Maisie Peters is yawning from a phone booth in a New York airport lounge and politely excuses herself, which is unnecessary. Her exhaustion is well-earned. The warranted apology comes from me, for sucking up an hour that could have been used to rest. She woke up at 4:45 a.m. to wake up the rest of New York City with her triumphant pop earworm “Lost The Breakup” on Today. After that, she hit Rough Trade NYC for an intimate album signing and performance around her sophomore album, The Good Witch, where she and her fans held a group manifestation. “The Good Witch to No. 1, The Good Witch to No. 1,” they chanted with their eyes closed, kneeling together in prayer.
“I've spent the last two years training my mind out of believing numbers and streams are a reflection on me as an artist or as a person because you just can't afford to live like that. You’ll crumple under it,” Peters, 23, tells Uproxx over Zoom, two days before The Good Witch debuts at No. 1 on the UK’s Official Albums Chart, making her the youngest British woman at the top since Ella Henderson in 2014.
Peters wasn’t immune to wanting a No. 1 album to her name, but she approached it as “a little group project” with her fans because “it’s cool to try” and it’s “a testament to the community we’ve built.” After The Good Witch’s No. 1 debut, 380 fans attended another signing at HMV Leeds in Leeds, UK, on July 1; one fan brou ght a big, blue No. 1 balloon, and another made a Lego version of Peters holding a spell book.
“Life is long,” she says. “I'm gonna make many albums, and, I hope, play many special shows and meet many fans.”
PHOTOGRAPHY BY:
Andy Ford
EDITION 24
JULY 2023
July 12, 2023
BY: Megan Armstrong
By the time Chloe x Halle prepared to release their second album, 2020’s Ungodly Hour, there wasn’t much doubt about whether the duo could find success again. The question was more so, what would they bring to the table this time around? Through the album’s 13 songs, listeners slowly watched Chloe x Halle operate at a fine level of maturity. Their natural innocence toward the world was gone and replaced with recognition, as well as some cuts and bruises, of the dangers in life and love. Ungodly Hour portrayed artistic and contextual growth while unlocking a brighter spotlight and a new level of attention for the Bailey sisters. Furthermore, confirming the duo’s improvements, Ungodly Hour and songs from it were selected in three categories at the 2021 Grammys: Best Progressive R&B Album, Best Traditional R&B Performance, and Best R&B Song. In the immediate aftermath of the duo’s sophomore album, Halle found herself overseas filming for her role as Princess Ariel in the upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Chlöe remained stateside, but in her own unique way, she used this time to project a new version of herself – new to the public that is at least – to screens all over the world.
This story of Chloe x Halle is one that the public knows well. However, the story of Chlöe the soloist is still one that’s being put together. It’s been a little over a year since Chlöe teased her debut solo single on what was her 23rd birthday. “This is 23… HAVE MERCY,” she wrote on Twitter with both the peach and hands raised emojis. This officially launched the campaign for her debut single, “Have Mercy,” a song that arrived just two months later. Chlöe’s step into her solo artistry was one we all expected for some months by the time she entered her Jordan year. By then, she’d serenaded the world with covers of Drake (“Marvin’s Room”), Nina Simone (“Feeling Good”), Rihanna (“Love On The Brain”), and Cardi B (“Be Careful”). The series of soaring tributes began in the spring of 2021 and continued for well over a year, and as Chlöe tells it, they were strategic as much as they were for fun.
“I wanted people to see me get back to my roots,” she says by phone from Atlanta. “For all of the incredible supporters, I wanted to still feed them while I was working on my solo music behind the scenes, I didn’t want to go complete ghost.” Additionally, these covers also marked a blast to her past. “That was how sis and I started on YouTube,” she notes. “I thought it would be nice to go back to how people originally met me and how people saw me from the beginning.” The formula worked for Chloe x Halle, and with an artistic and personal growth that’s quite hard to ignore, there’s no reason why elements of that past formula shouldn’t work in Chlöe’s favor years later. As the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Peters decompressed in the garden back home during the COVID-19 lockdown. At the onset of the pandemic, Peters and Sheeran wrote a few songs together. Sheeran christened their working relationship by sending a one-of-one Lowden guitar to Peters’ parents’ house, where she was living. Peters had explained how much time she’d been spending in the garden’s greenhouse, so Sheeran mailed the guitar with the note, “For the greenhouse.” Peters reserves the guitar for special occasions, playing it across You Signed Up For This and The Good Witch.
Peters’ mother unknowingly foreshadowed her daughter and one of her generation’s preeminent pop stars becoming unlikely yet totally fated peers.
“No one knew it was gonna become this,” Peters says. “My gran is from the small town near Suffolk, where Ed lives. My mom used to say, ‘I thought you were good, but I just didn't know how to make people hear you.’ She'd always joke, ‘I want to put your music on a CD and give it to Ed Sheeran.’ He just lived near my gran, so it was kind of our joke.”
