- 2021-08-28
-
MUSIC
-
-
Donate to support families affected by the crisis in Ukraine ➔ Maisie Peters Releases Debut Album “You Signed Up For This”: Streaming
British singer-songwriter Maisie Peters released her long-awaited debut album “You Signed Up For This” via Gingerbread Man Records on August 27, 2021.
She debuted in 2018 via Atlantic Records, but signed to Ed Sheeran's label Gingerbread Man Records this year. Her debut album was delivered under his label as the third artist of Gingerbread Man Records.
The album comprises of 14-track, including three songs co-written by Ed Sheeran.
“We just worked really well together,” Maisie Peters told Apple Music about working with Ed Sheeran. “This can feel like a very lonely [job], so it's great having a teammate and having someone rooting for you.”
She shared on social media with two photos which were new and old, “my debut album is out now. the first photo is me at soundcheck the other day at the first show of my record store run promoting my debut album (!!) and the second is me busking in brighton lanes as a teenager, and the only thing i can think to say right now is how much the second photo girl would not be able to fathom the life she now gets to live and the music she has created and the people she has gotten to fall in true creative love with all because of this album. i don't know what to say or how to say it but ysuft has been the time and privilege of my life i could not love this album anymore if i tried, and i have so many people to thank but for now i will just say anyone who is still reading this, thank u so so so much from the bottom of my feral heart. i live my dreams because of u.”- Ed Sheeran shared on social media, “So Maisie Peters debut album comes out today. I'm so honoured to have her on gingerbread man records. If I'm honest, I never wanted to set up a label and sign loads of artists to it so see which one works. My whole ethos has always been, one album at a time, so we can put all the time we can into it so it can have its best shot. Maisie has worked so incredibly hard over the last 4 years on this debut, it really is an amazing body of work. I'm so proud to have my name associated with her and her talent, and I know in 20 years time I'll look back and still be proud to have had something to do with this album. This is just the beginning, I remember the feeling on my debut album feeling like a new life and journey has begun, and this is gonna be so exciting to watch Maisie's unfold into greater and greater things. It's been a joy to watch up to this point, I can't wait to see what she does next. Thanks to all the people who were involved in this record, thank you for your time and talent, you know who you are. And to the fans, I hope you enjoy the record, you signed up for this, after all x”
She explained track-by-track for the album via Apple Music.
“You Signed Up for This”
“It's almost like a bullet point list of everything you need to know about me: I'm the narrator. This is my life right now. This is how I sing. This is how I write. But it's really self-aware—it starts off with an eye-roll. In this track, you have the synth noises, which felt like an ode to that side of the album, as well as a guitar feel to it, then this Coldplay-esque moment which married the two together. You're falling out of one sound and into the other.”
“I'm Trying (Not Friends)”
“There's like 5,000 lyrics in this song. It's all of my personality and everything that was going on in my life at the time. The first verse and the first chorus were actually written for Trying [the Apple TV+ comedy; Peters wrote the Season 2 soundtrack], but it wasn't the vibe for it, so I took it back. This song is chaotic and bitchy and passive-aggressive and really flawed.”
“John Hughes Movie”
“I wrote this when I was 17, and it just never felt right to come out at the time. We reworked it for the album, then I sent it to [LA producers] Afterhrs, who have done a lot of my stuff and who gave it a shine. This song is so naive and hopeful and stupid and embarrassing and teenage. The first half of this album hits you round the face with melodrama.”
“Outdoor Pool”
“I have a voice note on my phone that says, 'Midnight, outdoor pool.' We wrote the chorus for this song one night in Suffolk after we wrote 'Love Him I Don't.' It was such a random chorus and it was really hard to understand what it was about. Why are we in an outdoor pool? Then [Taylor Swift's] folklore came out that night, and, listening to 'betty,' it just clicked. It was like, 'Oh, I cannot be me all the time.' Then I came back to it a few days later realizing it had to be from the point of view of a 15-year-old. From there it was like, bang. I wanted to make it super British and we were throwing in all the references we could: Skins and HMV and form on Monday, science lockers, the French exchange.”
