‘Maybe Don’t’ feels like the natural evolution of Peters’ musical sensibility from ‘The List’, released earlier this year. It has a similar sound but it is even more stripped back – in that regard, it is most similar to Peters’ latest single, ‘Sad Girl Summer’. Throughout her career she has evolved from a great lyricist to a great lyricist with a real ear for musical arrangement, and her latest work has been consistently sophisticated in this regard.

Between Peters and JP Saxe, ‘Maybe Don’t’ is filled with combined songwriting genius. Actually, though, the single uses few words – Peters referred to it as “minimalist”, which is quite far from her usual, poetic, diary-like style of writing. Speaking to Thomas Bleach, she explained:

“Essentially the song started with Joe in the booth, and it was really important that it was very minimalist. I’m sure I will play the first demo one day, but it was SUPER minimal. I guess it was very inspired by Jeremy Zucker, Lorde, and that world of minimalist pop which embraces only adding things element by element, and if they’re not 100% necessary then they’re taking them out. We were trying to keep it really light, immediate and warm.”

The few lines they do choose to share are filled with meaning and wordplay: “I don’t know how to fall asleep unless you say goodnight”; “you been making group decisions / about us / without us” ‘Maybe Don’t’ has been defined as a conversational love song, and it is – but not the way you might expect. The softness of the sentiment is presented in reverse, through a lens of commitment issues and emotional unavailability. The accompanying energised pop sound is anything but love-ballad-gentle; this is a love song that’s perfect for the digital age and the current moment. ‘Maybe Don’t’ shows, once again, that Maisie Peters is anything but predictable.

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maybe don’t featuring @jpsaxe is out right now!!!!!!! link in my bio, here is me celebrating in hampstead tube station hehe. making this with jp and @joerubel and @afterhrs_ was the best, i am so lucky to get to work with all of them they are the the dream. i hope u love it like we do

A post shared by Maisie Peters (@maisiehpeters) on Sep 25, 2020 at 2:08am PDT

Maisie Peters is one of the artists who hasn’t been at all deterred by quarantine. She has zoomed with fans, created interactive, webcam music videos for ‘Sad Girl Summer’, and produced Youtube content as promo for her latest singles. If there is a video in the works for ‘Maybe Don’t’, it certainly won’t be compromised by any lockdown restrictions.

Due to some combination of her age, her early Youtube career and her digital alertness, Maisie is completely creative with social media and it feels totally engaging, from an audience perspective. This is even true of the ‘Maybe Don’t’ lyric video, which is elevated by using a transcription of the lyrics, typed in real time, including quirks like corrected typos. It has the cautiously overenthusiastic feel of a text conversation between two people who really like each other but don’t want to ever seem too keen.

JP Saxe, her stellar collaborator, is perhaps best known for his collaboration ‘If the World Was Ending‘ with American singer Julia Michaels, titled with some ironic foresight, perhaps. It was released in October 2019, but it became part of his EP Hold It Together, which came out earlier this year. Maisie Peters is a self-confessed ‘massive fan’ of his work. ‘Maybe Don’t’ came together in just six hours before Saxe jetted off to Paris the same evening. You can hear that although ‘Maybe Don’t’ is distinctly part of the Maisie Peters trajectory, Saxe’s influence has certainly elevated her song writing to great new heights. You can stream ‘Maybe Don’t’ everywhere now.

Already gaining plenty of attention, the song has been promoted for a week with cartoon social media posts from Peters, and much anticipation from fans. The music video, which the singer worked on with her friends, currently has 4,000 views after only two hours. Filmed at home while in lock-down, the girls are shown dancing and posing.

When the song and video finally came out, Maisie Peters was excited to share the news with her followers, explaining how they both came to be. She also left a message, saying, “I hope u shriek this song to your chosen families, your groupchats, your best friends, and I hope you remember that in THIS sad girl’s summer : no one dances on their mf own.”

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Sad girl summer is out, link in my bio!!!! This song is especially special to me because I made it entirely with people I love. I wrote it in la with the unreal @iamstephjones & @afterhrs_ the first time we met, before we all became real life actual friends and wrote many more songs together and split our actual sides laughing over dumb shit. Then, I shot this cover art last summer with @radhaggis who I’ve known since I was literally 15, when we both made youtube videos and I slid into his dm’s with facts about the coldwar. I got him to come down to brighton and take film photos of me and my hometown friends just fucking about for the day, and then fast forward a year, when I was tryna choose artwork for sad girl summer and I was suddenly like!!!! I should use those photos!!!!! Like the song is singing about friendship and girl gangs and building eachother up, and what is more perfect to represent that than a photo of me and my actual day 1 best mates @natashabanksss and @olivwalton who I went to prom with, and made tie dye shirts with, and crammed last minute for history gcse with. I hope u shriek this song to your chosen families, your groupchats, your best friends, and I hope you remember that in THIS sad girl’s summer : no one dances on their mf own

A post shared by Maisie Peters (@maisiehpeters) on Jul 1, 2020 at 1:01am PDT

The artist held an Instagram livestream yesterday (30th June) to discuss the song and pique the interest of her followers. While in isolation, Peters has held many livestreams and found time to work on multiple projects including writing and recording new music or covers, and even filming a carpool karaoke style video with her twin sister, in which the pair sung to many of the artist’s previous tracks.

Posting original music on YouTube in 2015, Peters gained popularity over the next few years, releasing two singles independently before signing with Atlantic Records. Her YouTube channel has now reached 82,000 subscribers from her original music. With her record company, the artist has also put out numerous singles including ‘Worst Of You’ which has over 62 million streams on Spotify, as well as two EPs. On YouTube, her most viewed video is ‘Stay Young’, a single release from 2019.