On her third album, the English singer-songwriter embraces a soft, just-in-focus pop palette inspired by the peace that comes with finding true love. Florescence isn’t, however, “just an album full of love songs”, as Peters tells Apple Music. “It really documents the process and journey and relationships and heartbreaks that take you to that,” she says. And so, alongside loved-up moments, including romantic opener “Mary Janes”, the “Jolene”-skewering country bop “My Regards” and “Nothing Like Being in Love”, there are also reflects reflections on past pain. But where 2023’s The Good Witch found her processing it via immediate pop and spiky lyricism, Florescence is more contemplative, as Peters quietly—and sometimes devastatingly—puts her feelings to bed. The album was written between the UK and Nashville and recorded in Nashville alongside frequent Kacey Musgraves producer Ian Fitchuk (she also united with Marcus Mumford on two tracks). Its slower journey to completion, says Peters, was almost a reaction against her The Good Witch era: its speed (“It was do, done”), its intensity of feeling, the “hectic” time of life it was made in. Life pre-Florescence does still sound a bit hectic: Peters wrote some of it between support dates with Coldplay and Noah Kahan in 2024, a year that also saw her land a support slot on Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour. Florescence’s mood reflects feeling more “still, grounded” in the years after The Good Witch, as she grew a bit older, wiser and comfier in herself. And, love aside, that’s what this record is really all about. “I had a realisation that the feeling of the album is this blossoming and blooming into a version of yourself that you feel proud of and that feels permanent,” she says. “The word ‘florescence’ really captured that.” Read on as Peters tells us about our 10 favourite tracks on the album. “Mary Janes” “I was thinking about how powerful the Lola Young song ‘Messy’ is. I was wondering what my own version of that would be like, coming out with all the things about me that are uncool or embarrassing. It’s something I’ve battled with a lot over the years—not feeling cool in the industry or in my genre or in myself. This song is a breath of fresh air to me. And it also felt like it really carried the thesis statement of the album within it—it feels the most Florescence in its bones.” “Say My Name in Your Sleep” “I made this song with Marcus Mumford. To me, it’s a real pillar of this album thematically. It’s looking backwards at what was and seeing it in a different light. There’s also an undercurrent of anger: feeling like you were not treated as you wish you’d been. That feeling flows through this album. I love the simplicity of the chorus lyric—you can hear that in so many different ways. There are days when I hear that sarcastically but it can also feel sad or it can feel contented.” “Houses” “This is my first ever 100 per cent write on any of my albums. The whole song is this very Sliding Doors-esque thing of looking at all the futures that you so desperately wanted and realising how much better off you were for not getting them. This song could never exist on The Good Witch because that album was all about desperately wanting a future you’re not allowed to have. It can be a little bit snarky in places but ultimately it feels like there’s an acceptance.” “Kingmaker” (with Julia Michaels) “I’m a big reader, and I love the Wolf Hall series by Hilary Mantel. Kingmaker is a phrase in that world. I had it written down and when I was in the session with Julia, I suggested it to her and she loved it. It became this song that’s about power. It’s about being a successful woman trying to love straight men. I think lots of women can relate to this song and this feeling of giving so much, moving mountains for somebody, calling in all your favours and then feeling taken advantage of. Underneath all these layers of wordplay and exasperation and ego, there is also a genuine hurt. It’s Julia and I commiserating together, and it’s a conversation between us.” “My Regards” “I love the fun and joy that this brings to the album. I made it in Nashville with a friend of mine called Nick [Lobel], who’s an amazing producer. I rarely write with minor chords but I was having fun writing these quite pitter-patter, rhythmic lyrics, which is something I love doing. I was almost playing this character to not freak myself out that I was even writing these lyrics that, like, my grandma would hear. It’s definitely my perspective and my real life but I’m almost putting on this like Dolly-esque persona to sing it. There’s a Loretta Lynn song I love called ‘You Ain’t Woman Enough’ and I really hear it in ‘My Regards’.” “You You You” “One of the starker songs on the album. I made it with Alysa Vanderheym, who’s a brilliant Nashville writer and producer. If I was seeing this album in colours, most of it is greens and pinks and oranges that fade into each other, almost like a watercolour painting. But ‘You You You’ is almost like a white—it’s definitely one of the sadder, if not the saddest, songs, on the album.” “If You Let Me” (with Marcus Mumford) “Initially, it was just me singing the whole thing. And it actually wasn’t on my tracklist for the album. But Marcus really loved the song and called me up and said, ‘I think this should be on the album. But I think maybe it could be a duet.’ He recorded his verse and, even though we didn’t change any of the lyrics, the song immediately changed meaning. It became much more of a conversation. It’s a song about moving on and finding closure, and when Marcus started singing the second verse, it became a song about the pace at which you do that in a relationship. A lot of the time, I have been slower to move whereas I feel like men, boys, can move quicker at first and then maybe get hit by it at a later date. It made it much more interesting to me.” “Flat Earther” “It’s about being delusional in the name of love—we’ve all been there. It’s about the magic of falling for somebody when it is unrequited. There’s disappointment in it, but it’s also about retaining hope that love will find you. I say in the middle eight, ‘I still believe in miracles and prophecies/Yeah, I just don’t believe in you anymore.’ It’s recognising this wasn’t it but someday it will come.” “Girl’s Just Flying” “This is one of the most important songs on this album. It comes at the end but it could have come right at the beginning. It’s about finding real happiness in yourself—and finding it in the world around you and in your friends. It’s about going to Nashville and discovering a new city and there are some lyrics in the second verse which reference being on the Coldplay tour and just running around Athens and feeling very happy. It’s about how cool that is after a period where you had this constant nagging feeling to your happiness. I specifically love the end of the last chorus—I pictured getting to sing that with a crowd of my fans. I loved the idea of giving them something that we can all sing together in a way that will feel so joyful.” “Nothing Like Being in Love” “It’s almost a love song to all the loves that didn’t work. It’s addressed to the past, to the present and to the future, and I love that as an ending to a record. It was one of the earliest songs I wrote for the album but when I decided it was going to be the last track, I went back and I changed the second verse—I wanted to have a part of this song reference the title in some way. In the second verse I say, ‘Someone is making me smile now, is holding me tight now, and watching me bloom.’ Ultimately the blooming and blossoming that I went through was something that I did, but I also really like that little nod to the fact that sometimes real progress and change is helped along by somebody else. Being loved and loving somebody can do that.”

Psycho

Maisie Peters

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