Love Lives - What’s the difference between a Soft Boy and a F*** Boy? With Maisie Peters

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

This week, Olivia speaks to musician Maisie Peters.The two discuss the crucial differences between Soft Boys and F*** Boys, how to reclaim the power in relationships, the nuances of writing songs about your love life, and why she’ll never explain who a song is ‘about’.You can download Maisie’s new album here: https://lnk.to/YSUFTSupport Millennial Love with a donation today: https://supporter.acast.com/millennialloveSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I'll meet you there. Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, a podcast from The Independent on everything to do with love, sexuality, identity, and more. This week I am joined by the wonderful musician Maisie Peters who has a brand new album out today called You Signed Up For This. In the episode we talked about soft boys and fuck boys and the crucial differences between them. We also discussed how to reclaim the power in relationships and the nuances of writing songs about your own love life and why Maisie will never explain who a song is actually about. I hope you enjoy the show.

So I have listened to the album. I love it. When did you start writing it? What did you envisage when you sat down to start writing it? Well, I feel like there's sort of two answers to that question. Like one answer is like I feel like I've kind of been writing it all my life if it's if it's your debut album then it's a collection of everything you've done kind of that you think is worthy so some songs like the first one during his movie is from 2017 um but I kind of I went last summer of 2020 I went to Suffolk for a month and I had this like Airbnb for a lot of it which we just was like an old barn and we just bought studio equipment in and like set up a little makeshift studio.

And I wrote there for like about a month and sort of, that was when I sat down and be like, okay, I'm making this album. Let's move. And like, what does that look like? And that wasn't, there's not a lot of planning that goes on with my music. But it's, I feel like it was more of just like getting into the mindset and the space of it um so then that was like yeah summer 2020 and then it was intense album times from then and I am obsessed with I mean a lot of the songs but I think the song that's probably most relevant to

this podcast particularly is the boy song yeah um it's really written for this podcast basically yeah it's brilliant I think it captures so many of the kind of like insidious ways that people and men in particular can behave in relationships so I guess I want to ask you when you were writing that what were you thinking of as like a typical fuck boy and how would you define a fuck boy well what a great question you know what that is how that's how the song define a fuck boy? Well, what a great question. You know what, that is how, that's how the song originated. It was, it was myself and a guy called Joe Rubel and Asheran all wrote the song together. And I'm really good. I'm really good friends with both of them.

And it was like an after dinner song that you have dinner, you have some wine and you go back to the studio. And it was so funny because it was literally that question. The guys were like, so like, what's a fuck boy basically? They were like trying to get into the minds of like a 20 year old girl and they were living their best life because they're both like 30 year old men who are just like having the time of their life pretending that they're a 20 year old girl anyway um and we were so I'd explained to them a fuck boy and then we were talking about soft boys as well and I was like

explaining the difference okay so what do you think the difference is between those two there was an argument at the time I was was arguing that fuckboy might, dare I say it, be, it's like a villain in daylight, you know? Like, at least they're somewhat open with their insidiousness. Whereas I would argue a softboy is harder to pin down. Yeah, I wrote about this recently and my friend uh described it to me he was like a soft boy is basically a fuck boy in disguise yes and I think what is really funny about them that really kind of lends it to satire is that there's this level of like intellectual superiority and sort of like snobbishness that

surrounds them and it's kind of it's all of these like weird niche cultural references and they'll give you books and they'll talk to you about art house films and it's like that kind of thing trying to be super interesting and super different they're so like emotionally it's the the greatest irony of my life is like one of the one of the the guys I've met along my travels who like was a lyrical inspiration for Fuckboy. I had this conversation with him about Fuckboys and Softboys before I was aware. And he really spent a long time explaining how he really wasn't either. And I was like, fair, you know, like, okay, cool. And they spend so long.

