hello from a fellow Wendy!

I recently started posting album reviews on my page (see my “Good Riddance” review), and I’m excited to delve into my defining albums of 2023! This afternoon, I’m sitting down to write a review on my personal album of the year, as of late August.

To say “late August” is deceiving because, by the time you are reading this, late August is long gone. I started this review at that time but am making final revisions in October. I started my junior year of high school a month ago and am being kept busy, so the most I can promise for now is one review a month. I wish I had more time to commit to these, and if anyone has been secretly pining away waiting for my next one, I’m sorry about that. Moving on!

I’ve discovered a lot of artists in weird ways, and I discovered Maisie Peters in March of 2021 when going through a random girl on Spotify’s playlists. Doing this, I encountered the classic “John Hughes Movie”, which was (technically) the lead single off her debut album, “You Signed Up For This” (2021). That song was originally a filler song on my seasonal playlist, but thanks to little 14-year-old me once again stalking a different girl’s playlist, I truly fell in love with her music through the song “Milhouse”. After hearing this song, I listened to the “Trying” soundtrack (which Maisie wrote), released in May of 2021, and became further hooked on “Glowing Review” and “Lunar Years”. I was obsessed by the time the year was over. Maisie was my first concert out of quarantine, and I’ve seen her live two other times since then.

This album is so special to me because I visualize it in my head as a musical. How I picture that is a story for another time, but it helps build context. Maisie described the record prior to its release to a fan on Twitter (don’t come at me for not saying X, it doesn’t flow) as “some form of a breakup album”. I think that describes it well. All songs except one (“The Band and I”) are about a relationship ending, but she is almost always in full control of the narrative. She expresses this control further through the cover. She is photographed from below with the vast sky behind her, and her arms positioned as if the camera is a globe she’s spinning. She explains this artwork by saying on Twitter, “I wanted it to feel surreal and I wanted to fill the space, appear powerful and in control of the universe behind me.” This describes the theme of the album – taking control of a heartbreak. Now you shall learn why!

Peters pictured on the cover of The Good Witch.

“The Good Witch”: the title track is an enchanting intro for an album with such a title. The song opens with the sparkly sound of a keyboard, initiating control by saying “Still me here, do you think I forgot about you?” She uses this introduction as a blanket statement over the rest of the song, both using it to say (in my own words) “I have not forgotten about you, I will get back at you”, and “You left your mark on me, I’m still hurting”.

“The Good Witch” is an update on who she is to a past “muse” (“found some other muses, I give ‘em all my best”). The verses are her explaining little details of this – “still don’t play the black keys”, “still King’s Cross”, and more vulnerably, “still argue like my mother and suppress stuff like my dad”. In the choruses, she channels in on this theme. She sings “All I do is think about the past and haunt a house nobody lives in”, saying she has been waiting around heartbroken for her turn to haunt her muse. The only thing that’s changed about her is that she’s learned from the breakup. Hence, the update is a message saying (in my words), “Hey, the part of me that’s making me wait around to haunt you has always existed, it’s just coming out now”.

This is one of my favorite songs on this album because of the tantalizing way it builds. She uses words with building tension (“I will try forgiveness, but I will not forget, not forget, not forget, not forget”), takes the tension away for a split second, and once the tension has almost left, she slams it back in. After this, the song ends heartwarmingly, with her singing “You wanna hear from all the people in my heart? Well okay, when it kicks in”, followed up by recordings of friends and fans talking. It ends with a recording of a crowd at Webster Hall chanting her name before she enters the stage.

My favorite lyric: “All I do is think about the past, make it a universe that you can live in” – this is what so many of my own songs are about.

“Coming of Age”: Since its release, “Coming of Age” has crept its way up to the top of my ranking. It’s very electronic and reminiscent of her (technically) unreleased song “Girl’s House”. When I first heard “Girl’s House”, I was eating a shortbread chocolate chip cookie. Now whenever I hear that song, I taste shortbread chocolate chip cookies in my mouth. “Coming of Age” gives me such a similar vibe that even though that cookie memory existed long before “Coming of Age” did, they feel like the same time period. That’s a very cool future nostalgia thing to me.

