Maisie Peters – The Good Witch

Pop

64%

 

As someone who clings to the idea of albums as one cohesive whole, singles often feel like movie trailers. There’s an (oft forgotten) art to what makes a good trailer, one that has a lot of crossover with what I’ve come to expect from a great single. At their best both offer an enticing first taste of what’s to come. They’re a way to put a project on your radar and set your expectations. But the similarities run deeper, with both mediums also falling into the same pitfalls and making the same mistakes. Both singles and trailers risk misrepresenting the project as a whole. Maybe this small piece taken out of context doesn’t capture the wider tone. Maybe it doesn’t build up hype and gain attention half as much as it was meant to, and a great work of art ends up slipping through the cracks. Most often of all however, what if they cram in all the best moments, all the biggest highlights – why delve any deeper when you’ve already experienced the best that was on offer?

The build-up and release of Maisie Peters’ sophomore album sadly falls into that latter category. Given that her debut was practically the blueprint for how to make a fantastic pop record, and first taste we got of the next record were some of her most perfectly polished bops to date, there was every reason to expect that the full album would build on the successes of its predecessor. Instead The Good Witch stumbles in the way so many second albums do. Keeping the film analogies rolling, it’s a project that could’ve done with more time in the editing department. While the big bangers, those trailer worthy set-pieces, are still worth the price of admission, there’s a fair bit of filler to sit through in between, and a couple of missteps that would have been better left on the cutting room floor. Some questionable lyrics feeling like dialogue in need of rewrites, and above all a peculiar problem with pacing. A well paced project could make hours fly by, but somehow here a fairly tight 47 minutes begins to outstay its welcome with a few tracks still to go. 

So much of Maisie’s songcraft and her idiosyncratic approach to pop; something she absolutely nailed first time around, her sound almost emerging fully formed – at times all that seems to unravel a little here. The tasteful balance between singer/songwriter earnestness and highly polished production falls by the wayside on tracks like ‘Coming Of Age’ and ‘Run’, whose arrangements are marred by loud obnoxious dance beats that have me instinctively reaching for the skip button every time.

Lyrically too, the balance between her grounded casual conversationalist approach and her Swiftian turns of phrase, that so defined her debut for me, seems to have shifted. The former far less prominent and a push towards the latter feeling very hit and miss. Don’t get me wrong, there are some killer lines here, credit where it’s due! “You gave me the world and you gave me your word, It built me like a promise till it broke me like a curse” from ‘Therapy’ and “I take in clowns like a one-woman circus” from ‘You’re Just A Boy (And I’m Kinda The Man)’ being prime examples from opposite ends of the spectrum. But elsewhere the verbose verses of ‘Want You Back’ end up stumbling over themselves, while ‘BSC’ and ‘History Of Man’ rattle off pop culture references and historical and mythological nods respectively, with about the same degree of success and sincerity as the nerdy comments in The Big Bang Theory. 

These sizable steps backwards from her debut feel a little baffling at times, especially as sandwiched between them we have some of Maisie’s best tracks yet. She’s two for two when it comes to stellar title tracks opening her albums in a way feels like a perfect introduction to her artistry. ‘The Good Witch’, much like ‘You Signed Up For This’ before it, feels like a Maisie crash course immersing you into a world of her design. ‘Two Weeks Ago’ and ‘There It Goes’ bring some stripped back bittersweet balladry to the table, the kind of touching tenderness, a sense of quiet and vulnerability, that makes the album’s big hooks seem to tower all the taller by contrast.

Yet even standing on their own, in the album’s holy trinity of ‘Body Better’, ‘You’re Just A Boy (And I’m Kinda The Man)’ and ‘Lost The Breakup’, we find some of the best songs of 2023. If I didn’t limit myself to one track per artist, then my year-end list of songs would practically be a Maisie playlist. Heaps of fun, melodies that enliven you body and soul like a refreshing summer breeze in a heat wave, earworm choruses that will be playing on repeat in your head for hours, production polished to a brilliant finish. No notes, absolutely faultless, each one a shining example of pop perfection. With two of them being the album’s lead singles it’s easy to see how the standard was set so high for the rest of The Good Witch. But one doesn’t just stumble onto perfection, especially not three times, so I’m far more inclined to believe that it’s this album’s missteps that are the fluke here. Maisie Peters absolutely has the potential to release a whole album that reaches this same sensational high standard, one where the singles are merely a teaser to the joyous thrill ride that is the full picture, and when that happens I’ll be in the front row seats loving every minute.