I feel like a Softboy spends so long convincing himself and others that he could never like he's not that guy at all he would never do that um and then he fully does turns around and does it I'm really interested as to where that comes from that like ability to deny your own bad behavior and I was talking to a friend about this the other day and I think it comes from and this would make sense when you think about the kind of intellectual superior superiority that we talked about earlier I think it comes from a place of narcissism because it's like thinking I'm such a good person yeah I'm so fantastic and I have such good morals and I'm the main character in my own life I could never outwardly hurt anyone yes no it is exactly

that it's like such a like hysterical place of exactly what you said of narcissism because it's and it's true it's truly a level of like they would never could never fathom that they'd done anything even remotely like hurtful to anybody to the point where I'm sure you could ask them you could be like you know do you do you do you see what you did there and they would be like no like do you think you did anything wrong no and it's like it's kind of amazing but I think to arguably to act that way you just have to have a level of like yeah blind belief in that you always make the right decision and you never make the wrong decision and everybody else is wrong apart from you yeah and it's funny I get asked about a lot you know what's the equivalent for women? Because obviously, you know, fuck boy, fuck girl, soft boy, soft girl. And I just don't think there is one because the whole idea, right, it's based on the patriarchy and it's based on male supremacy. Like it's not those kind of gender dynamics don't lend themselves to a cool girl in the same way right and I feel like this is a generalization now so this is and this

is also me thinking out loud but I think with like a fuck boy and a soft boy there's such a lack of like emotional responsibility towards anybody else but yourself and I feel like as a generalization women are just less sort of um raised in a way and you're sort of in in a way that means it's kind of impossible to do that to feel such a lack of like empathy or responsibility for anybody else and I feel like that's a that's an important trait in the fuck boy soft boy genre I'm interested about the writing process as well because you obviously raised it with two men were they like did they recognize the behaviors that you were talking about like oh we know oh they did oh yeah they're like this is so crazy what is this men behave like this there was there was so many good moments because we were like the song so was so fun to write we

were literally all just howling with laughter um and everyone was like contributing like what they thought a fuck boy did um and there was this one line i start the song and i go i heard you had a lot of therapy when you're 17 for your anger issues if i had a pound for every hole i saw punched in a wall i'd be a rich girl and I told him that I was like you guys know there's like a massive thing it's like a kind of a meme between women that like all men do is like punch walls and they were like wow and I was like have you ever punched a wall and we went around the room and let's just say revealing no names of who had and who hadn't some of those men had definitely punched some walls and I was like did you make a girl look at the hole you punched in the wall?

And they were like, no. It's just like, it's just so good. And then, yeah, there's so many lyrics in that song where we were just unpacking it, you know, like, you up, text repeater. Then I actually, what is good about this song is I wrote it, we wrote it a year ago and then lived my life for a year and then some more shady things happened in my life so then I actually went back and I wrote some more things um some more lines in this song because I was like oh I just want to like throw in more oh I love that I mean yeah you could keep every I think every woman every straight woman you know their whole life is just one long fuck boy song you just keep adding to over the years um I think there's a real kind of

strength to the whole album because it's all about taking the power back and it feels like it's kind of like a call to arms for women who have been messed around by men and just kind of calling out their bad behavior and I guess the two singles Psycho and John Hughes movie like the lyrics feel like it's very much about women taking the power back after they've been hurt um so I guess I wanted to ask you what drew you to that kind of narrative and what made you want to explore that in your songs um I don't know if it was conscious I don't I feel like as a writer I like ever I'm super like sort of I don't set out with like a really intense plan but I think I just naturally I lean towards those themes and I think like I yeah it's it feels it feels like an important emotion to write about and then with Psycho

is what obviously kind of a more dramatic but sort of more fun bolshy version and then Johnny's movie feels sadder but I still really love you know if you don't want me You're Not The One, which I wrote when I was 17, which was very ahead of its time, um, I think I wrote that, and then probably did not follow that for, uh, all the subsequent years, but I don't know, I just think it's always, like, been an interesting theme to me, I've always sort of written within that world, um, and I like the idea that, you know, for this, for every, like, drop of sadness on this record, there's always like a sort of redeeming silver lining sort of side. Yeah, like B-side to it. And so when you do write about love and dating and your songs, where do you go for inspiration, I guess?