This song shows Maisie’s path from trying to make sense of an ended relationship to having herself back. She sings “I wasn’t your cliché” in the chorus, which she later describes over social media to mean “it's about refusing to be the cliché ‘woman scorned/naïve 19-year-old/girl who couldn’t get over anything’ all the labels we get given by people who want to fit us neatly within their narrative”. She gains more confidence in that field as the song progresses, realizing that maybe the other person wasn’t emotionally intelligent enough for her - “I am the Iliad/you couldn’t read me/so I’ll leave you behind but that don’t mean it’s easy”. She has the most power in the bridge “You couldn’t keep what you couldn’t tame” and “I let you butcher my big heart, but it’s my song and my stage”. The song finishes with a cheer screaming “I wish I could’ve seen it, God!” as if she’s rolling her eyes and laughing at the situation like it’s all a funny joke now.

The instrumentals of this song are very well thought out, with super powerful drums, and interesting audio editing to add playfulness. It’s one of my favorites on the album to have a scream-dance session to.

My favorite lyric: “You couldn’t keep what you couldn’t tame” – I think this line plays well into the blurb Maisie posted about the line “I wasn’t your cliché”, but is a more broad and fun way to say that, for anyone who has ever felt like they were too much for someone.

“Watch”: this was my original favorite on the album. I’ve found that the thing I love most about Maisie’s lyricism is how blunt and real she is with everything she says, but how she still miraculously keeps it complex. Some of my favorite moments of that in this song with no explanation needed include, “Nobody actually happy and healthy has ever felt so desperate to prove it”, “you look better, what the f*ck”, “everybody pretends that they’re great, but what if you actually might be?”, “I know that I should know better, I don’t think I wanna get better”, and “I saw you and your girlfriend – sure, I don’t know she’s your girlfriend/well f*cking sue me, ‘cause at least then we could talk”. The song has similar instrumentals to “Coming of Age”, although it has more blatant electric guitar.

She maintains that bitter personality shown in those lyrics for the length of the song while maintaining that she is still obsessed with this person. She makes unreasonable obsession quite fun.

My favorite lyric: “Nobody actually happy and healthy has ever felt so desperate to prove it” – I know I already said there was no explanation needed for this line, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. It confuses me when people want me to prove myself worthy of an adjective I use to describe myself. If it’s accurate, why would I feel the need to prove it? The quality exists for my benefit (or lack thereof), not yours.

“Body Better”: “Body Better” was the lead single on this album and set a powerful precedent for the rest of it. She delves into her darkest insecurities that plenty of people think but are too scared to say. She explains that she doesn’t know what she could’ve possibly done to make someone who she was good to – “could lay my head up on your chest and here I was good for you” – leave, so she determines that it’s because the new person the subject of the song is with has a better body than she does. She gets progressively sadder as the song goes on, singing in the second verse “’ Do you love her?” and then, “Do you suffer?”, wondering if the gravity of this situation even matters to the subject of the song. In the bridge, she is singing very fast, as if she’s venting, with lines like “How’s it feel to have made me cry? Will you tell me just one more lie? Is her body better than mine?” When the bridge ends, she re-enters the chorus with a last line “Has she got a body better than mine?”, dragging out the “mine” as if she’s wailing it while crying.

Because of that last part, I think the vocal delivery is one of the most important parts of this song. She’s upset about something that is outside of her control, and she channels in that emotion superbly with how she sings.

My opinion of this song sells what I think the message deserves a little short because the song itself is not a favorite of mine. I have so much admiration for the message, but I don’t really like the instrumentals, primarily during the chorus. To me, they feel kind of like the sound I would have in my head if I were in a car race. I feel like a more natural sound to the instruments would’ve benefitted the song better.

My favorite lyric: “Was I just an idea you liked, a convenient use of time?” – I might be biased because I’m a teenager – not that it really matters regardless – but I think this is a thought that isn’t thought about enough. That thought being the difference between liking something and liking the idea of it.

“Want You Back”: this is probably my overall favorite on the album, and she said that she almost didn’t add it! A very Taylor Swift-inspired artist, Maisie loves playing into the track 5 tradition. In this tradition, Taylor Swift is known to put the most vulnerable song as track 5 on the album.