Peters’ upbringing around West Sussex, England, in towns like Brighton and Steyning, reads like a full-circle fairytale ripped from the fiction Peters ravenously read as a young girl. Her first love was literature.
“I've always liked books and words on pages. I would be an author before I was a music video director. I could quite happily release music with a single white piece of paper as the cover art till the day I die,” she says. “I was writing book ideas and unending chapter ones. I never got past chapter one. That's why I started writing music.”
Harry Potter, The Poisonwood Bible, Twilight, et cetera filled up her childhood bookshelf, but Peters “hated being read to” because she easily bored and “wanted to be further ahead.”
“I wanted to be in charge of the pace,” she says.
She was in firm control of the expedited pace of her teenage development. Mom and Dad bought Peters her first guitar when music began taking up territory in her heart around age 12 or 13. Soon, she’d play songs she was working on to Mom in the living room, fielding honest feedback, or study the likes of Sheeran (particularly “Lego House” and “The A Team”), Taylor Swift, and Lily Allen in her bedroom. Most weekends, Dad supervised her busking for hours on the Brighton streets.
Instead of Gran physically delivering Sheeran a CD, a 15-year-old Peters posted original songs to YouTube, catching the attention of her now-manager and making it possible for Sheeran to discover her later. By 17, she gained undeniable traction from her independently released piano ballad “Birthday” and the acoustic, nostalgic “Place We Were Made.”
Peters’ formative literary obsession was conducive to her disciplined writing style. She doesn’t romanticize songwriting; she simply documents to defeat her memory’s fallibility. She recalls being in bed with someone and pausing to scribble a thought, taking out her phone at a restaurant table to hum a voice memo, and sneakily typing what someone said mid-conversation.
“I used to think that if you wrote a song every day, you were good,” Peters says. “And there's something in being like a river that keeps going, but it's important to have something to say. If you write a song every day, all the time, how do you know which is important? Which of those is really something you feel the need to say, or is it that you're just saying a lot?”
Peters was never content with merely posing questions like these. Her curiosity demands deeper exploration. Though a teenager when crafting You Signed Up For This, she was seasoned and self-assured.
The next few years promise to be exciting for Chlöe, starting with her upcoming self-titled debut album. Specific details about the project, like when it will be released and possible guest features on it, remain under wraps. However, one thing is for sure: the project will see the light of day. Back in March, Chlöe revealed that her debut was complete and that it had been submitted to her label, confirming that she would not find herself in a state of constant perfecting and re-perfecting as we’ve seen with some of her contemporaries.
“I am just so eager for the fans to hear the songs and the music, and I hope they love it when it finally comes out into the world,” she says happily. Despite the rather skim details about Chlöe, we do know that the album will document the aforementioned rise of power that Chlöe has experienced internally. “In the beginning, you can tell that [the person] who is singing is like a bird with broken wings,” she noted in a past interview with Allure. “As time went on, you can hear me finding my strength and confidence. I didn’t want to lose that story as I pieced the [songs] together.”
“The point I'm making is it'll be people that will judge or making an opinion about my music and A, you don't know this environment, or B, never took the time to even listen to what I'm really saying on the album,” he says. “That happens far too many times. You wish people would really listen, but I don't even blame them because there's so much music coming out.” Does he feel as though he’s gotten overlooked or lost in the furor?
“Yes,” he agrees. “I don't think a lot of people don't know that me, Cole, and Pharrell opened for Jay-Z. We did a whole college tour... A lot of people don't know I opened for Jay before that, even in Europe… A lot of people don't know I opened for Rihanna in Europe. Because there was no Snapchat. I wasn't walking around with a cameraman for YouTube all day. It was a weird time… We got a little bit of the Mandela effect going on in this generation.” However, he says, “I might just try to do the best I can because there'll be a time when it will all connect and everybody is going to put everything together and then it'll all makes sense to some people that it might not make sense to. I would not be lying to say it wasn't frustrating, but ain't nothing to do about it but just keep pushing. It’ll be on Folarin II, where I wrote these subtle reminders all throughout the album.”
When I ask him how this album will be different from the 2012 Folarin mixtape, which featured appearances from 2 Chainz, Chinx Drugz, French Montana, Nipsey Hussle, Rick Ross, and Scarface, among others, Wale compares the project to Jay-Z’s career-defining 2001 release, calling it a “Blueprint” record. “I feel like the process on this one was pretty much, as soon as I got into the mode, it just started feeling like, ‘You know what? Where I am, how I feel, how I know who I am, regardless of what anybody's talking about,’ it started just speaking to me more. I was like, ‘This is Folarin II.’ Folarin is when I started really coming into my own. I really was in that space. I was just singing with my chest. I think that's what's happening now.”
