Since releasing her 2017 single “Place We Were Made,” Maisie Peters has made quite a name for herself with her witty, narrative driven tracks that delve into universal and emotional experiences.
Her latest single, “Maybe Don’t,” a collaboration with JP Saxe, is a conversational love song that looks at our tendency to sabotage “the things we want the most,” as Peters and Saxe sing.
We chatted with the rising artist about everything from her book club to her forthcoming debut album.
Excerpt from the podcast:
What was the inspiration for your new single, “Maybe Don’t”
The inspiration for that track was essentially life. Me and JP [Saxe] were in the studio together and we were just talking about our respective situations that were going on at the time and talking about why it is that we, meaning human beings, feel like we need to ruin things that are going well. We were talking about this destructive element of being a human being and being someone that writes songs about it as well. It’s fun because I’m 20 and in the destructive part of my life and JP is a little bit older and he is in a very healthy, committed relationship and he’s very in love. It was actually really a sort of fun parallel. I think both of us brought very different energy, but it really complimented each other and created this song which is kind of about the push and pull of romantic relationships.
How did you get connected with JP and what was the writing process like?
We had known of each other and had been friends for a long time since his song, “The Few Things.” I remember hearing that and being like ‘oh my god, this is insanely good.’ I reached out and we got in touch and we had always planned to write together, we just never came through cause obviously he lives in LA and I live in London. Earlier this year, he was just playing a show in London and was like ‘oh we should write’ and of course I said yes. We just managed to luckily right before the pandemic, as well. It was right before lockdown. We managed to get in the studio with a friend of mine called Joe and wrote this song in a couple of hours. It was very chance and luck driven.
What was it like translating the song to the video?
I very much wanted us both to be in it and I wanted it to feel like a conversation and to reflect that part of the song because I thought that was a really cool part of the song. The original concept was going to be us on the phone to each other. Then really interestingly it just kind of got increasingly weirder and weirder. I love it because it feels slightly off center, like something about it is slightly weird. Obviously, our faces are joining and that’s kind of weird and then the coloring is just kind of weird and like we were so pale and there’s a lot of weird dance bits but they’re not really dance and we’re not really in time and it’s like is that intentional. I think the song is weird in itself and it has these kind of weird qualities to it as a lyric and a message and general thing, so it was really cool to reflect that in the music video.