Maisie Peters - 'Body Better'

Pop sensation Maisie Peters is back with a startlingly honest new single from her second album, yet to be announced.

Peters started singing at a young age, and began busking in Brighton aged 15, as well as uploading original songs to YouTube. She released her debut EP Dressed Too Nice for a Jacket in 2018 with much success, and a second EP, It’s Your Bed, Babe, It’s Your Funeralfollowed in 2019. Since then, she has released several singles, and her debut album You Signed Up For This arrived in August 2021, under Ed Sheeran’s label Gingerbread Man Records. The album debuted at number two on the UK album charts, and Peters embarked on a US and UK tour, with a slot supporting Sheeran.

Her previous single, Not Another Rockstar, was a catchy, cynical, tongue-in-cheek track, whereas Body Better is certainly catchy, but definitely not tongue-in-cheek. 

Opening with vocalisations, backed by a slightly distorted guitar and layered production, the single is frank from the get-go. Speaking on the track, Peters said: “Body Better is one of the most honest songs I’ve ever released, and definitely the most personal. I wrote it after a breakup, and it deals with the ugly things you think to yourself in the aftermath, when you’re painstakingly going through everything small you did and wondering what you could have changed. It’s a song about insecurity and vulnerability, about giving a lot of yourself away to someone who decides they don’t want it anymore and knowing where to go from there.”

It goes without saying that the lyrics are incredibly personal and somewhat painful; Maisie touches on anxieties that most of us have felt. The production, however, is pretty upbeat and makes you want to toe-tap along to the melody, until lines such as “Convenient use of time/With obedient blue eyes” crop up and hit the listener deep in the chest. 

During the bridge, the song picks up even further and it feels reminiscent of the stream of worries and fears you experience after a breakup. “Will you tell me just one more lie? Is her body better than mine?”

A memorable, moving song, Body Better definitely gets Maisie Peters’ new era off to a solid start.

Words by Lucy Skeet

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