“It's a space that I was in, this bubble,” he continues. “Some days I felt like telling the stories and some days I felt like talking about things going on back home. Some days I felt like talking about shit. The next day I felt like talking about shit. Then the next day I felt like talking about shit. Then the next day I want to do something else. It was just a moment in time, this bubble of where I'm at…. I made sure I spelled it out, it's more grandiose. I think all of them have a different thing, man. Folarin II is its own thing, but it's just the same intentions and the same feeling that I had when I made Folarin 1.”
Peters’ commitment to intent nearly backfired when trying to write the title track for a then-untitled album. Several options floated around for months.
“There’s a song called ‘Coming Of Age,’ and there's a line in that song where I go, ‘Baby, I am The Iliad / Of course you couldn't read me,’” she says. “And for a while, I really wanted to call the album The Iliad because I think that's so funny — a modern woman's Iliad.”
Next time.
“I'm still gonna write my Iliad.”
One week at Decoy Studios in Suffolk with Rubel birthed “Wendy,” “Want You Back,” “BSC,” and “History Of Man.” Toward the end of the week, she knew she needed to get the title track off her chest. She kept returning to “The Good Witch.” Peters fought for the album title, calling her manager to explain her gut feeling about it.
“It reflects building and destroying something and having the power to do that,” she says. “Within this album, I had this huge lack of power because I wanted somebody and something that didn't want me. I found that really hard, but as much as I had no power, I had all the power because I was writing it, it was my story, and I got to say everything I wanted to say.”
In addition to video games and sneakers, Wale’s other big preoccupation is with wrestling. The appeal is obvious; in the same way rappers create characters for themselves, overcoming financial and structural obstacles, wrestlers do the same thing with physical ones. They can both become larger-than-life, exaggerating characteristics, creating their own narrative, and redefining themselves in the public eye. However, this wasn’t always the case. At one point, Wale was really the only rapper making himself such a visible fan of the sport. Just like with sneakers and livestreaming — that’s right, Wale was livestreaming himself on the now-defunct UStream, years before Instagram and TikTok allowed similar functionality to connect artists with fans — he was just a little bit ahead of his time.
“You know, now there is a little slight shift in wrestling,” he muses. “You got to look at guys like myself and Westside Gunn, Smoke DZA, Flatbush Zombies, we've been a part of that culture for a long time. And Black journalists too, Black writers are talking more about it and uplifting our Black wrestlers. And this is a special time in that culture. The conversations are happening. I work closely with Neil Lawi at the WWE, and I talked to Triple H last week on text. So there's definitely... It's an interesting time for wrestling. You got the R&C podcast, you got the WrassleRap [social media movement], you got Kaz[eem Famuyide] doing it so crazy... Media uplifting the culture, you got Westside Gunn on the crazy run right now, uplifting the culture. So we love where it's at right now. We love where it's going.”
Again, it feels like Wale’s interests parallel his real-life trajectory as an entertainer. He’s always on the ball before anyone else — but he rarely remains there alone for long. It just takes others a while to catch on. On being one of the first highly visible artists bigging up Nigeria before the Afrobeats genre broke stateside, he says, “It's one of them things that I feel like I knew was inevitable and it's not going to stop anytime soon. So I'm proud of all my guys and girls. I'm just grateful that I can be somebody seen as part of that culture.” Isn’t he being too humble? “Nah. I've been valid. My thing is if you know, you know. So I'm not overly concerned with that. Everybody know what I do and what I've did. And if they don't, Google is free.”
He takes the same attitude toward the world’s skeptical view of go-go, which still threads through his music like the ever-critical stitching holding together his favorite Nikes. “Go-go is a genre where you got to experience that shit live to all the way, get it for real,” he says. “After you experienced it live, you have a different appreciation for it. This is what I assumed because I think I was maybe 13 years old when I realized go-go was only local. I thought everybody back then knew what go-go was. When I was a kid, I thought everybody in the whole world knew who those people was. Now that I've learned so much about the actual music and instruments and mixing and culture from all over the world, I can understand why we never really made that leap after [Junkyard Band’s] “Sardines” and [E.U’s] “Doin’ Da Butt.”
Maisie Peters is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
“It was a breakup to me, but it's debatable, without saying too many facts,” Peters says of the inciting relationship. “How long were we together? What significance did that relationship have to the other person? Is it a breakup for them? We almost were, and then we weren't. I thought we could be, and it didn't happen.”
Romance is nestled within universally relatable concepts like transitioning from girlhood to womanhood and the innate human desire for reciprocation. “I’m on a one-way trip to take over the world / You could’ve come, babe, I held out my hand,” she sings in “You’re Just A Boy (And I’m Kinda The Man).” More concisely, she sings “I go where I’m wanted” in the cleansing album closer, “There It Goes.”
