In her Music Week cover feature, Maisie Peters has been musing on what it means to be a pop star.
Having first appeared on our cover alongside Celeste as part of a new music special issue at the start of 2020, Peters’ second time comes ahead of the release of her new album Florescence, which follows 2023 chart-topper The Good Witch.
“I think it’s an active verb, ‘to popstar’, so it’s something that you do every day and in small ways, some days more than others,” Peters told us. “‘To popstar’ is a lifestyle, a real, true commitment to the art, in a way that’s all-encompassing in your life.”
Peters releases her music via Ed Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man label in partnership with Atlantic and, since her first appearance on our cover, she has toured with Sheeran, not to mention Taylor Swift and Coldplay. These experiences, she told us, helped shape the artist she is today.
“I’ve been part of that history,” she said, reflecting on opening for Swift. “The Eras Tour is a feat that will be in the history books. So to play just a tiny, tiny role in that and to imagine your name, very small, in that history book is very cool.”
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“There are tours and memories that I already know I’ll think about for the rest of my life,” she continued. “I’ll remember what it was like to walk onto the Coldplay stadium stage, how it became such a norm for me, stepping round all the inflatable installations. I mean, both Taylor and Coldplay are people that I’ve admired my whole life. I did homework pieces on them in Year 7!”
Peters also shed light on her relationship with labelmate Sheeran.
“It’s not about him giving me advice; we really just talk about life and what he’s doing and what I’m doing,” she explained. “I’m very lucky to have somebody like Ed in my corner. He’s an excellent role model… He’s managed to have this extraordinary career and be one of the biggest songwriters and artists ever, whilst also having such a normalcy to his life and his relationships.”
“I was with him in New York, walking around his neighbourhood and we went into his local coffee shop,” she added. “He’s one of the most famous people in the world and he’s just there chatting to the guys making the coffee and talking about how the menu has changed.”
Peters also opened up about the realities of the pressures facing artists in today’s industry.
In 2024, she had been booked to support Kelsea Ballerini, but pulled out citing mental health reasons. Prior to that, while touring The Good Witch, she was diagnosed with vocal polyps.
“I started vocal therapy and, luckily, I wasn’t scheduled to be on tour or to be working at all,” she recalled. “In the back of my mind, there was always the thought that if I couldn’t resolve it, there would have to be an operation and bigger decisions to be made. It was a scary time and something that I still feel the effects of, maybe in more of a mental health way than a physical way.”
Peters said that artists must strike a delicate balance.
“It’s rarer to get those big opportunities, maybe because there’s a saturation of new artists, as well as it obviously just becoming harder and harder financially,” she opined. “So if you do get them, there is huge pressure to make the most of them and not jeopardise them. I know I’ve definitely felt like that, and it’s obviously not healthy, but we’ve seen people take a stand against that, like Chappell Roan standing up for mental and physical health, because you can’t do the rest without that.”
With more than 46 million likes on TikTok alone, Peters is an artist for whom social media has played an important role.
“Social media can be a tricky place; it’s sort of the worst place,” she told Music Week. “But the opportunities I’ve got out of it are literally the reason I’m here today. That said, I feel it’s my duty as an artist to say: don’t assume I’m not opening the apps, seeing that my video hasn’t got many likes and feeling
a deep sense of dread and shame – because I absolutely am, and I think we all are. But the metrics you can judge yourself on are not what you’ll think about on your death bed.”
Peters also spoke about negative online reaction to her performance on The Eras Tour.
“I could be simultaneously rational and say, ‘These people don’t know me, they’re commenting from their bedrooms and I’m on the Eras Tour,’ whilst also feeling it the way you feel it,” she explained. “That can be very hard to rationalise, and I am a very rational person. So, it was a good lesson for me when I experienced that and was very taken aback by how hard it felt.”
Peters also spoke about the context into which Florescence is being released, coming in the wake of landmark success for UK acts including Olivia Dean, Sam Fender and more.
“There have been a lot of incredible breakout moments for UK artists and, globally, we’ve been in a really great period for pop music, especially by women,” Peters said. “I started releasing music around the same time as Olivia Dean and it’s so cool to see what she’s doing, and Charli XCX. It shows the rest of us what is possible at any stage of the game. I’m not a new artist anymore, and I’ve found that so inspiring, but also calming and soothing, too.”
Read the full interview, also featuring Atlantic co-presidents Ed Howard and Briony Turner, manager Bobby Havens of Grumpy Old Management and CAA’s Summer Marshall, in the new edition of Music Week, out now.
Subscribers can read it online here.