Do you always draw on your own experiences or is it kind of a mixture of different things that inspire you? It's really a mixture. I think for a long time, because I've been writing since I was so young and obviously when you're 13, there's just not a lot going on. For a long time, it was drawn upon sort of imagination

and what I thought could happen or, you know, like characters and films or books I was definitely one of those people I was other music I was obsessed with Taylor Swift I pretended to be Taylor Swift um and then as I've gotten older it's definitely it borrows a lot more from my own life and then some songs are super autobiographical some songs are still like wholly fictional because I think that's like the joy of writing is that you should be able to do both um and if if they if there's like an a truth of like feeling in them like an like the the feeling and the emotion is honest then I think that's the most important thing so in this album there's like

there's some stuff that's wholly made up um I always I feel like I've ruined the image because I said on an interview so now I'm going to keep saying it but Outdoor Pool is not real I did not kiss my crush in that pool when I was 15 um but that was like wild imaginative abandonment being like oh like we wrote this chorus with about an outdoor pool let's just like let's just do it like let's commit to the story um that's like a really cool example of how that can be so fun and then there are other songs that's happened that are super real and personal to me and were about my life at the time and when you are writing about your own experiences how do you kind of navigate that do you because obviously you're trying to protect yourself I suppose and protect other people maybe in that process like do you do you try and cloak

things about in ambiguity or is that something you don't even do consciously and you just write what you feel and then just see what happens I think I used to be a lot more uptight about it um I used to because it is a weird it's a weird like responsibility you have as a writer no responsibility but it's a weird sort of power you hold because it ultimately like it is your narration it's however you choose to see it and say it and I used to really struggle I think with the idea that it it maybe wasn't fair it wasn't a fair depiction which obviously nothing can be because it's all perspective um and now I think that I've you sort of have to get over that you have to write what feels natural at the time I do think there is a natural depending on the subject area I think there's like a subconscious and natural ambiguity that I do give to some areas where like yeah I'm not gonna name any names you know and I've always been very um I've always been

very adamant with like interviews or with press with anything when when I'm asked about you know songs and who they're about like that's really that really, that's, like, not my job. Like, my job is, like, writing a song and putting it out. And then the, like, the explanation is, like, it's just not relevant to the music and really to the artist. And I think women get asked it a lot more than men. And I've always been very much like, that's not important. Like, I'm not, I'm never going to talk about that.

Why do you think women do get asked about it more often than men because obviously you know we've already talked about Taylor Swift but she's sort of the the the best example of this at a really high level because obviously all of her songs there are kind of whole reddit threads about who it's about because she dates famous men or she used to date a lot of famous men and so I guess she's yeah one of the best examples whereas I feel like that kind of hype and that level of intrigue you never get that around male artists no I don't think you do I just I don't know I really I I really couldn't tell you um but it does feel like it's like more of the package deal like there's it's so much more expected but it's so much more expected I feel like for women female artists that number one it's I don't know what this is but it feels like it has to be entirely

true it's like this has to be exactly your life and I'm like well it might not be and people like really struggle to compete with that um and then also yeah there's this expectation that um it that we should I don't know, discuss it. And I do think if you sort of, if you look back in interviews, I don't know, like who's asking Bruno Mars who his songs are about? Nobody.