However, Peters’ heartbroken vulnerability bleeds on tender tracks such as “Therapy,” “Two Weeks Ago” (Peters’ mom’s favorite), and “Want You Back,” featuring guitar-playing by Sheeran and purposefully placed fifth on the tracklist. Track 5 is the Swifitian law that Peters abides by the most. She obviously developed Swift’s Easter egg gene, with callback lyrics galore between You Signed Up For This and The Good Witch. (Per Peters’ request, Shayla compiled the list as a Twitter thread.)
“I felt like I was making a sequel,” Peters says. “Maybe I had songs that were smarter or catchier or bigger or more emotional, but songs like ‘There It Goes’ and ‘The Band And I,’ I needed these songs on this record because it tells this story. It's like a chapter. You can't just not have a chapter of the book. My first album was like throwing paint at a wall. This album feels like a picture painted with more intent.”
GRIFF is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
“Mais has always known the kind of artist she wanted to be, but she has gained so much more confidence in her artistry over the past few years,” says Joe Rubel, one of Peters’ closest collaborators over the last five years with production and writing credits on You Signed Up For This and The Good Witch. “She has somehow honed in on exactly what she wants to say and the framework in which to say it. We wrote some of the songs for The Good Witch within a year of her debut album coming out, and she also put out five new songs in that year. That takes real guts and focus, and it’s a real privilege that I’m able to share in that process with her.”
Still, Peters struggles with the rigors of comparison inherent in being a famous musician or just in being a young woman. She wrestles with it out in the open on the scrutinizing Good Witch single “Body Better.” In hindsight, sharing her adolescence with her twin sister, Ellen, helped. Giving and receiving support from other women also helps — reminiscent of singing to her mom in the living room.
Taylor Swift co-signed Peters’ December 2020 recreation of “Exile” with Griff, tweeting, in part, “I’m a huge fan.” More recently, Diane Keaton posted an Instagram Story about Peters’ unhinged — her word, not mine — anthem “BSC” (“You think I’m alright / But I’m actually bloody motherf*cking batsh*t crazy”) from The Good Witch, writing, “You definitely didn’t drop the ball!”
As The Good Witch took shape between October 2021 and December 14, 2022 — anywhere from Suffolk, England to Stockholm, Sweden — she leaned further into her intuition and inner circle.
Being the biggest — again, another mantra of hers — comes with its ups and downs. Shortly after releasing a freestyle to the viral SpottemGotem single “Beatbox” earlier this year, Latto found herself embroiled in the sort of rap drama that it would seem the game might have outgrown now that there are so many new female rappers finding success at the same time. However, uneasy is the head that wears a crown, and by dubbing herself the biggest female rapper from Atlanta — currently inarguably true, at least judging by sales — she apparently rankled some of her fellow Georgians with the track. Renni Rucci, another Atlanta rapper, recoiled at Latto’s assertion of being “the biggest,” leading to a back-and-forth that still amuses her.
“Look, on my mama,” she chuckles. “I did not think that that was going ruffle feathers like that. I swear to God. I do this. I'm a very confident woman. Some might call it cocky, I don't give a fuck. I'm seasoned and I know I'm good at what I do. So when I go in that booth, I pop my shit. So that's not me taking shots at nobody or me dissing anybody. It's a lot of bitches who put Big in front of they name that I'm cool with. So that wasn't no dis but at end of the day, we in hip-hop, baby, we still competition. It ain't even that deep. It's just me going in there popping my shit. It's not even for nobody to take it to heart. So I definitely didn't think it was going to do all that. I don't remember being offended though. I remember being like, 'Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah. You the biggest too, girl. Go ahead.’”
“I went to deliver Ed his personal [Good Witch] album. He's actually already ordered, like, four or five, he said,” she says, forming a heart with her fingers. “But I gave him one, which said, ‘I heart Ed Sheeran,’ and then [wrote on] the back, ‘The club isn't the best place to find a lover - Aristotle’ to remind him of his genius.”
The crux of Peters’ genius, though, is staying grounded, ascending without detaching, despite a two-year stretch that puts this New York City whirlwind to shame.
Prior to signing with Sheeran, Peters handled the May 2021 second-season soundtrack for the Apple TV+ series Trying. That was an appetizer for her August 2021 debut LP You Signed Up For This, boasting the synthy “Psycho” and equally infectious “John Hughes Movie” as gold-star singles underscoring Peters’ lyrical dexterity — weaving timeless pop cultural references with autobiographical details.
March and November 2022 staged headlining North American tours, and she spent a chunk of the past year opening for the European, UK, Australian, and New Zealand legs of Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour.
“I’ve worked so hard the past two, three years,” she says. “My band, my manager, my tour manager, they've all been [with me] since I was playing to literally 10 people. Everyone sacrificed so much to be part of this team — to do the shows, the tours, the promo trips. Earlier, my tour manager, Harry, was like, ‘I'm tired, but at least I'm not driving the splitter van anymore.’”
