NOTE: All photos are copyright of Howard Shiau Photography 2025
On the heels of her sophomore studio album “The Good Witch” debuting at number one on the UK charts, Maisie Peters embarked on a two month tour of North America. A week after the kickoff in Minneapolis, she played History in Toronto on Aug 14th. With just two albums under her belt, she is already playing large venues (like Radio City Music Hall in NYC!!) occasioned by more seasoned peers. Given the fact that this evening was an all ages show, you could see by the line in front of History that the “good witch” has certainly cast her spell on the young women and men of Toronto.
New Jersey based singer/songwriter Grace Enger opened the night. Her debut EP “Well Here We Are” was released just three days ago but she’s not a newbie by any means. She wrote the song “WYD Now?”, a huge viral hit for Sadie Jean back in 2021. Many audience members were also obviously big fans since they were singing along to all the songs!
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In walking around the venue, you could see that the friendship bracelet fad that started with Taylor Swift (I think) has quickly extended through pop music. Fans were trading friendship bracelets and Maisie Peters’ mic stand even had a stack of them! It didn’t look like these were lyric driven but, whatever the reason behind these, I don’t think the craze is going away anytime soon.
When Maisie Peters enters the stage, a bounce in her step and a huge grin on her face, you know it’s going to be a fun show because she looked like she loved being there. She opened with the title track from her latest record “The Good Witch”. When Grace Enger was on, we could already tell that it was going to be a sing-along kind of night and the crowd didn’t disappoint. They were on point the whole evening! Perhaps this is why Peters said that the Toronto stop was her favorite from her last tour and expecting the same for this tour. If you’ve listened to a lot of her music, a recurring theme is breakups but with a happy poppy sound. She told the audience that she was very sad when she wrote this album and told her fans in no uncertain terms that “whoever he is, he is just a boy”, segueing neatly into, what else, “You’re Just a Boy”. It really didn’t matter if Maisie Peters was performing songs from her new record or older songs or whether she was playing guitar or just bouncing around the stage with her microphone. The fans were all having an amazing time, a mood that was infectious. Peters closed the evening with my, and it seems everyone else’s, favorite track “Lost the Breakup”. She has two more months of her North American tour left…lots of time for you to get tickets and see a really fun pop star as she comes into her own. Or go listen to “The Good Witch” if you can’t make it out to a show. Maisie Peters…remember that name!
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