I don't know. I don't care. But I don't know. I don't care. Like great music. But it feels like, you know, Miley Cyrus, Taylor is obviously the best example. Even like, you know, Cam Cyrus uh Taylor is obviously the best example even like you know Camila Cabello and like I just think everyone's so obsessed they're so obsessed it's funny because I don't

I also don't think it's not limited to music either I think you know even female novelists when their work is literally categorized as fictional will get asked who is this about who inspired this character you know like I guess um an example would be cat person that viral short story right which was fiction and everyone would ask Christian Eupenian the author the author who was about who did who did this to you kind of thing um and that story actually is maybe a bad example because there's been a twist in that narrative I don't know if you read this like massive piece that came out a few weeks ago about a writer who said that Cat Person was actually about them. And yeah, it was a weird, it was a weird twist in the narrative. I think Kristen Upanian went to a writing course with this woman and then she dated a guy that this woman had also dated and kind of amalgamated

the two stories but used very similar details about this woman's life without telling her um so yeah you should read that I'll send you a link um but yeah I just think it's across it's just female artists in general it's like there's this weird sexist assumption that female artists just don't have imagination and everything has to be from real life and everything is 100 real and I know because I run a book club which actually you should come on we should talk about that afterwards um that would be great that would be great we should have this conversation again but I run a book club and I'm always I always ask and then I say like I'm really sorry for asking this because I know that everybody asks you and I you know I'm like, I always ask. And then I say like, I'm really sorry for asking this

because I know that everybody asks you. And I, you know, I'm like, is there any element of like autobiography to this book? So I remember seeing Phoebe Waller-Bridge being like, I'm not Fleabag. Like everyone thinks I'm Fleabag. I'm not Fleabag. And it's so good.

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I also want to ask you, when you do write about your own experiences, because I kind of feel like this as well, do you allow yourself like a certain amount of time to pass before you write about it? Because I kind of take the view that I need time to pass before you write about it because I kind of take the view that I need time to pass in order for me to actually have a handle on that situation and be able to write about it with any sense of clarity but then I speak to other writers who are the opposite and

say that actually it's better to write when you're feeling much more raw and fresh about the moment so which kind of stance do you take or if if either um I think that I kind of would I'll like write whenever I feel like I want to um but also a lot of the writing I do is on my own especially if it's about something that's super personal or like this just happened it'll just be like me on my own in my room and so there's that's really just like for me like I might not ever send those songs to anybody. I might not ever use them. But then I do think, yeah, like having a little bit of time perspective is good.

But then it depends really. I think there's merit to both. I used to find it again really hard. I guess I kind of still do to write like in the moment because you're so conflicted like emotionally or you don't really know how you feel for like the first week or so so it's very hard to sort of put that into words and when you can it's really good and I think like the times that I've managed to do that like really quickly after something has happened or like when you're in the thick of something it's quite rare to get like a whole song or to sort of have it but it's really

cool to look back on I'm and I'm always really glad I did because it's such a sort of vivid time stamp of that moment that is it's like kind of wild that I have the ability to do that even though it's hard and I think that when you get it it doesn't even like they'll never come out like realistically I don't think anyone will ever hear these songs because I'll never post them because it'll it'll just be probably like too much of myself for me right now to sort of think about giving to other people but it's just cool for yourself to be able to listen to that and go that is exactly how I felt when that happened do you ever have this feeling when you do write a really personal song and then it goes out and then people sort of talk about it or dissect it or even

just listen to it do you ever get this sense of like oh I feel a bit too exposed or what I guess the writer Nell Frizzell once described to me as a vulnerability hangover which I think is such a good description of when you've just kind of really like bared your soul in some way and you know I did this a lot with the book and with the pieces I wrote around the book and then afterwards I felt this real kind of sense of oh god like I've just kind of like opened my guts for everyone to dissect and talk about and discuss and it it feels a bit strange do you ever do you ever get that feeling because obviously when you're talking about love and dating as we both do I mean that's like your most vulnerable self so yeah do you ever get that kind of vulnerability hungover um I do I would say what's for me at least the like the kind of I get saved a little

bit by the nature of like the release process and songwriting because I'll write something but I don't think realistically it's very rare that it will come out before six months later very rare like I can't think of many examples where that's happened so you kind of get the the benefit of time um and what feels like I would say like 90% of the time what feels like so painful and sort of relevant six months later is very different and it's it's a very different feeling it's a really good Lucy Dacre song called night shift um and she sings I hope it's something organized but I hope in song called Night Shift um and she sings I hope it's something organized but I hope in so many years the songs I'm singing feel like covers um and dedicated to old lovers and I've always loved that lyric and I think it's really true like