At some point during last year’s Mathematics Tour gauntlet, Peters and Sheeran rocked matching black graphic tees displaying “I CAME FOR ED SHEERAN I LEFT WITH MAISIE PETERS” across the chest. But the fan account Mazziememes has been here for Peters all along. The platform was co-created in July 2021 by Mal from the Netherlands and Shayla from the US, who each began following Peters in 2018 and attest to her enduringly authentic character.
“I first met Maisie in October 2019 at her Nashville concert,” Shayla, 18, writes to Uproxx via Twitter DM. “We had interacted quite a bit, so she knew who I was, which was sort of daunting, but she's genuinely the sweetest person ever when it comes to meeting fans. I was crying and was really nervous, and she just carried the conversation as normal, even asking my sister and I what outfit she should wear for the show. The ‘never meet your heroes’ cliche could never apply to Maisie.”
“Two people falling in love, falling out of it, all the parts in between, is magic. It could be for your whole life, or it could be for two months. It's impossible that it works out, but it does all the time. I think that this album is about really believing in that magic of love. Even if it didn't work out for me in that instance, I still am so in awe that I'd had it.”
Peters is awed by the experiences she’s about to have, especially belting “BSC” from the Wembley stage.
"You only do these things once,” she says. “Sometimes, it's like, This is so important! Why can I only do it once? Why can't I do it, like, three times?”
Why stop at three? Peters doesn’t believe in star signs, but she can forever wish upon the Ursa Major star named “The Good Witch” by a fan who presented the certificate to Peters at the July 2 Liverpool signing. The good news for the good witch is that she won’t need to waste a wish on reliving the past. She possesses the power to conjure whatever future she wants.
The past two years haven’t been the easiest for Chlöe. Her stardom presents its own pros and cons. Granted, stars often experience increased scrutiny, but unfortunately, it’s worse for Black women, young or old. Society always seems quick to criticize and dramatize their flaws while forgetting its own imperfections. Add in the fact that she and her sister are the musical progeny of Beyoncé, and you can see that life is more complicated than it usually is for a 24-year-old. With barely a quarter-century of life experience under her belt, one would hope that the world would be a bit more gracious to the young singer and allow her to find herself and figure out the world at the same time. While that’s seemingly too much to ask from some people, Chlöe isn’t complaining too much.
“It's a weird place to be in because as a human being it does hurt sometimes hearing certain things,” she admits. “But at the same time, this is my job. So, it's really up to me to create those boundaries in my mental state and be like, 'Okay, this is what is important to me,’ prioritizing that, and tuning out the rest of the noise.” Chlöe confesses to “hard” moments, “struggles,” and times of breaking “down crying and in tears,” but it doesn’t outweigh the glory of living out the dreams her younger self longed so much for. “I still pinch myself at the same time because I get to do what I've always dreamed up since I was a little girl,” she says. “So, it's like anything that you love, none of that comes easy. Anything that's worth it doesn't come easy. So, I feel like it's just kind of a part of it, I just have to learn how to have tough skin.”
Writer: Megan Armstrong
(IG: @documeg)
Photographer: Andy Ford
(@andyforduk)
Stylist: Luci Ellis
(@luciellis)
Hair and Makeup: Elizabeth Rita
(@elizabethritamua)
Digital Design: Carlos Sotelo Olivas
(@barlosx)
Creative Direction: Philip Cosores
(@philipcosores)
Peters and her band commemorated The Good Witch’s June 23 release day by blasting it en route to Glastonbury. As they approached the festival in their van, the album’s purest love letter, “The Band And I” started playing.
“That line came on about Jack, my drummer, falling in love with a girl at a cookie shop, like, ‘He said he’d make a move and then he went with, excuse me?’ Soph, my photographer, goes, ‘Jack, immortalized forever as having no rizz.’ And then the line, ‘It was Tina stoned.’ Soph goes, ‘Immortalized forever as an icon,’” Peters says. “Immortalized forever are all these little things. I literally describe exactly what we were all doing [in March 2022], and we all are still doing it.”
Peters’ tour rituals haven’t changed, but she’s inevitably evolved after cramming so much life into a condensed span. It’s an artist’s rite of passage to deliver “the breakup album.” Peters hedges that The Good Witch is “sort of” her breakup album.
Photographer: PETER DONAGHY
@DONSLENS
Mal, 24, finally met Peters IRL outside of Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam, a July 2022 stop on the Mathematics Tour. They hugged and immediately burst into tears.
“It’s nice to be seen by someone you look up to. It makes it feel like you’re actually doing something for them and not just posting into the void,” Mal writes via Twitter DM, adding, “It’s probably easier to meet your ‘hero’ when they have no clue who you are because there’s no expectations you can disappoint. But for me, it was exactly as I thought it would be.”
The fans who met Peters at Rough Trade NYC, HMV Leeds, or any other recent Good Witch signing got the same Peters that embraced Shayla in 2019 and Mal last summer.
