Maisie Peters is back with a new single, ‘Maybe Don’t’, featuring JP Saxe. The duo have collaborated for a very cool, stripped back love song for the age of emotional unavailability, but at the same time it’s tender in all the right places. You can stream it everywhere, or watch the lyric video below.
‘Maybe Don’t’ feels like the natural evolution of Peters’ musical sensibility from ‘The List’, released earlier this year. It has a similar sound but it is even more stripped back – in that regard, it is most similar to Peters’ latest single, ‘Sad Girl Summer’. Throughout her career she has evolved from a great lyricist to a great lyricist with a real ear for musical arrangement, and her latest work has been consistently sophisticated in this regard.
Between Peters and JP Saxe, ‘Maybe Don’t’ is filled with combined songwriting genius. Actually, though, the single uses few words – Peters referred to it as “minimalist”, which is quite far from her usual, poetic, diary-like style of writing. Speaking to Thomas Bleach, she explained:
“Essentially the song started with Joe in the booth, and it was really important that it was very minimalist. I’m sure I will play the first demo one day, but it was SUPER minimal. I guess it was very inspired by Jeremy Zucker, Lorde, and that world of minimalist pop which embraces only adding things element by element, and if they’re not 100% necessary then they’re taking them out. We were trying to keep it really light, immediate and warm.”
The few lines they do choose to share are filled with meaning and wordplay: “I don’t know how to fall asleep unless you say goodnight”; “you been making group decisions / about us / without us” ‘Maybe Don’t’ has been defined as a conversational love song, and it is – but not the way you might expect. The softness of the sentiment is presented in reverse, through a lens of commitment issues and emotional unavailability. The accompanying energised pop sound is anything but love-ballad-gentle; this is a love song that’s perfect for the digital age and the current moment. ‘Maybe Don’t’ shows, once again, that Maisie Peters is anything but predictable.
Maisie Peters is one of the artists who hasn’t been at all deterred by quarantine. She has zoomed with fans, created interactive, webcam music videos for ‘Sad Girl Summer’, and produced Youtube content as promo for her latest singles. If there is a video in the works for ‘Maybe Don’t’, it certainly won’t be compromised by any lockdown restrictions.
Due to some combination of her age, her early Youtube career and her digital alertness, Maisie is completely creative with social media and it feels totally engaging, from an audience perspective. This is even true of the ‘Maybe Don’t’ lyric video, which is elevated by using a transcription of the lyrics, typed in real time, including quirks like corrected typos. It has the cautiously overenthusiastic feel of a text conversation between two people who really like each other but don’t want to ever seem too keen.
JP Saxe, her stellar collaborator, is perhaps best known for his collaboration ‘If the World Was Ending‘ with American singer Julia Michaels, titled with some ironic foresight, perhaps. It was released in October 2019, but it became part of his EP Hold It Together, which came out earlier this year. Maisie Peters is a self-confessed ‘massive fan’ of his work. ‘Maybe Don’t’ came together in just six hours before Saxe jetted off to Paris the same evening. You can hear that although ‘Maybe Don’t’ is distinctly part of the Maisie Peters trajectory, Saxe’s influence has certainly elevated her song writing to great new heights. You can stream ‘Maybe Don’t’ everywhere now.
