If Maisie Peters’ debut album ‘You Signed Up For This’ proved the hype was legitimate, its popified follow-up ‘The Good Witch’ skyrocketed the singer-songwriter to the top of the charts. After touring support slots with Taylor Swift and Noah Kahan, Peters took an enforced break to protect her mental health. In doing so, she’s peppered her pop with spicy confessionals and a Nashville seasoning that lends itself well to her journey of self-love and appreciation.
‘Florescence’ is rooted in country, Americana, and indie-folk — at once they feel like missing puzzle pieces that fit Peters’ songwriting instincts naturally. Houses is Peters at her storytelling best, its sliding-door moments rendered in pastel brushstrokes and its country-pop warmth building detail by detail like the domestic bliss she so desperately imagines yet denies herself.
Kingmaker, co-written and performed with Julia Michaels, is a lyrical showstopper, with two of pop’s sharpest tongues dismantling the male ego over a chorus that somehow unites both line-dancers and ravers. Questions is so Swift-coded it borders on self-parody, yet remains an irresistible earworm that burrows in and refuses to leave.
The carousel of co-writers — Houses is the only song here without one on board — occasionally shows. The Joe Rubel collab Mary Janes is a curiously hollow opener given the richness of what follows, while Alysa Vanderheym’s co-write on You You You nearly fumbles the ball, the vocoder-induced delivery an unnecessary side-show to Peter’s fairytale vocals.
At the same time, the folk inflections Marcus Mumford brings to Say My Name In Your Sleep and If You Let Me — banjo, gentle percussion, harmonies tucked beneath Peters’ like skin beneath bed sheets — only highlight how some collaborators suit her far better than others.
Peters hasn’t reinvented the wheel here. Kacey Musgraves, Noah Kahan, and Taylor Swift’s shadows fall large and long across Florescence’s 15 tracks. But the grand finale of Flat Earther, Questions, Girls Just Flying, You Then Me Now, and Nothing Like Being In Love is as strong as anything those artists have put out recently. That’s not imitation, that’s something bigger.
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