“Ed is always at dinner with someone. I’ve never met a man who has so many genuine dinners with people,” Peters says. “It doesn't matter if I've met 500 people. Everybody matters. That’s something Ed's taught me, definitely.”
Thousands more will soon have the chance. Peters will embark on her headlining Good Witch run, including New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on August 11 and her biggest-ever, sold-out headlining show at London’s OVO Arena Wembley on November 3. She’ll also reunite with Sheeran for the North American Mathematics Tour homestretch.
“Making an album is so weird,” she says. “When you finish it, there is at least one moment of, like, I did it. It's real, it's there. But then, very quickly, it's like, Well, now I need to promote it, and other people need to understand it, too. I need to rehearse it and work out the setlist. It's sort of like a garden you have to maintain. There are brief moments where you can look at the garden and be like, Wow, that's so cool. I can't believe that's my garden.”
The Good Witch cleverly employs fictitious imagery. “You could take me to Neverland, baby / We could live off of magic and maybes,” Peters sings at the beginning of the “Wendy” chorus, which emphatically ends with, “And what about my wings? / What about Wendy?”
“Someone on Twitter was like, ‘You think you're Wendy, but have you ever thought that you are the short, angry blonde who hates men?’ Tinkerbell. And that is something to think about,” Peters says with a laugh.
The album’s lasting achievement is dispelling that magic is reserved for the likes of Tinkerbell. Magic is alive, hidden all around, awaiting those brave enough to look. Peters has found it in the most unsuspecting places, from her parents’ garden and the tour van to Mazziememes and Rough Trade NYC.
“I'm this huge cynic, but I have this core heart of deep romanticism. I really believe that music is magic because one day a song doesn't exist, and then the next day, Paul McCartney writes ‘Hey Jude,’” Peters says. “A million things have to happen for him to sing those two words.
For now, Peters should probably sleep on this evening’s flight from New York back to the UK — a broomstick ride would be clutch — though she’s tempted to dive into a new book, Agustina Bazterrica’s Nineteen Claws And A Blackbird, given to her by a fan at Rough Trade.
“When fans say something or do something that's so cute, I take a photo of them,” Peters says, draped in her tried-and-true oversized navy blue Levi’s sweatshirt. This pictorial tradition is a tangible extension of her artistic comfort, putting herself out there and trusting the right people will reciprocate. “There was a different girl in the queue who was telling me that she'd listened to my song ‘I’m Trying’ for nine hours.’ That is so many hours.”
Peters’ 24-hour stint in New York City ended with Ed Sheeran, her close confidant who happened to become her label boss after signing to his Gingerbread Man Records imprint two Junes ago. She popped by the 50th birthday party for Sheeran’s manager, Stuart Camp — a private Star Wars marathon at Soho House.
Peters wasn’t immune to wanting a No. 1 album to her name, but she approached it as “a little group project” with her fans because “it’s cool to try” and it’s “a testament to the community we’ve built.” After The Good Witch’s No. 1 debut, 380 fans attended another signing at HMV Leeds in Leeds, UK, on July 1; one fan brought a big, blue No. 1 balloon, and another made a Lego version of Peters holding a spell book.
“Life is long,” she says. “I'm gonna make many albums, and, I hope, play many special shows and meet many fans.”
Peters wasn’t immune to wanting a No. 1 album to her name, but she approached it as “a little group project” with her fans because “it’s cool to try” and it’s “a testament to the community we’ve built.” After The Good Witch’s No. 1 debut, 380 fans attended another signing at HMV Leeds in Leeds, UK, on July 1; one fan brought a big, blue No. 1 balloon, and another made a Lego version of Peters holding a spell book.
“Life is long,” she says. “I'm gonna make many albums, and, I hope, play many special shows and meet many fans.”
“I went to deliver Ed his personal [Good Witch] album. He's actually already ordered, like, four or five, he said,” she says, forming a heart with her fingers. “But I gave him one, which said, ‘I heart Ed Sheeran,’ and then [wrote on] the back, ‘The club isn't the best place to find a lover - Aristotle’ to remind him of his genius.”
The crux of Peters’ genius, though, is staying grounded, ascending without detaching, despite a two-year stretch that puts this New York City whirlwind to shame.
Prior to signing with Sheeran, Peters handled the May 2021 second-season soundtrack for the Apple TV+ series Trying. That was an appetizer for her August 2021 debut LP You Signed Up For This, boasting the synthy “Psycho” and equally infectious “John Hughes Movie” as gold-star singles underscoring Peters’ lyrical dexterity — weaving timeless pop cultural references with autobiographical details.
March and November 2022 staged headlining North American tours, and she spent a chunk of the past year opening for the European, UK, Australian, and New Zealand legs of Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour.
Prior to signing with Sheeran, Peters handled the May 2021 second-season soundtrack for the Apple TV+ series Trying. That was an appetizer for her August 2021 debut LP You Signed Up For This, boasting the synthy “Psycho” and equally infectious “John Hughes Movie” as gold-star singles underscoring Peters’ lyrical dexterity — weaving timeless pop cultural references with autobiographical details.