This song to me is a snowy sunset. There’s a beautiful piano intro, and each note played feels like a snowflake falling. She comes into the song sounding dreamy, singing quickly. The song is largely about who she and the subject are, and how that bonded them both during the relationship and after.

In the first verse, she establishes herself as a teacher’s daughter and explains how that made the relationship easy to blossom. The subject of the song sent her alluring texts - “you caught a teacher’s daughter with a dangerous text” – and kept her life poetic (tying back to her obviously being a songwriter) – “found myself a lover that made everything rhyme” – both of which seem to apply to that part of her. In the chorus, she elaborates that her friends always remind her that the subject was a bad partner, but it annoys her because she loves him anyway. She further explains in the second verse that she committed and was ready to do anything for the subject “If you’d told me what would happen, I think I would’ve begged” but also that she thinks that maybe she wasn’t enough, “when you touch her I bet she doesn’t flinch”. She further establishes her subject in this verse as cowardly, but someone she loved anyway.

Finally, she shows her petty side in the bridge, saying that she must (basically) find a rebound so she can confirm she has potential for other people.

I love this song primarily for two reasons – the first being that I love a good fast-singing song. The second is because especially as a songwriter myself, the way she enters the second verse with heavier instruments and the line (my favorite in the song) “found yourself a lover, I bet she doesn’t sing” scratches an itch in my brain. Every time I leave a good concert, I think of all the people that I thought of while the songs played, and I laugh as I exit the doors with that line playing in my head. Kind of weird? Sure. A solid way to end a good night? Also, sure.

“The Band and I”: my opinions on this song make me question my music taste, but nonetheless, I’ll explain. Here’s why I don’t love it as much as other songs on the album.

You might’ve noticed that this review is different from my last review in the sense that it’s much more written in the fashion of “decoding Maisie Peters’ album” than my thoughts on it, but that’s because so much of Maisie’s writing is centered around clever nods. She’s built her image as a writer around the idea of being an avid reader and mostly admiring strong lyricists like Taylor Swift and Lorde. She said (paraphrased) years ago, that her favorite thing about writing is taking something old and making it her own new thing. There’s constant complexity in her lyrics, whereas artists like Gracie Abrams write more blatantly. No style is better than the other, they’re just explained differently.

In terms of “The Band and I”, I love the simplicity of the lyrics, and there’s some depth to it, but a Maisie song doesn’t hit the same for me if I don’t feel like it has a decent amount of complexity. However, that’s probably why this song fits so well on the album and is a fan favorite.

She opens the song with the line “We played heads up in a car in Seattle”, which is one of my favorite lines because Seattle was my stop on the tour this song is about. The song is reminiscent in melody to “Elvis Song” (2021) from ‘You Signed Up For This’. I do love that song, but the melody is not the reason why. She keeps up the motif of the album with the person she’s been hung up on making brief appearances in the lines “it was letting go of everything but you” and “told her you were just a friend”. But she keeps it the classic touring song with lines like “we are the best damn band that’s ever played right here”, “it was Friday nights” and “it was shining lights, it was rock and roll”. She has her guitarist do an electric guitar solo, as shown on Instagram, and she keeps the song down to Earth with the band the song is about playing. All that said, this song is simply not my favorite.

My favorite lyric: “’Guys, I’m pretty sure it’s the American Dream'” – I find it so funny how people from different countries perceive the United States.

“You’re Just A Boy (And I’m Kinda The Man)”: this song executes a Shania Twain feel that keeps me both dancing and rolling my eyes at the audacity of the boy in this song. It’s full of snarky comments directed at a lover who won’t let her love him the way she wants to. She tries to understand him – “You’re kinda awful, but you’re not awful on purpose”, says she loves him – “It’s sad and it’s true and I’m in love with you”, tries to help him – “I’m on a one-way trip to take over the world/you could’ve come, babe, I held out my hand”, but gives up – “goodbye from your biggest fan/goodbye from the bigger man/bye bye from your girl, oh damn”. I could write a five-page review on all the lyrics in this song because it’s lyrically one of my favorites, but the only other one I really want to touch on is the hook, “What’s a girl gonna do when she’s in love with you, but you’re just a boy and I’m kinda the man?” She manages to show the utmost exasperation while also bringing the feeling of power with that first part. Like yeah buddy, what’s a girl gonna do? She’s gonna ditch you because you’re lazy and write a really good song about it.

