Exploring the Sound of Maisi: Insights into Her New EP "You Could Be Something"

I'm Maisi and I'm an alt-pop artist from London and yeah, I just released an EP called “You Could Be Something.” 

Interviewer: What inspired you to make music? 

Maisi: That is a good question. I think I always loved music, like my dad was really into music and there was always music playing and I think maybe when I was like 12, I started, you know, finding out what type of music I liked. I really liked Lily Allen and I started listening to lots of people like that. I think as well, I have a lot of family friends who've made music, so literally everyone around me as I was growing up was in bands or was making music or was DJing or whatever, so I always just grew up around music.

 So I think that's probably a big part of it, just like always having music around me and then yeah, I went to a music uni and did music there and I think that like encouraged me more to do it because for a while I thought I just wanted to do stuff behind the scenes, but I think like going to uni and being around other people that want to be artists, that made me want to do it as well basically.

Interviewer: How would you describe the style of music you make or your sound? 

Maisi: I think I would generally call it alt-pop but I think I kind of go in and out of like a few different genres. I think it's always fairly fast, and there's always kind of elements of sort of weird synths, there's elements of hyper-pop, there's elements of indie-pop, I think it's kind of a combination of those two things, like indie and hyper-pop because they're two of like my favourite genres, but I kind of like take different amounts from different places, so each song is a little bit different, but the thing that i like that kind of ties it all together a lot of the time is like the lyrical content, so I think I often write about the same things really.

Interviewer: Do you have any strong influence that shine through in your music? 

Maisi: I always say this, but like my two main influences, well like probably three, I'd say my three main influences is Charli XCX is my biggest one, which obviously she, I always feel a bit like, yeah a bit silly saying that right now because she's obviously like had really had a massive moment, but I've been like a Charli stan since I was like 13, like I'm such a huge fan. But yeah, Charli's basically probably my biggest influence, so I love everything about her, like sound wise and also attitude wise, and just like how she's conducting herself throughout her career, I think she's a big inspiration.

 I think sound wise, probably 1975, because I really like how they kind of dip in and out of different genres,  I really like they have that kind of freedom. And yeah, like I mentioned earlier, Lily Allen, I really love like the honesty of her lyrics. She's been a big, big inspo lyric wise.

Interviewer: You mentioned earlier that you released an EP recently, what can a first time listener expect from that? 

Maisi: Um, I think, oh, that's a good question. I think someone could expect to feel a lot of existential dread, because I talk a lot about that in the lyrics and feeling a experience and like, feelings of growing up and not knowing how to handle that, that kind of thing. But then also, I tried to tie in with that also, like a lot of hope as well. 

So kind of throughout the EP, I kind of go, oh, I'm feeling really scared of growing up and existential. And it's like, oh, actually, everything's gonna be okay. So I think it kind of goes on a journey of that, which I think hopefully is relatable, because I think a lot of people feel that kind of existential dread that I definitely feel quite a lot. So I think that yeah, that's probably what people could expect. 

Interview conducted and transcribed by EJ Meredith