Our host Vick Hope is joined by Maisie Peters.
Maisie is an award-winning, chart-topping singer-songwriter, whose albums The Good Witch and latest release Florescence both reached No 1 in the UK charts. Maisie started as a teenage busker in Brighton, before releasing her debut studio album, You Signed Up For This, which catalogued the highs and lows of early adult life. Fast forward to now where, alongside her latest album, this year Maisie also made her debut at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, and she’ll be playing a headline show at The O2 in May 2027, which no doubt will be watched by her loyal fandom “The Daisies”. This tightly knit, committed group of young women has fallen in love with Maisie’s catchy and emotionally honest indie-pop sound.
Listen to the full episode here and read on to discover Maisie’s five most influential books by women.
‘I was 12, 12-ish maybe [on reading Twilight for the first time] and I think that I was so taken by the romance, and by the way that love is described and experienced in Twilight, in the way that I think maybe like my mum would have been taken by Jane Austen. To me, Twilight is my Jane Austen and people always assume that I’ve read Jane Austen and I say, not really, but I have read Twilight, and that’s a hot take. But, I write songs primarily about love, and love in all of its glory, and I think that Twilight is like a part of why I’m so obsessed with love and as a teenager, and I have been so obsessed with love and romantic love, platonic love my whole life, even when I wasn’t experiencing it, I was writing songs as a teenager, writing love songs and I’d never been in love.’
‘Well, I loved [Famesick]. I read it in pretty much one sitting, I was flying from maybe New York to Toronto, and literally, I was reading, I was stepping off the plane and I was going through customs and I was still reading – it was like being on drugs. I think Lena Dunham is underrated as a writer. I mean, obviously, Girls is getting its flowers now and it’s coming back – that’s a whole separate conversation. But, as a writer, I just find her voice so singular, it’s so warm, it’s so honest, and that’s a word that’s overused, I was so infatuated with it because it’s so honest in a way that I can’t even really imagine.’
‘Nora Ephron just writes so brilliantly, it’s very classy whilst being real and filled with you jealousy, anxiety, upset and revenge and all those things. She would be someone I would love to – unfortunately she passed away – but I would have loved to get a coffee with her, and I would have just been like I’m actually not going to say anything, you just need to tell me how to live my life for an hour, and I have nothing to add. I just want to learn everything I possibly can from you and then I will leave you to your life. I have nothing to give and you have everything to share.’
‘I want to shout out this book because I recommended it to my boyfriend maybe a few years ago now, I had just read it and at the time he was reading a lot of non-fiction, which I think men are more likely to do and my subway take is that men need to be reading more fiction because it’s good for their empathy […] and there is so much to be gained from reading fiction. I think it’s been seen as women read women, girls read books about magical worlds, and fiction is amazing because you live through all these different people, and you experience things you’ve never experienced yourself, it’s amazing for challenging your own view of the world, and your own perspective, and getting to walk in other people’s shoes, and so I said to my boyfriend you should read Babel, I think you would like it and he read and loved it, and he now is obsessed with fantasy.’
‘I read Rebecca right at the beginning of making Fluorescence. so it was very much a subconscious influence. I didn’t go to the studio thinking…actually, it’s a lie, I did write a couple of songs post-reading Rebecca because I found it so inspiring. Although those songs didn’t end up making the album, I think there are a couple of parts of Rebecca that really found themselves in Florescence. I think the description of the English countryside is a huge part of Rebecca and, yes, it’s very gothic and romantic, and very English. Fluorescence means to blossom, to bloom, and a lot of the album was sort of inspired by my return to my roots and to the village that I grew up and going back there after having a difficult time and a few years, and getting to be back there and feeling that very powerful force in my life, and it’s a very powerful force in Rebecca.’
