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The Fall 2022 Music Issue
If she’s not, it’s because she’s singing or harmonizing — whether it’s a lyric, note, or melody, her mouth is constantly moving. As the camera flashes, she quickly excuses herself to move the speaker closer. The music playing from her thoughtfully-curated Spotify playlist titled “car lyfe” fills the Brooklyn studio, with songs like “touch tank” by quinnie, “Cursed” by King Princess, and “Disciples” by Tame Impala. She sings along. “I have melodies running through my head all the time,” Latour tells me later, as her fingers fidget with a roll of leftover duct tape.
Latour radiates confidence. At her photo shoot, she bounces around in cherry red sweat shorts with matching, triple red Nike Air Force Ones and shakes the hand of everyone in the room. Bright energy practically spills out of her, whether she’s harmonizing to Harry Styles’ “As It Was” while outstretching her hands toward the camera or reminiscing about performing at Lollapalooza in July, which she calls her “biggest ‘pinch me’ moment” yet. Latour is still on cloud nine from the experience. “It was literally incredible. I felt like it was the start of my career,” Latour says. “Lolla was on my mind for the whole year. I was a little nervous and giddy the morning [of the show], but I peeked out at the crowd two hours before I went on and … I saw some fans from Chicago that I recognized. Seeing them, I was like, ‘Oh, wait a second. It’s just my party.’”
Maude Latour is constantly humming.
“I was a little nervous and giddy the morning [of the show], but I peeked out at the crowd two hours before I went on and … I saw some fans from Chicago that I recognized. Seeing them, I was like, ‘Oh, wait a second. It’s just my party.’”
Her first taste of virality came from TikTok in March 2020 — the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic — when she posted a video singing her song “One More Weekend” from her shoebox dorm bedroom. The track continues to be Latour’s biggest, with over 30 million streams on Spotify. Earlier this month, her cover of “Kids in America” was featured in the Netflix film Do Revenge starring Maya Hawke and Camila Mendes, and she’s got an upcoming performance at Austin City Limits in October.
Latour’s gearing up for the release of her EP 001, out on Sept. 30. It’s the third in her discography, a highly-anticipated follow-up to Strangers Forever, released in 2021, and her debut EP, Starsick, in 2019. Her month-long nationwide tour kicks off Sept. 29, too, which she’s “nervous” but mostly “excited” about (it’s “definitely [another] party”). Outside of those projects, Latour has released nearly a dozen singles. She did almost all of it while she was a full-time college student at Columbia University (she graduated in May), studying the philosophies of Socrates and Plato on the weekdays and flying out to perform in front of thousands of fans on weekends.
At 22, Latour is quickly on her way to becoming a household name.
“So many of my lyrics have been detailed narrations of things, and me describing my body, or myself, from a bird’s eye view. And I am working on actually being in my body and my words, and talking about things directly instead of an observation of them.”
“My senior year was definitely the hardest,” Latour admits. “The label was very generous in letting me get a little time and having faith in me that I’d pull through, but I cannot even. When you’re in school, the thought of doing homework is just always on your mind — the assignments and the schoolwork and everything, and the demanding schedule of classes.” And while balancing her budding music career, college, and just being a 22-year-old (Latour recently got her driver’s license) was certainly a challenge, it was one Latour wouldn’t change. “I’m really glad I finished,” she says.
While she’s running at max capacity, Latour’s trying to focus on why she’s doing what she’s doing in the first place: to make songs that have real meaning. “The essence of my music is always, always about big feelings.” But, “right now, I’m trying to be less,” she says. “So many of my lyrics have been detailed narrations of things, and me describing my body, or myself, from a bird’s eye view. And I am working on actually being in my body and my words, and talking about things directly instead of an observation of them.”
Latour sings lines like, “Now I’m 23 / I’m feeling everything / Sometimes I wanna give up / But you’re keeping me up.” It’s Latour’s deeply relatable attempt to work out this transitional period in her life, as well as a personal effort to get more raw in her songwriting. “I want my words and my songs to reflect how I truly feel. I don’t want to be unintentional or careless with them,” she says. “I want [my songs] to hold weight and for me to be responsible for the weight they hold. I got that from philosophy, where words are really precious and you have to listen to where each sentence takes you. You try to be as true as possible all the time.”
Latour is also approaching the growing pains of love and heartbreak head-on in her music. Her songs are existential and thought-provoking, exploring the challenges of getting older and the complexities of romance and friendship. Some detail the blurry lines between amorous chemistry and platonic love — something Latour has dealt with in her personal life, especially as she’s navigated her sexuality. (In a TikTok, Latour shared she knew she was bisexual since ninth grade.)
In her song “Probabilities,” which was written on an airplane and dropped a month before our interview in August,
“I want [my songs] to hold weight and for me to be responsible for the weight they hold. I got that from philosophy, where words are really precious and you have to listen to where each sentence takes you. You try to be as true as possible all the time.”
She opens the song singing, “You were on my mind all night / I hope you know that / You don’t even have to try / I want you so bad.” On March 27, Latour posted a TikTok where she nervously showed Lola the track for the first time. It’s racked up over 1.2 million views.
“We know so little about love, and there’s just so many ways it can be, and the boxes that we have for it really don’t always make sense. And it’s OK for us to challenge what we think love is supposed to look like,” Latour says. She pauses, then pivots. “But then sometimes, I’ve figured out that having some boxes are helpful, because otherwise it gets super confusing. Like I say in ‘Starsick,’ I don’t know a thing about love.”
Latour’s song “Lola” went viral when she shared it was about one of her best friends.
“We know so little about love, and there’s just so many ways it can be, and the boxes that we have for it really don’t always make sense. And it’s OK for us to challenge what we think love is supposed to look like."
She tells me, “I feel close to my friends for sure, and my family and the people I work with are really intimate parts of my life,” adding they were a huge reason she decided to finish school while her career was taking off. “I feel really transparent with them and honest with them.” Outside of her rising fame and thousands of fans and millions of streams, Latour just wants to live a normal life.
When I ask Latour what her perfect day is, most of her answer doesn’t even involve being a musician. She walks me through her day, which would include coffee, good food (probably a sandwich), watching the sun set, going to a rooftop party with her friends, and enjoying “some fruity type of drink.” (At the party, she’s not on AUX — the person who is on AUX is curating to her taste, though.) When she gets home, she wants to unwind with exactly “three episodes of a reality television show,” either The Bachelor, Love Island, or The Circle. “I’m a deep stan.”
Part of what keeps Latour so grounded is maintaining her closest relationships, despite being an up-and-coming alt pop star.
While fame can come and go, at the end of the day, Latour is “a person first,” as she puts it, and wants to be a good friend, a good daughter, and a good person. “I want to feel really confident and feel like I’m a person that I’m proud of. I want to feel close to love and the world and people and friendships. I want to live according to principles that I believe in and be working on some projects in different realms of my brain that help me live a full life and help make the world good,” she says. And she wants to “drive really well.”
Above all, Latour wants her music to hold weight. “I don’t want my music to be about nothing,” Latour says. “I really want it to mean something, and be sacred, and add more good to the world.”
Latour’s aspirations go further than becoming a household name.
“I want to feel really confident and feel like I’m a person that I'm proud of. I want to feel close to love and the world and people and friendships. I want to live according to principles that I believe in and be working on some projects in different realms of my brain that help me live a full life and help make the world good.”
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She's got her heart set on finding deeper meaning in both her music and her life.
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