March and November 2022 staged headlining North American tours, and she spent a chunk of the past year opening for the European, UK, Australian, and New Zealand legs of Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour.
“I’ve worked so hard the past two, three years,” she says. “My band, my manager, my tour manager, they've all been [with me] since I was playing to literally 10 people. Everyone sacrificed so much to be part of this team — to do the shows, the tours, the promo trips. Earlier, my tour manager, Harry, was like, ‘I'm tired, but at least I'm not driving the splitter van anymore.’”
“When fans say something or do something that's so cute, I take a photo of them,” Peters says, draped in her tried-and-true oversized navy blue Levi’s sweatshirt. This pictorial tradition is a tangible extension of her artistic comfort, putting herself out there and trusting the right people will reciprocate. “There was a different girl in the queue who was telling me that she'd listened to my song ‘I’m Trying’ for nine hours.’ That is so many hours.”
Peters’ 24-hour stint in New York City ended with Ed Sheeran, her close confidant who happened to become her label boss after signing to his Gingerbread Man Records imprint two Junes ago. She popped by the 50th birthday party for Sheeran’s manager, Stuart Camp — a private Star Wars marathon at Soho House.
“Am I good enough? Do I like the music and the art that I'm making? Do people even want to hear me in this way?” These are questions she admits swirled in her head in the beginning, but nowadays, she seems quicker to conquer these moments of self-doubt thanks to some help from her godmother. “Even now, I'm still getting out of it,” she admits. “Of trying to prove myself to people that I'm worthy enough when I should just believe that I am worthy enough.”
Our conversation takes place just a couple of days before Beyoncé – who signed Chlöe to Parkwood and also serves as her mentor – released her long-awaited seventh album Renaissance. This meant that for the first time since signing to Parkwood, Chlöe was crafting a body of work at the same time Beyoncé was, offering a unique opportunity to see Queen Bey put together the album, which has been met with critical acclaim in the days following its release. “Ever since I was a young girl, I've always been inspired by her,” Chlöe says of her mentor. “To be able to hear the music and get to see her thought process in choosing certain songs, and just knowing how fearless she is, it's been incredibly inspiring to me.”
For Chlöe, success is being able to live out “every single dream that I have." When asked what she thinks her teenage self would say to her today, she replies, "Keep going, keep holding my head up, and look what you're doing. This is what you've always dreamed up, and I know you're not exactly where you want to be, but you're on the right path… you should be proud of yourself.”
The Good Witch cleverly employs fictitious imagery. “You could take me to Neverland, baby
/ We could live off of magic and maybes,” Peters sings at the beginning of the “Wendy” chorus, which emphatically ends with, “And what about my wings? / What about Wendy?”
“Someone on Twitter was like, ‘You think you're Wendy, but have you ever thought that you are the short, angry blonde who hates men?’ Tinkerbell. And that is something to think about,” Peters says with a laugh.
The album’s lasting achievement is dispelling that magic is reserved for the likes of Tinkerbell. Magic is alive, hidden all around, awaiting those brave enough to look. Peters has found it in the most unsuspecting places, from her parents’ garden and the tour van to Mazziememes and Rough Trade NYC.
“I'm this huge cynic, but I have this core heart of deep romanticism. I really believe that music is magic because one day a song doesn't exist, and then the next day, Paul McCartney writes ‘Hey Jude,’” Peters says. “A million things have to happen for him to sing those two words.
“I first met Maisie in October 2019 at her Nashville concert,” Shayla, 18, writes to Uproxx via Twitter DM. “We had interacted quite a bit, so she knew who I was, which was sort of daunting, but she's genuinely the sweetest person ever when it comes to meeting fans. I was crying and was really nervous, and she just carried the conversation as normal, even asking my sister and I what outfit she should wear for the show. The ‘never meet your heroes’ cliche could never apply to Maisie.”
Mal, 24, finally met Peters IRL outside of Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam, a July 2022 stop on the Mathematics Tour. They hugged and immediately burst into tears.
“It’s nice to be seen by someone you look up to. It makes it feel like you’re actually doing something for them and not just posting into the void,” Mal writes via Twitter DM, adding, “It’s probably easier to meet your ‘hero’ when they have no clue who you are because there’s no expectations you can disappoint. But for me, it was exactly as I thought it would be.”
The fans who met Peters at Rough Trade NYC, HMV Leeds, or any other recent Good Witch signing got the same Peters that embraced Shayla in 2019 and Mal last summer.
“Ed is always at dinner with someone. I’ve never met a man who has so many genuine dinners with people,” Peters says. “It doesn't matter if I've met 500 people. Everybody matters. That’s something Ed's taught me, definitely.”
