I spent a lot of last night thinking of iconic pairings. Gin and tonic. Wine and cheese. Chilli and chocolate. Coincidentally, all great breakup remedies – but not quite as good as the experience of a Maisie Peters and Cate show in Sheffield, it has to be said.
There are a lot of tired cliches about how life on the road as a touring musician can be tough, but there’s none of that woe-is-me attitude when it comes to this West Sussex songstress and her Canadian pal, Cate Canning. Thanks to TikTok and Instagram, fans get to peep behind the proverbial tour bus curtain and see that life on the road for this blonde duo is a hoot.
Cate’s high-energy support set perfectly prepared the crowd for Maisie’s return to Sheffield’s beloved institution, The Leadmill, with her setlist comprising some of the highlights from her recent release Tell Me Things You Won’t Take Back, including ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ and ‘Groupie’.
Women and girls around me clutched their chests as they sang the heart-wrenching ‘Can’t Wait To Be Pretty’ – a beautiful ode to not feeling good enough in your own skin, and treating your friends kinder than you treat yourself. But it was Cate’s cover of ‘Rock Star’ from Hannah Montana that really got the crowd worked up into an appropriate frenzy ready for Maisie to take to the stage.
Hot off Ed Sheeran’s stadium tour, Maisie seemed buoyed by a crowd that was there exclusively for her. Describing this tour as a “victory lap” for her 2021 studio album, You Signed Up For This (released on Sheeran’s label), the 22-year-old launched into a well-chosen setlist of fan favourites, while also proffering a taste of what’s to come from sophomore release The Good Witch, set for release on the 16th June.
Opening with 2023 single ‘Body Better’, the venue screamed the staccato chorus back and then some. We were treated to a rare outing of the ‘Elvis Song’ which revolves around the line “you were always on my mind”, before Cate re-joined Maisie for ‘Cate’s Brother’ – a song that epitomises the joy to be found in not taking yourself too seriously as an artist, and allowing jokes between friends to turn into great tunes.
One of my favourite things at gigs where there’s a predominantly female audience is looking around at all the boyfriends who have been dragged along – but it was cheering to see that they also looked like they were having a good time. That’s thanks in part to Maisie’s ability to write catchy hooks; case in point, even though we’d never heard ‘You’re Just A Boy (And I’m Kinda The Man)’ before, there were a few people singing along by the second chorus.
Donning her acoustic guitar, Maisie raced through a medley of some of her more gut-wrenching songs including ‘Glowing Review’, ‘Volcano’, ‘Good Enough’ and ‘Favourite Ex’, rounding it up with a snippet of Taylor Swift’s ‘Dear John’ before launching into the frenetic ‘Not Another Rockstar’.
Having just gone through a breakup where I ended things out of self-respect, it was a personal highpoint to get new single ‘Lost The Breakup’ as the set closer. Who even needs therapy when you can just shout the lines “Right now, I might be a mess but / One day, you’re gonna wake up / And, oh shit, you lost the breakup” in a room full of people?
And finally, after briefly disappearing offstage, we got ‘Blonde’ for the encore – a song about the transformation that often follows the end of a relationship, when one party realises they’re hot shit and they can do better. Hopefully there will be more of these cathartic anthems to come with the release of The Good Witch – and I look forward to emerging from my own post-breakup chrysalis and feeling half as good as Maisie Peters must feel, having turned her difficult life experiences into songs that move tonight’s sold-out crowd of 900 people.
Pre-order The Good Witch via Maisie Peter’s website
Words by Beth Kirkbride
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