Label: Gingerbread Man Records
Released: 27th August 2021
Whatever Maisie Peters thought she was signing up for, chances are that the reality has left her expectations a million miles away. Celebrity tweet endorsements, getting signed to Ed Sheeran’s record label, excitement, ridiculous hype levels, she’s taken it all in her stride. And now, with her debut, she’s proven more than a match for all of it. ‘You Signed Up For This’ should come packaged with a noise warning, because that deafening din of hype is about to become a sonic boom.
Pinballing wildly in mood between heartbreak and lovestruck, it’s as much of a rollercoaster ride as real life is at this age. Everything is either the best thing ever or the worst thing ever, so yeah it’s pretty much the perfect Dork album in that way. Tracks like ‘John Hughes Movie’ might feel torn from the big screen, but not in a fabricated way. Like pages torn from a diary, they drip with emotion and anguish and hope and being pissed off. All the good stuff then.
‘Psycho’, the track co-written with Ed Sheeran and Steve Mac, is the perfect pocket firework – an album highlight amongst a sea of Good Stuff. Ridiculously catchy, it is EVERYTHING that is good and mighty about pop music. Elsewhere, the sad banger (sanger?) ’Love Him I Don’t’ makes us want to release the hounds on whoever it was that made Maisie feel bad, and ‘Boy’ is a punch-in-the-air (if not in the face) slapback at, yes, A Boy Who Is Not Good. It’s all marvellous, right now it’s the best thing ever, we love it, you love it, bring on summer and sunshine and dancing and all the good stuff. What a start.