I don't know I I have some songs now which do feel like covers there's so there's so little of that feeling left in you and that experience was so long ago that it you're I don't know me personally I'm able to kind of separate it quite a lot um so I I think that really helps whereas if I had to put the song out when I'd just done it that would maybe be less how does it feel when you hear your songs played on Love Island because I feel like they are always on Love Island I think it's so cool like i love love island um i've sort of tuned in and out of it this year because i've just been wildly busy but i fucking i love love island um yeah it's really cool that my songs like fit those moments

um and yeah whenever you see like your lyrics and your song over somebody else's life it also shows you like how universal everything is like truly no one's special we're all doing the same stuff yeah yeah I it's so funny because for a long time when I was younger my dream job was to be the person that uh soundtracked film and tv shows and like chose the songs to do that because I think that's such a there's such a magic in that in finding the song that perfectly encapsulates a moment and I think so many of us apply that to our own lives like we're constantly soundtracking our own lives anyway subconsciously so it must be so cool to see your song soundtracking someone else's I don't know breakup or whatever I think I think I'm trying to think of the moment when favorite x was used

I think it was like maybe the Amy heartbreaker yeah it was that was powerful stuff that was so powerful I was I was in the most powerful tv scene it's true um no but for sure it was yeah it's really it's really cool I like this year when they played traitor by Olivia Rodrigo finally and it was so funny I feel like everyone had just been waiting um and that's actually one of my favorite songs this year one of my favorite lyrics um and it was so good like in the context of Love Island I was living yeah she's great yeah I really like Olivia Rodrigo did you like her album that came out I did I think she's so good um I think she's so good I love Good For You I love Traitor I think she's an amazing writer talk to me I guess I guess this

kind of leads into my next question because Olivia Rodrigo Taylor Swift all these women we mentioned they write songs about love and as do loads of men so you know love songs have such a long history and context in the music industry why do you think songwriters are kind of actually drawn to writing about love and romance and and why is it a subject that never gets boring I guess I don't know I think that there's just a lot of layers to it there's a lot you can talk about I think it it feels exciting um it feels dangerous and people like to do things that feel dangerous I don don't know. Writing about love can feel like that sometimes. But I don't know because I guess I've been writing about it for a long time

and I'm not particularly a romantic person. I wouldn't argue. Would you not say you're a romantic person? No, no. That's interesting. What? Because I feel like from listening to your songs, I would say you must be a romantic person.

Not, well, maybe in different contexts but as in like in my personal life I would I would say I'm I'm pretty cynical or yeah I'll lean on the side of of pessimism but I'm also I'm saying that having written love songs basically for the past 10 years so like maybe I just maybe I just use it up in my songs and then I have none left um yeah stop writing about love and save it save something for yourself I mean I I'm not romantic either I'm I'm a total cynic and I think I I'm quite unsentimental about love and dating because I'm just obviously I talk about it and write about it all the time and I just feel like everyone's horrible to each other that's so funny so then how do you kind of tap

into that more positive side of things in your songwriting because a lot of your songs I think talk about and view love in a very like nostalgic and uh and yeah I guess in a romantic way how do you where do you go for that it's not so it's not like a conscious decision um to do that I don't know I think it's just you just see where the song takes you I think the song sort of you just follow this there's the song and whatever feels right in that moment um and as you know as I said maybe maybe that is sort of where I where I put all those feelings and all those hopes and yeah belief do you have a favorite song on the new album I do my favorite song is love whom I don't which is track five which is very relevant um for this podcast as well and for what we've just been talking about talk to me so yeah why is that