My favorite lyric: “Goodbye from your biggest fan” – she’s just too real.

“Lost the Breakup”: “Lost the Breakup” is the hit of “The Good Witch”. It fits all sides of the heartbroken girl spectrum while keeping the slightest touch of humor throughout. I’m obsessed with it. She uses her tone to sing “you’re MIA” as if being MIA is the most endearing thing in the world, and “I know you could never” while making it very clear that while it hurts, she knows very well that they could. She enters the chorus energetically, singing about how sad she is but how she knows one day it will all work out in her favor. In the second verse, she mocks herself for being hung up on things that there’s no reason to be hung up on, as she already knows the answers. The person in the song is very consistent, “is she just like me?/yeah, I reckon/you got two types: country and western”. The bridge is the peak of the song, where she sings about seeing this past lover approaching her in a bar, seeing she’s looking better than ever and trying to get her back, only for her to say the iconic line “I’m kinda busy, but, like, stay in touch!” and thus realize she has won the breakup, as she is now the one her ex can’t get back!

In my opinion, this song is the ultimate spring song. As a high schooler, it was released as a lead-up single at the perfect time. In spring, all drama seems to be both unfolding and coming to an end, and this song matches the feeling perfectly.

My favorite lyric: “didn’t say it in those words, but I know how your tone works” – I like substituting this line with “I know how you work” because it speaks volumes to when people say “But I never actually said that” and you’re like “ok, but…”, and she explains that in a very satisfying way here.

“Wendy”: Confession – this is another fan favorite I don’t completely adore. But the reason is brief. My only problem with this song is that it’s substantially slower than any other song on this album, so it feels the slightest bit out of place.

“Wendy” is built around the theme of Peter Pan – a “lost boy” who never grows up. Similar to “You’re Just A Boy (And I’m Kinda The Man)”, Maisie is ready to love the guy who symbolizes Peter, but he doesn’t seem to be. He’s “pretty like a girl” and “vicious like a man” and “evasive on the phone (til he’s) sorry on the floor”. She describes how she wants him, he pushes her away, and then he says he wants her, so the cycle repeats. She expresses how she’s worried about what it will do to her long term. The big gun is the lyric “If I’m not careful I’ll wake up and we’ll be married and I’ll still flinch at the sound of a door”. The choruses open with a sound that resembles breaking glass as she comes to that realization. Siren-like noises sound as she explains that they could be an amazing thing, but that she also knows he’ll never make up his mind. The song describes a toxic relationship beautifully.

My favorite lyric: “Be the clock that he watches” – I think this line is a metaphor for time passing by as someone realizes what they lost. By saying this, she’s saying, “One day you’ll miss me, but it’ll be too late and we’ll both be running out of time in our lives and you'll be too focused on what you lost in me to worry about finding someone new for you”.

“Run”: The first time I heard this album, I was sitting at my desk staring out the window at a sunset, and after nine relatively heartfelt (and sometimes extremely sad) songs, I thought this was a hilarious plot twist. She’s extremely blunt with lines like, “if he says he’s real, he’s not/if he makes you smile, he’s blocked”, and “he likes a promise if he don’t have to keep it, he hates a sentence when he has to mean it”. I kept hearing lines and doing that thing where you wave your hand in the air and sigh because she just gets it!

This single is everything you’d expect Maisie to have as a single. The hook of “Run” is “If a man says that he wants you in his life forever, run”. The entire song consists of Maisie listing red flags in men, and explaining what those red flags say about their character. The sound is very reminiscent of her 2018 hit “Worst of You” and feels like it’s sister song to me.

My favorite lyric: “If he says he’s real, he’s not” – I tell my friends this all the time. It’s common sense!

