Maisie Peters Is Ready For The Next Chapter

I’d always loved this song. When I wrote it, I loved it. I almost released it, actually. But I would release “Worst Of You” instead, which is funny. In hindsight, we had always loved [the song], it just never felt like the right time for it. When I was putting this album together and needed a song to start the album off, I just couldn’t figure out which one felt right. And then my manager – who I’m very close with – suggested ‘What about “John Hughes”?’ Suddenly something clicked and I was like, ‘Oh my god, yeah’. It feels really real and kismet that the album starts chronologically, where my journey sort of started. I’ve been making music for longer than [when I was] 16, but I love the idea and the way that now the album starts from when I was like 16/17. The song to me sounds very wide-eyed and very honest and excited and melodramatic. It captured a lot of my influences and inspirations back then. Looking at it again last year, it’s [now] this amazing mash of 17-year-old me and 20-year-old me, which felt perfect for the beginning of this album.

I think it’s changed for everybody the way they create. For me, I actually found it mostly really great creatively because it made me a lot more self-sufficient. I just wrote heaps more on my own, returning to the way I started making music, just alone in my bedroom. In terms of inspiration, I’ve always been someone that’s able to be really inspired by many things. In a way, this has been really interesting to me because suddenly everything is about words now that you can’t see anybody anymore. Words – written, spoken, telephone and video chatted. For me, words are the most important thing. I’ve written countless… so many songs the past year, I haven’t found a lack of inspiration at all. I’ve been very inspired, which has been great.

Well, I mean, I can’t tell you much. As much as I would like to, my manager will kill me [laughs]. I like to think it’s going to be what everybody came for when they signed up for me. But it’s also what they didn’t know they came for, but will also enjoy. I think it’s a good mix of that and the music I’ve made so far. The person that’s made those songs is the same person that made this album and the same person that wrote “John Hughes” and the same person that had a YouTube channel when she was 14. Like, it’s all the same people. But it’s also me at my current creative peak. But I guess, you know, with all the culmination of years of experience, in music, and in life, I think it’s kind of a combination of both.

I would say, first of all, there really is no correct ingredient. I think it’s a combination of luck – of a song connecting, coming out at the right time, and the right people hearing it – and to take off. I might also say authenticity, that you believe the person who’s singing it means it.

Yes, every day [laughs]. No, 100%. I’ve gone into the studio before, spent the whole day there and I’ve left feeling really deflated. I wasn’t my best self and I didn’t write the best song. I had that and then the song I ended up writing that day was “Worst Of You”. I left the studio that day really down, feeling like I hadn’t done myself justice. I’d been let down and I hadn’t written the best thing I possibly could have written. But what I had actually written was “Worst Of You”, which is now my biggest song. So it goes to show.

I think, personally, I just decided very early on that there were some things that I would talk about, and some things that I wouldn’t. I would say I do I share a lot of my life, but I’m also very stubborn about what I won’t share. I think that’s important. Having basically grown up on the internet, and having been a person who shared her life since I was a teenager, I’m really grateful that past me decided to do that. Social media is a mind chasm of good and bad. It’s definitely been hard because being an artist this year, more than ever, there’s a huge, like pressure to be on social media as much as possible, but also you’re not doing anything, you’re just in your bedroom all the time. You’re trying to be entertaining, and you’re trying to keep people interested and invested, but obviously, everyone’s been struggling the past year. It’s been very tricky mentally, so yeah, it’s definitely been complicated. But I would say that I have the best fans and the nicest social media; it’s such a wonderful place. So I’ve been lucky.

I guess back then I was a lot more naive. But I think in a really amazing way. I love all the music I made back then. There’s a real sound of purity. I just have no idea what I’m doing and I think that’s amazing. You can never go back again. There’s like a wide-eyed romanticism of making music and being a songwriter. And now, I think there’s been growth. I’ve grown up as a person and musically I’ve grown. Obviously, I love the music I make nowadays but I’ll probably never make better music. *Pauses* I don’t know, that’s not true. But there’s a level of that, where it’s like, you’ll never make better music than the music you made when you didn’t have anyone to make it for. And I think that that’s always true to some level. But I love past me, I love now me, and I’m excited for future me.

Ha, I feel like 20 is quite young to make a legacy plan [laughs]. I hope I’m making music for all of my life, so in 10 years time, ask me the same question again and I’ll give you an answer.