The Daily Telegraph - Features
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Maisie Peters: The Good Witch (Gingerbread Man) ★★★★★
Just how much does Maisie Peters want to be Taylor Swift? An awful lot, on the evidence of the English singersongwriter’s second album
The Good Witch. Signed to Ed Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man label, West Sussex-born Peters displays numerous Swift tropes including – but not limited to – her intonation, her lyrical preoccupation, her waspish humour, her delivery style, her song dynamics and, on one song on The Good Witch, even her producer.
The Swiftian similarities are obvious from the start. The opening title track is delivered in the kind of half sung and half spoken, part-breathy and part-assertive manner that Pennsylvania-born Swift does so well. The next song, Coming of Age, includes a shouty rapped bit that will be instantly familiar to Tay Tay’s legions of fans. Third track Watch,
meanwhile, contains lines such as “You took a road trip into the mountains/ I feel like all of my exes have done that/ It looked like a film Michael Cera would act in/ And it felt like a face slap”, which is precisely the kind of bittersweet autobiographical nugget with which Swift stuffs her songs. On the track Lost the Breakup,
the 23-year-old has co-opted Swedish musician Oscar Görres as co-writer and producer, a role he also played on Swift’s Reputation track So it Goes … The list goes on.
Believe it or not, however, this is not necessarily a criticism. If you’re going to be influenced by someone, then why not make it one of the most successful stars on the planet? Swift is the dominant voice of her generation (young millennials and Gen Z, so people from their teens to their thirties). And once you get over the mental Swift hurdle, The Good Witch has plenty to recommend it.
Peters has described it as her “twisted version of a break-up album”, her “heart and soul”, and her “blood on the page”. It’s full of catchy melodies that fizz with the lemon zing of a young woman scorned. Run flirts with drum and bass, Two Weeks Ago drips with regret about missed opportunities, and the pulsating History of Man builds to a satisfyingly crisp crescendo.
The album was written while Peters was on the road last year. And the relatively off-the-cuff, grab-it-while-youcan approach to songwriting gives it a pleasing feeling of spontaneity. Indeed, it’s an approach to the craft not dissimilar to Sheeran’s. Like her label boss, Peters is dizzyingly prolific. She has released 29 singles since 2017, including songs for the TV comedy series Trying. She’s also hugely popular. On Friday she played Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage and in November she’ll play her own headline show at London’s Wembley Arena.
In terms of what Peters is aiming for with The Good Witch – to be Britain’s answer to Taylor Swift – she succeeds with bells on. This is smart, relatable break-up music for Gen Z listeners. But a more moot question, and one to which this reviewer suspects he knows the answer, is whether we actually need our own Taylor Swift when the real one seems to be doing a pretty good job as things are.
Also out: Kelly Clarkson, ‘Chemistry’ (Atlantic); Kim Petras, ‘Feed the Beast’ (Republic)