“Two Weeks Ago”: if you listen to this album, prepare yourself for whiplash, because from “Run” to this song to the next one, you’ll feel an entire rollercoaster. This is the type of song that I wouldn’t expect myself to love, but Maisie nailed the future sad-song-nostalgia feeling so well that it’s hard not to adore it. This song feels like a letter you write that while nothing too out of pocket is in, it’s a big deal to let anyone read it. Lyrics that aren’t very personal but still feel like it are scattered throughout. Some of my favorites are, “I wish we kissed when we first wanted” and “That last kiss, couldn’t look at you, but I wish I did”. “Two Weeks Ago” is the kind of song that you’d send a friend who’s never been through a breakup so you can help them feel more equipped to help you out.

My favorite lyric: “I wish we kissed when we first wanted” – to me, this line symbolizes the intimacy of a relationship to a deeper level than writing about other forms of intimacy can. The lyric is about the relationship itself, but also the hidden feelings behind it. To say “we first wanted” shows that she knew this person so well that she knew they also wanted this with her, despite it not technically being something you can easily know.

“BSC”: I don’t know if I’d say that this is my favorite, but I will not be shocked if it’s my most streamed song of 2023. She describes writing this song (paraphrased) saying “Is this line going too far? Oh well, let’s keep it. Is this line going too far? Let’s keep that too. Is this whole song going too far? Oh well, I don’t care”. The song has no warning at all before the lyrics start – you press play, and she jumps right into anger. She briefly explains the situation and quickly launches into criticizing the boy in the song’s actions – “we don’t speak cause ‘it’s too tricky’ but if I’m tricky, why’d you kiss me?” and “If you don’t love me, why’d you act it? Love’s a verb and not a bandage”. It’s in the chorus that you begin to truly realize what you’re in for. The hook is insane itself. She sings, “You think I’m alright, but I’m actually bloody motherf*cking batsh*t crazy” and somehow makes it flow. After she sings that mouthful, she launches into an arguably even “batsh*t crazy” -er second verse. I could put the whole verse here, but instead, I’ll say some of my favorite moments: “Pour the gin and call Graham Norton”, “Golden boy, you dropped the ball” and “You play the game but I run the table/Mr ‘I-don’t-want-a-label’, you made me little miss unstable”. She proceeds in the bridge to call herself unhinged, Cathy Bates, Stephen King, and say she is inside this boy’s walls. For the final big bang of a chorus, she cuts instruments for the entire thing until “but I’m actually bloody…” and the song finishes in what you’d think is nothing left in her to let out.

My favorite lyric: “You play the game but I run the table” – get that power!

“Therapy”: She might have let out her “BSC” anger already, but she’s now going to therapy.

While this is a great song and I love it despite it probably being my least favorite, my one big criticism for this album is that it has approximately one too many songs, and this is that. I see why it was added, because it generally adds to the storyline of the album. You know, she’s mentally updated her ex on her life, had a coming of age, watched her ex move on, has felt insecure, wanted her ex back, enjoyed life at moments, has found her power, learned from her ex in many ways, has missed them and has gone crazy, but now she’s going to therapy. It all makes sense, but in the vast scheme of the album, it doesn’t feel like therapy adds much to the story. It’s a fun and interesting twist to the breakup story because you don’t hear it often in albums, but I felt like this song kind of proved why. The idea of therapy makes the idea of a heartbreak album feel less personal and more like you’re a third wheel, in a sense. There’s the singer, there’s the therapist/concept of someone helping them out, and then there’s you: the listener. It takes away the personal feeling a little bit. Aside from that - some lines I like are “in the bed of poison oak, you were the remedy”, “now you’re gone, honey, I can sleep”, and “it built me like a promise til it broke me like a curse/with your shadow in the door, you were turning in your key/and loving you was letting you leave”.

My favorite lyric: “You touched me, now your touch will last for centuries” – this ties back to the meaning of “I wasn’t your cliché” from “Watch”, as well as (especially) a blurb you’ll see later on in “History of Man”. As I said, part of her explanation of this line was the stereotypical idea of the “girl who couldn’t get over anything”. She lets someone love her intimately, and she expresses the consequences of this using this line. It’s both a powerful and vulnerable comeback – both sad and inspiring in its acceptance.

