I learned in the first record onto this one and I think it’s just a more intentional than before”.
The Good Witch details a period of great change in Peters life, as she learned how to balance career highs with personal lows. Touching on common themes of young adulthood such as heartbreak, ghosting, insecurity and a never-ending sense of uncertainty, it’s personable beyond belief, with quick references to everything from Greek Mythology to Joan Didion.
“I like a good reference” Peters laughs, “It brings life to a song, having a reference to something else that listeners can pick up on and it makes it exist in the real world a little more”.
“I listened to this album last year, Nervous at night by Charlie Hickey, he’s from LA and I loved it, it’s my favourite album of last year” she mentions of her listening patterns during the creative process.
“It’s very important to me. I love the lyricism of it all and it paints such a gorgeous picture of life; I feel like I know him. A lot of the songs on there are so interesting and thought through and I love it”.
The Good Witch was recorded far and wide, from Suffolk to Stockholm and London to LA. “I can hear all the influences” Peters smiles when asked of the globe-trotting “I have such fond memories of Stockholm and Bergen and going out there and writing this music”.
“I really want people to take whatever they need from it” she says of her hopes for the record, “I’d like it to play an important part in someone’s life; that would be cool”.
As well as being an incredibly observational songwriter, Peters is also an avid reader and has brought fans into her world of literature through her online book club. While the book club has been inactive as Peters was writing the album, that hasn’t stopped Peters reading some of the latest releases.
“I just read the new Naoise Dolan book, Happy Couple, and I loved it” she says of her reading list, “but I loved her first book even better. Exciting Times is one of my favourite books ever”.
Whilst currently in the midst of festival season, Peters is already looking ahead of Autumn and her upcoming The Road To Wembley tour, which will see her play two nights in the 3Olympia Theatre on 25th and 26th October.
“I’m super excited to come back to Dublin” she adds on mention of the shows, “I’ve never done a headline show here so it should be really fun”.
Tickets for Maisie Peters at the 3Olympia Theatre are on sale now.
