Maisie Peters: Meet the singer who's been snapped up by Ed Sheeran

With her candid, tuneful pop songs, Maisie Peters has built up a passionate fanbase that includes everyone from Taylor Swift to Lewis Capaldi.

Now, she can add Ed Sheeran to that list, as he's just signed the 21-year-old to his Gingerbread Records label.

The duo have also written a single called Psycho, for Peters' forthcoming debut album, You Signed Up For This.

"She's a very special artist who continues to push her storytelling in new directions," says Sheeran.

"We had a few great writing sessions together and from there I knew I had to work with her."

Peters, meanwhile, can't quite believe she gets to call Sheeran her boss.

"I've loved him since his first album," she says. "I mean, who were you if you didn't try and learn I See Fire on the guitar?

"It's weird because we're friends now, but sometimes I'm still like, 'Oh wow, that's Ed Sheeran.'"

Sheeran isn't the first musician to spot her talents. After hearing Peters cover her song Betty last year, Taylor Swift got in touch to say, "My ears have been blessed." Grammy nominee JP Saxe, who duetted with Peters on the single Maybe Don't, calls her "someone to hold on to".

"She's able to be really vulnerable while still having a smile on her face," he says. "I love that about her music and I appreciate that about her as a person, too."

Celebrity endorsements aside, Peters has been doing pretty well on her own.

Since emerging in 2017, her songs have amassed half a billion streams worldwide, and she's sold out major venues like London's Shepherd's Bush Empire - all without releasing an album.

Her profile rose in 2019, when Love Island featured two of her tracks, Favourite Ex and Feels Like This, and she was about to go on tour with One Direction's Niall Horan when the pandemic struck last year.

"It was a big, screeching halt, and it was really hard at first," she says, "But ultimately it meant I could make the album that I've made."

Due out in August, the record charts her journey from small-town teenager to adulthood, via blossoming relationships (Outdoor Pool), heartbreak (Villain), and holidays with her twin sister (Brooklyn).

Psycho, one of three Ed Sheeran co-writes, was the last song she finished for the album. A vivid and wryly-observed pop anthem, it sees Peters confronting an ex who badmouths her in public, but still calls her on the sly.

"The song feels like Abba to me, which I'm obsessed with," she says. "Everything is so sharp and concise, and I think that's what makes a perfect pop song."

We caught up with Peters in her childhood home - where she was swotting for a driving test - to explore her story so far.

Congratulations on the album. When did it all come together?

It's funny, I've been trying to make my first album since I was 12, writing songs as a Texas woman who threw my husband in the river! But I've been more concisely working on it since summer 2020. I actually went away and got a cottage and started the seeds of the album there.

What's it like to write with Ed Sheeran?

He's so fast! And luckily I'm pretty fast too, because you have to keep up. He's insanely skilled at getting to the point of the song, and it's inspiring to be in the same room as him.

You wrote your first ever song on a friend's guitar, is that right?

Yes, I'm not from a musical family, so I borrowed my friend's guitar and started writing songs for my school music project. And I actually wrote my song and my sister's song, and then I wrote my friend's song. So I was basically a jobbing songwriter at the age of 12.

How did you know what to do?

Well, I'm a massive Taylor Swift fan and I loved Girls Aloud and Lily Allen - so I think, in a way, I'd studied those songs, growing up. I was always fascinated by lyrics. I would read along to work out what they were saying and then I'd learn them.

So when it came to writing my own songs it wasn't like I knew what I was doing, necessarily, but I was so immersed in that world that, in my first years especially, I was really just copying them.

You have a real rapport with your audience on stage. Where does that come from?

It's something I built up through busking and pub gigs. Those were so formative in learning about stagecraft - but also about how people don't have to listen to you. They have all the rights in the world to walk past and not even look. So you have to make sure you've got something to say, so that people stick around.

I saw you headline Shepherd's Bush Empire in late 2019, and it felt like a real "arrival of a pop star" moment. But three months later, the brakes went on. What was that like from your perspective?

I felt like I was on a train, on the precipice [of something big] and then it was a big screeching halt. But I wonder what sort of album I'd have made otherwise, because I was meant to be touring. I wasn't going to be home very much.

You started an online book club during the lockdown. Do you get lyrical inspiration from reading?

Yeah, absolutely. Because I started so young, I really cut my teeth writing as other people. As I've gotten older, I've delved more into my own life - but it's fun when my songs draw from several different people. Or maybe it's about one person but there's three lines which are about my friend's boyfriend.

Do people assume everything is autobiographical?

Yeah definitely, and I don't mind that. As a songwriter, it's my least favourite job to tell people how they should hear my music. The fact they want to hear it, full stop, is amazing.

It's funny, though, because even though I know how I write lyrics, I listen to every Taylor Swift song and I'm like, "Yes that is 100% about her!"

What was it like when Taylor Swift contacted you last year?

Oh, wow. It was very exciting. I just screamed. My sister Ellen has a video of me running into her room, going: "ELLLEN! TAYLOR SWIFT HAS TWEETED ME!" I love her and she's a massive inspiration to me.

If she called up and asked you to duet on one of her new songs, the answer would be...

The answer would be, "I love you. Let's get married." I will do anything Taylor Swift wants. There's your headline!

You have a really close relationship with your fans, doing regular Zoom calls and joining WhatsApp groups. It's almost a symbiotic thing, I think.

Yeah, that's really sweet. I just love them all, they're so funny. A lot of us are really similar ages and we go through really similar things.

Have you made any permanent friends?

Yeah, I played a show in Montreal, and there was a girl outside called Ashley, who gave me some Canadian crisps. But then she couldn't actually get into the show because she didn't have her ID, so I played this little separate concert for her and her parents outside and now we're friends.

I was doing a Zoom recently and Ashley was like, "I'm flying out to meet my boyfriend for the first time." And we were like, "Oh my God, Ashley!"

Stuff like that is so the point. I love knowing these people. It's so special.

1) Places We Were Made (2017)

That song was my first single, and it's about my hometown, Steyning which is a little village near Brighton. I wrote it when I was 16, and it's very autobiographical. I was finishing school and a lot of my friends were leaving, knowing that we might never come back.

2) Favourite Ex (2019)

That was inspired by a conversation with my sister's ex at a party. He was pretty not sober and he said something about my sister being his favourite ex-girlfriend. I remember thinking it was a really nice turn of phrase, and when I was writing the song, that line effortlessly slipped in. I call it Magpie-ing, where you take lots of little shiny bits and store them up.

3) Sad Girl Summer (2020)

This is maybe blasphemy, but I think this song has an almost Simon and Garfunkel feel, where it has lots of different characters telling their stories. It's a super-modern pop song, but the narrative is almost like a folk song.

4) John Hughes Movie (2020)

This video was my little dreamscape baby. I wanted a combination of those nostalgic 80s movies and the violence of Quentin Tarantino. I spoke to the director and we created this insane, prom night John Hughes movie where everything was allowed. We had cheerleaders, and zombies on skateboards and a heart being ripped out, like an Indiana Jones tribute. It was so much fun.

5) Psycho (2021)

One reason I love Psycho is because it's so tight. I went into the studio going, "I want to make a song as upbeat as Call Me Maybe." It was a lofty goal. Who knows if we measured up, but we like to aim high!

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