Maude Latour. Whether you’ve heard about her or not, I’m sure you’ll be seeing her name topping charts and on all sorts of billboards in the near future. She is a twenty one year old singer-songwriter who is currently studying at Columbia University in New York, and despite only releasing her first EP back in 2019 and a few singles over the past year, her unique talent and sound are undeniable. I first discovered her thanks to my bestie, Lilly Jones, around December of 2019, about a month after she released her EP, Starsick. Not to be like “haha we’ve been around since the beginning so we are OG and quite cool” but seeing her grow from only a couple thousand listeners on one song to about 4 million on some of her latest releases like “One More Weekend” has been so fulfilling and as a fan you can’t help but feel proud to have always been there. 

Maude is also a special artist in the sense that because she’s still growing and currently not signed to any labels, she recognizes her place as a small artist and greatly values any input from her fans. Her eagerness to grow and spread her music is emphasized by the way she interacts with her fans, always reaching out to fan accounts and putting polls on her Instagram stories to get feedback from her fans about when to release music and what steps to keep making towards her musical career. 

She is also an avid activist through her music, working to combat climate change and spread the word about the issue as well as being safe in this time of COVID-19, recognizing the importance of her having a voice and a platform at all. She has mentioned her hopes to save the planet in a few of her songs, but acknowledges climate change as an issue that has to be dealt with through the support of many, and could never be a one-person job. She also acknowledges the fact that with all of the human rights issues that have been occurring lately, she understands that she herself is in a unique and privileged position to even be making music and being able to release it and garner any amount of support at all.

Her sound is one that many describe as similar to that of the musical powerhouse of a lady some of you might have heard of… a certain lady who goes by the name of: Lorde. The resemblance is weirdly uncanny, with similar breathy and emotional vocals, but a much different tone to her music. She describes her music genre as “glitch pop” as she’s been working to evolve her music’s production value in more recent songs like “Walk Backwards” and “One More Weekend”. She’s really conscious of how she wants to build her sound, making sure that she puts out only music that she feels is a true representation of herself, even sitting on songs that she’s had done for months to make sure that they’re perfect for release. 

For her songs, she likes to translate her emotions or things on her mind into beautiful lyrics, with themes of heartbreak, anxiety, modern love, and her own ideas of philosophy. As a philosophy major at Columbia, she’s talked about using ideas learned in philosophy and English classes and incorporating them into her music. In her newest song, “Walk Backwards”, she talks about figuring out her feelings for her best friend, and with the line between platonic and romantic love that she feels for her always seeming to be mildly blurred, which if you’re someone who falls into the category of having a pretty much unconditional love for your friends, is something to find very relatable. She doesn’t shy away from any topics in her music, and her lyrics just always have a way of hitting your core and recognizing all of those feelings that you might keep bottled up inside every once in awhile. 

Her songs remind me of bright spring days and are the perfect mood for blasting in the car with your friends. And yes maybe that sounds corny but I can’t wait for the summertime to play Maude full volume all day long. She was actually my top Spotify artist for last year because I spent like a whole week listening to “Furniture” on repeat 24/7 after it came out last summer during quarantine. She’s really been keeping me sane since day one. 

My personal favorite songs of hers would probably be “One More Weekend”, “Walk Backwards”, and “Furniture”. I honestly could name every single song of hers as favorites because there really are no skips in Latour’s entire discography. And I don’t throw around this stuff lightly. Genuinely go listen to Maude’s music if you’re looking for a new pop sound or just some more music to add to your everyday playlists.