why is that one your favorite song it's kind of it's almost it's on one level it's kind of hard to pin down because sometimes things just are and I wrote it and it was my favorite song I said I was like this is my favorite song I've written um for this album when I wrote it and then it's and then it's just always been my favorite I think on one level just musically and sonically and lyrically and everything about it just feels like a song I'm the perfect song for me to have written it feels like the culmination of lots of songs I've written and lots of music that I've listened to and my journey as a songwriter and as a as a artist and someone who makes music it just feels like that is a song that really like

embodies all of that um and then I it's just a lot of there's like yeah I've just there's a lot of that song which is just like really just like I don't know it is like very lodged in my, just very like lodged in my heart. And we did it and the first lyric that came was sort of that chorus. It was, now it's coming up roses, kicking up snow. And then it was like, yeah, love him I don't, love him I won't, love him I did for a minute, but I'm finished because I've learned learned and I think that like really just was important to me at the time I guess I get I can see what you mean actually now that you're talking about

that and talking about the lyrics of the songs like there is actually there's not a pessimism that comes through but there is just a very kind of realistic sense of not getting caught up in the in the fantasy of love I suppose that that we all are subjected to occasionally but particularly when we're younger I would agree but I think what's funny about that song like talking about it now is that I'm in that song it's kind of as like a warring thing because it is that it's trying it's not getting caught up in fantasy but I I you know I say like I could see a bloodbath coming playing checkers as the flat was flooding I wasn't eating and he said nothing but I dug my heels in got really good at underwater breathing and I guess that I say, like, I could see a bloodbath coming, playing checkers as the flat was flooding. I wasn't eating, I used to say nothing.

But I dug my heels in, got really good at underwater breathing, and I guess that was my stubborn season. And that song feels like you have this, like, really naive, like, hopeful, young, dumb, romantic, sort of almost like, what's the word I'm looking when you're like infatuation that runs through this album but then that song feels like it it ties in with the other theme of the album it's sort of like they fold it's like a segue into a sort of more adult so it's almost like resentful and like

it's like a cold shower of realism where you realize that like the world's not as you thought it would be and people are not as you thought they would be i like that cold shower of realism where you realize that like the world's not as you thought it would be and people are not as you thought they would be I like that cold shower of realism I think we could all do with a cold shower of realism in our dating lives um I guess finally I want to ask you what is your lesson in love so this is the part of the show where I ask every guest to share something they've learned from their previous relationship experiences and what it has taught them about relationships so Maisie what is your lesson in love my lesson in love is you know what I'm gonna say it's my lesson in love this is the first thing that came to mind I might take it back tomorrow is to ask the question when you want to ask the question don't wait and don't think that you can ask it

later and don't think that it's stupid or embarrassing or it's going to push somebody away ask the question because you might never get to ask it what kind of questions would you say that people should ask it's like how do you feel about me or where is this going those kind of questions yeah anything well this is that's kind of the point anything anything that you feel enough that you want to ask somebody um is valid and and you should ask it when you think it as opposed to just eating where letting it eat away at you because yeah yeah because I think we do that a lot as opposed to sitting on it and then before you know it time's passed and it's not the right time to ask it anymore and then I think the more you do that it just yeah like it's it it invalidates like how you feel um and it and it creates I think it ultimately creates a relationship

what you know regardless of who it's between that's uneven because if you feel like you can't ask somebody something and you keep doing that I don't know it's not honest

you need to have that kind of level of authenticity with someone but again doing that is really hard because you need to then let your guard down and show vulnerability and actually that is easier said than done no it's so hard it is so hard it's a lesson that I've learned from not doing it um so that that was what I would say that's it for today thank you so much for listening if you're a new listener to Millennial Love you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Acast or anywhere else. You can comment and leave us a rating too so that more people can find us.

Keep up to date with everything to do with the show on Instagram. Just search Millennial Love. See you soon. Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. I'm Jessie Cruikshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend, I break down the biggest stories in pop culture. But when I have questions, I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy.

You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like, and now that's what my grandma's on. Thank God phone a friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.