“There It Goes”: The penultimate song of the record (as Maisie has dubbed it), “There It Goes” portrays letting go of not only a person but also the feeling of love you have left over for them. She details the worldly feeling of many a teenage girl healing and becoming a new person in autumn. She heals with the powerful hook “There it was, heaven knows/there it was, and there it goes”, which is honestly just an extremely satisfying thing to sing along to as you try to breathe out your thoughts away from you and into the world.

The song opens with piano and quickly is lit abuzz with her singing “I’m back in London, I’m running down Columbia Road, they’re selling sunflowers cheap”. The instrumentals almost feel spring-like, which is one of my favorite qualities of the songs on her “Trying” soundtrack. But instead, she fills the lyrics with blatantly autumnal things. To keep people guessing, she adds in the wintery line “the love we had was covered in snow” – her way of saying that the love was “frozen in time” (a quote from Maisie on Twitter), and how she “had to let it go”. Listeners can feel her beginning to close off the album with lines that call back in a happier way than previously to the start of the album, like “I’m young but I am aging, and I need you less than I did”. Finally, the bridge hits the concept of moving on with lines like (these are my favorite ones), “a new home, a swan dive, a blank page, a rewrite”, “I wake up and it’s October, the loss is yours”, “red wine on his hipbone”, and “the universe is shifting and it’s all for me”. Finally, it closes off euphorically with her echoing herself saying “There it goes” repeatedly. This song feels like a hug.

My favorite lyric: “I wake up and it’s October, the loss is yours” – the euphoria.

“History of Man”: Arguably the most well-written song on the album lyrically, “History of Man” describes lessons from heartbreak as if the love was religious and ancient, but still fresh on her mind. I know very little about the religious references in the song, but I have the basic gist of it from some tweets of Maisie explaining the lyrics. It explains how a heartbreak impacted Maisie in a similar way to how Taylor Swift says in the Midnights track, “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve”, “you’re a crisis of my faith”. She explains how the man in this song ruined things that were sacred to her (“you burnt down Easter island”) while maintaining simple and relatable lyrics in other moments. However, the most powerful parts of the song are when she expresses her own vengefulness. She sings in the second verse “so Samson blamed Delilah, but given half the chance, I would’ve made him weaker too”. The bridge (middle 8) is the peak of both her vengulness and the song in general, which reads,

“He stole her youth and promised heaven

The men start wars, yet Troy hates Helen

Women’s hearts are lethal weapons

Did you hold mine and feel threatened?

Hear my lyrics, taste my venom

You are still my great obsession”

She describes the opening line on Twitter saying, “The whole middle 8 is about the unending pain of the female experience, and this line refers to older men taking advantage of younger women. The way we want to believe them, the way they know that and use it against us”. This is an excellent way of explaining how Maisie uses vulnerability. She adds into the final chorus of the song “I save you a seat and then you say you wanna stand”. This person pushes her to a breaking point, to the point that she makes a small but important gesture, and when he refuses to accept it, he loses her.

Finally, as a songwriter, I want to tell anyone reading to please re-read those final lines (“women’s” through “obsession”) and just soak them up. Those are my favorite lyrics.

To sum up my thoughts on Maisie after this would be impossible because Maisie is going places and will make sure no one knows her next move. Because of that, I am proud to have called myself a fan of her since before her debut album. I will now be using this review as my way of saying: Maisie, thank you very much for writing my personal album of the year.

You can listen to The Good Witch on all streaming platforms.

***Before I close off this review completely -

I’m a little too soon into this album reviewing thing to be able to say this is a “special new thing”, but alas. I’ve seen Maisie twice in concert now, plus another time at an acoustic record store show. I’ve met her twice, and my friends, mom, and I have all come to the consensus that seeing Maisie live is out of this world compared to listening to her music on Spotify. I know, hard to believe! So, if you see a part 2 (can't confirm that this will happen but it might) dedicated to that experience rolling around anytime soon, don’t be surprised, especially when it makes you want to see her live. Okay I’m done now! Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this and that you’ll listen to this incredible album :)