“Love Him I Don't”
“My favorite on the album. Lyrically and musically, it feels like the combination of a lot of songwriting that I've done and a lot of learning about what I love. There's a real heaviness but also lightness. It's a song to sing to yourself when you don't feel it.” -
“Psycho”
“Everything about this track is so wild. It was the last session we did for the album. It was like, 'The album is done, so if we get something, great, but if not, it's done.' I was with Ed Sheeran and [prolific British songwriter] Steve Mac and thought, 'If I'm here with these people who have done massive things, I'm here to win, I'm here to write a big song.' Ed has previously said 'Psycho' would be a really good song title. The track only took about 45 minutes once we were in the session, but afterwards I just felt really scared of it—it's very different for me. I actually told my manager I'd release it 'over my dead corpse,' but I'm so glad I got over it—I love it now. It's so fun.”
“Boy”
“[Producer and songwriter] Joe Rubel, Ed Sheeran, and I had written 'Hollow,' then had dinner. Afterwards, I was like, 'Let's write another song.' Everyone had been drinking wine, so it was a fun vibe, and we ended up talking about fuckboys and softboys and I was educating the boys on the differences. They said we should write a song called 'Fuckboy.' I was crying with laughter as we wrote it, and I think you can hear that. Really last minute, I said we should take out the 'fuck' and just have a gap. They eventually all came around to that idea.”
“Hollow”
“This is a special song. I did it with Ed, Joe, and [Snow Patrol's] Johnny McDaid. It was the first day I'd met Ed and Johnny, and we all knew there was something to this song. It's so simple but it also has a weird charm—it kind of harks back to what I did when I started, but also what Ed did when he started. It's very sad and has one of my favourite lyrics on the album: 'You're the one that got away and you got away with a lot.'”
“Villain”
“Up until this point, a lot of this album is very rash. It's coming from a place of being hurt and saying, 'I was right and you were wrong.' But 'Villain' is this moment where there's a cold shower of realism and you understand that you are not always the hero of the story. It felt like it almost leveled the playing field, a moment to hold your hand up and move forward. Sonically, it felt like an older sister to 'John Hughes Movie.' I was looking at Bruce Springsteen and Brandon Flowers and The Killers for this song.”
“Brooklyn”
“This is about me and my twin sister Ellen going to New York when we were 19. We went to Gatwick, we had terrible tickets, we flew at 2 am, we had noodles for breakfast. This song literally just tells the story of that trip. I did it with [songwriter and producer] Frances [aka Sophie Cooke] and it came together quite naturally. It was funny—a lot of people wanted to produce this, but in the end Frances finished it, and it's not dissimilar to the demo. Two women wrote and produced the song, and I think that's really amazing. ”
“Elvis Song”
“One of the oldest tracks on the album. This is like stadium euphoria to me but with more realism to it, I guess. 'I've got no right to miss you' is something I've always played around with, and it's a feeling I've definitely felt before.”
“Talking to Strangers”
“This is a love song and it's really sweet. I did this with [songwriters] Brad Ellis and Jez Ashurst, and we wrote it really late at night. The vocals you hear in it are the vocals I did then. In fact, all of this song is basically the demo, apart from some harmonies I added from my bedroom studio during lockdown. The demo was very much how it needed to stay.”
“Volcano”
“This is a different palette, and it's almost the hardest to talk about because there's so much within it. It's really a song about people who you feel like never see the consequences of their actions. This song is just repetition all the time, because that's how it feels, I think, when you're in that moment, and someone has hurt you and gotten away with it. No one has called them out, so they're able to keep living their life, and you're just stuck in this song. It was definitely fueled by #MeToo. There's a lot of real, simmering female resentment and the silence you take upon yourself. I was referencing Dolly Parton and Kacey Musgraves. It felt like the right tone for that sort of thing—no one does 'woman scorned' better than country musicians.”
“Tough Act”
“To me, this song feels sad but also has a real air of growth in it. It's hopeful and it's respectful and comes from a really mature place of 'This is nobody's fault.' By the end of it, you're not sure if it's meant to be a sad song or if it's meant to be a song of happiness. I listened to it recently and was struck by the second verse, when I say, 'I got busy and you forgot how to miss me when I'm not much of who you grew up with.' I think that speaks to so many people and so many relationships, romantic or platonic or family or anything. It's the realization that you're not who you were and that's fine, but that's something that everyone has to accept at some point. Originally it was a piano ballad with no harmonies and it was very stripped. It ended up this really beautiful orchestral arrangement. The lyrics felt like a great way to finish this album.”
Photo by PHOENIX - source : Apple Music
