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I honestly couldn't tell you how I first heard of Maisie Peters, but between her opening for Ed Sheeran's current tour and a period of time where rumors were floating around of her opening some of the European dates of the Eras tour, I felt like listening to her sophomore album within a couple days of it's release would be fun. And that's exactly what I got with The Good Witch-- a really really fun album to listen to.
Stand-out tracks: "Coming of Age" "Lost the Breakup"
My favorites: "The Band and I" "Therapy" "History of Man"
The album opens with the pared-back-turned-boppy title track "The Good Witch," which effectively illustrates every single theme that appears on the rest of the album; toxic relationships, emotional struggles, and good old-fashioned moving on. "Coming of Age" kicks the pop tones of The Good Witch into high gear-- the chanting of "I wish I could have seen it, God!" closes out a rock-solid pop punk song that's almost Avril Lavigne-esque. While the preceding track was very Maisie-moving-on, "Watch" is very Maisie-wishing-she-could-move-on; it carries on the poppy sound with a little more heartbreak sprinkled on top of her pop punk.
"Body Better" was one of the pre-releases from The Good Witch and between its cruising chorus that seems like it pairs beautifully with a drive along a coast in the summer and the clever back and forth of "I can't help thinking that she's got a better body/has she got a better body than mine?", it makes all the sense in the world why this song would have been picked as a single. "Want You Back" is the first piano ballad of the album, and honestly I feel like the natural poppiness of Maisie's voice, the backing instrumentals that are added to the production beyond the piano, and the simplistic lyricism makes this one of the tracks that I'll likely skip when I come back to The Good Witch. "The Band and I" is incredibly refreshing-- ultimately, this is what you'd get if you cracked open the diary of a touring musician and read all the little anecdotes of life on tour. If there ever comes a day when there's a coming-of-age movie about a young band in the 2020s, this song was meant to be on the soundtrack.
"Lost the Breakup" is one of the other pre-releases from The Good Witch and it absolutely deserves to be arguably the biggest hit Maisie Peters has had. A chorus that's composed of lines like "I know I'm obsessed, and/right now, I might be a mess, but/one day, you're gonna wake up/and, oh, shit! you lost the breakup" backed with a fun synthy instrumental deserves hype almost to the level of Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe." "Wendy" is one of the other slower-paced songs on this album, but the poppier instrumental turns it up a notch. It's a little unoriginal in the comparison of a boy not growing up to Peter Pan that we've heard in a dozen other breakup songs, but it's better than the other ballads on this album like "Want You Back" and "Two Weeks Ago." "BSC" is another really fun track and when you listen to this track and find out what the title stands for, it makes it all the more fun. This song might also have the best bridge of the album (how can it not when it starts with "I am unhinged/I am scaling these walls I've gone within").
"Therapy" is the only track on The Good Witch that hasn't been made into a single that I think absolutely needs to be one-- it's one of the more dancy-pop songs on the album and personally, I love a song with clever, sad lyrics and a boppy beat. The next track,"There It Goes," is almost an Act II to "Therapy," illustrating more of the feeling of being happy moving on ("the comedown of closure/the girls and I do yoga/I wake up and it's October/the loss is yours") rather than the "but now you're gone honey I can't sleep/I'm just talking to your memory/I still love you, but you're taking me/from your arms/back to therapy" of Act I. In terms of quality of lyricism, this album ends on the highest of high notes with "The History of Man." I could describe this one, but I would never do all its complexities justice, so just go listen to it and thank me later.
Ultimately, I feel like cutting a few tracks off this album would have overall made it a little stronger as a complete project. But, the songs on The Good Witch that are great? They're really, really, really great.
AM I OBSESSED?
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