Thousands more will soon have the chance. Peters will embark on her headlining Good Witch run, including New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on August 11 and her biggest-ever, sold-out headlining show at London’s OVO Arena Wembley on November 3. She’ll also reunite with Sheeran for the North American Mathematics Tour homestretch.
“Making an album is so weird,” she says. “When you finish it, there is at least one moment of, like, I did it. It's real, it's there. But then, very quickly, it's like, Well, now I need to promote it, and other people need to understand it, too. I need to rehearse it and work out the setlist. It's sort of like a garden you have to maintain. There are brief moments where you can look at the garden and be like, Wow, that's so cool. I can't believe that's my garden.”
“I went to deliver Ed his personal [Good Witch] album. He's actually already ordered, like, four or five, he said,” she says, forming a heart with her fingers. “But I gave him one, which said, ‘I heart Ed Sheeran,’ and then [wrote on] the back, ‘The club isn't the best place to find a lover - Aristotle’ to remind him of his genius.”
The crux of Peters’ genius, though, is staying grounded, ascending without detaching, despite a two-year stretch that puts this New York City whirlwind to shame.
Prior to signing with Sheeran, Peters handled the May 2021 second-season soundtrack for the Apple TV+ series Trying. That was an appetizer for her August 2021 debut LP You Signed Up For This, boasting the synthy “Psycho” and equally infectious “John Hughes Movie” as gold-star singles underscoring Peters’ lyrical dexterity — weaving timeless pop cultural references with autobiographical details.
March and November 2022 staged headlining North American tours, and she spent a chunk of the past year opening for the European, UK, Australian, and New Zealand legs of Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour.
“I’ve worked so hard the past two, three years,” she says. “My band, my manager, my tour manager, they've all been [with me] since I was playing to literally 10 people. Everyone sacrificed so much to be part of this team — to do the shows, the tours, the promo trips. Earlier, my tour manager, Harry, was like, ‘I'm tired, but at least I'm not driving the splitter van anymore.’”
At some point during last year’s Mathematics Tour gauntlet, Peters and Sheeran rocked matching black graphic tees displaying “I CAME FOR ED SHEERAN I LEFT WITH MAISIE PETERS” across the chest. But the fan account Mazziememes has been here for Peters all along. The platform was co-created in July 2021 by Mal from the Netherlands and Shayla from the US, who each began following Peters in 2018 and attest to her enduringly authentic character.
For now, Peters should probably sleep on this evening’s flight from New York back to the UK — a broomstick ride would be clutch — though she’s tempted to dive into a new book, Agustina Bazterrica’s Nineteen Claws And A Blackbird, given to her by a fan at Rough Trade.
“When fans say something or do something that's so cute, I take a photo of them,” Peters says, draped in her tried-and-true oversized navy blue Levi’s sweatshirt. This pictorial tradition is a tangible extension of her artistic comfort, putting herself out there and trusting the right people will reciprocate. “There was a different girl in the queue who was telling me that she'd listened to my song ‘I’m Trying’ for nine hours.’ That is so many hours.”
Peters’ 24-hour stint in New York City ended with Ed Sheeran, her close confidant who happened to become her label boss after signing to his Gingerbread Man Records imprint two Junes ago. She popped by the 50th birthday party for Sheeran’s manager, Stuart Camp — a private Star Wars marathon at Soho House.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY:
Andy Ford
EDITION 24
JULY 2023
Maisie Peters is yawning from a phone booth in a New York airport lounge and politely excuses herself, which is unnecessary. Her exhaustion is well-earned. The warranted apology comes from me, for sucking up an hour that could have been used to rest. She woke up at 4:45 a.m. to wake up the rest of New York City with her triumphant pop earworm “Lost The Breakup” on Today. After that, she hit Rough Trade NYC for an intimate album signing and performance around her sophomore album, The Good Witch, where she and her fans held a group manifestation. “The Good Witch to No. 1, The Good Witch to No. 1,” they chanted with their eyes closed, kneeling together in prayer.
“I've spent the last two years training my mind out of believing numbers and streams are a reflection on me as an artist or as a person because you just can't afford to live like that. You’ll crumple under it,” Peters, 23, tells Uproxx over Zoom, two days before The Good Witch debuts at No. 1 on the UK’s Official Albums Chart, making her the youngest British woman at the top since Ella Henderson in 2014.
Peters wasn’t immune to wanting a No. 1 album to her name, but she approached it as “a little group project” with her fans because “it’s cool to try” and it’s “a testament to the community we’ve built.” After The Good Witch’s No. 1 debut, 380 fans attended another signing at HMV Leeds in Leeds, UK, on July 1; one fan brou ght a big, blue No. 1 balloon, and another made a Lego version of Peters holding a spell book.
“Life is long,” she says. “I'm gonna make many albums, and, I hope, play many special shows and meet many fans.”
July 12, 2023
BY: Megan aRMSTRONG