Please listen carefully, because I’m about to change your life. If you haven’t listened to Maisie Peters… well reader, please prepare yourself and get excited.

A self-proclaimed friendly neighbourhood popstar, Maisie is an English singer-songwriter who started posting her music on YouTube when she was just 15, with her first single officially being released in 2017. Now at 20, her career has well and truly taken off and there is no stopping her. She first started gaining attention when one of her song Favourite Ex was featured in the 2019 series of Love Island, and she was supposed to be opening for Niall Horan on tour before the pandemic hit. Not to mention her song Smile was featured on the Bird of Prey soundtrack early last year.

She has released two EPs thus far that are filled with masterpiece after masterpiece, proving not just that she is an effortlessly talented lyricist, but that she has a way of connecting with her listener. When you listen to her music, it feels personal, which I find rare in artists today. Her first EP Dressed Too Nice For A Jacket has one of my favourite songs, Details, about the ever-present unrequited crush. That song still hits different every time I listen, even when that number is upwards of 50. She came back with It’s your Bed Babe, It’s Your Funeral, with Maisie describing herself as the first lady of emo pop. That meant I could not stop singing her song This is on You at every slight inconvenience in my life. She has since gone on to release singles including the list, Daydreams, and Sad Girl Summer (all of which you should be listening to). However, with the release of her latest song John Hughes Movie in February she has gone straight to number 1 on the iTunes charts, top 5 in Ireland and even cracked into the top 200 in the US. The world is slowly but surely awakening to the genius that is Maisie Peters with this banger of a track inspired by the legendary 80s/90s filmmaker.

Maisie’s words speak better than mine do when she says “I wrote ‘John Hughes Movie’ when I was 17 about a house party that I had gone to. It’s a really honest depiction of being a hopeless, melodramatic teenager, being awkward and drunk and getting your heart broken by people you don’t even remember anymore”. I would be lying if I say I haven’t once or twice romanticised my own Molly Ringwald wannabe life and created my own main character soundtrack so once again she knows exactly what I want to hear. The song itself is not only an instant favourite but is the first song from her soon to arrive album. I am sure we can expect an abundance of melodic expertise and pop production, as she continues to remind us on Instagram that when we hear this album, we will lose our minds.

Maisie is an excellent songwriter with a self-proclaimed excellent taste in knitwear. I can say with full confidence that she will soon be a huge name in the music industry; it’s only a matter of time. As a fellow 20-year-old I have never before been so happy to feel like an underachiever. Bringing this (maybe biased) recommendation to an end, it’s not just the fact that she also idolises Taylor Swift or that her Instagram has me scouring the internet to see where she got her stellar outfits from or that she agrees that AOC will save American politics – I truly believe her music possesses a uniquely relatable charm that everyone needs to hear. Listening to Maisie Peters is like laughing about your recent heartbreak with a best friend and, honestly, what more could you want.