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Maude Latour’s first brush with viral fame got here in early 2020 when she posted a video on TikTok of her singing her authentic monitor “Furnishings” to the tune of the piano. “It was throughout a time that I did not suppose my music was going to be rising due to quarantine,” the singer tells AP over Zoom from Los Angeles, the place she fittingly had simply completed a gathering with TikTok. “Every little thing was canceled.” Initially of the yr, she had set her plans — a pageant slot at SXSW and a tour throughout the fall; as a substitute, she discovered herself at residence in her New York residence.
“It really nonetheless was a time that completely modified all the pieces,” Latour explains. “The platform has such a capability to focus on somebody or discover the individuals who adore it. And when it really works, it works.” With the inhabitants remoted throughout the pandemic, they discovered new music they may relate to utilizing the app. Singers went viral for merely performing within the consolation of their lounge, amassing 1000’s of followers with out ever leaving their houses. It was a method for folks to attach throughout the pandemic with musicians and followers.
Learn extra: How Victoria Anthony went from singing with P!nk to creating pop-punk-inspired anthems
Latour skilled this firsthand. Her effervescent pop songs (suppose Lorde’s “Inexperienced Mild” and Hayley Kiyoko’s “for the ladies”) supplied the last word high-energy escape for customers scrolling for the subsequent sticky earworm. “Folks on the app are so humorous — after they love one thing, they adore it a lot,” the 22-year-old singer says. It was evident for Latour within the almost 100,000 followers she rapidly amassed.
It will be a year-and-a-half till Latour was again on campus at Columbia College, and when she returned as a senior, loads of her classmates had heard her music (because of TikTok, after all). “Folks would go me notes within the library saying, ‘Oh, love your music,’ or I might go into the library and other people can be whispering my title,” she recollects.
The New York-based pop newcomer, who went to an all-girls faculty rising up, has develop into identified for utilizing her music to mirror on the complexities of feminine friendships and sexuality. In February 2021 she tweeted, “its actually the binary/phallic constraints on love and emotion that trigger us to place love into packing containers. female love is fluidity, boundaryless, friendship and romance blur, it’s true feeling and it has no ends.”
In March, she shared “Lola,” an ode to her greatest pal. The TikTok the place she performed the tune for Lola occurred to obtain greater than 220,000 likes. One commenter wrote, “Maude actually out right here blurring the road between friendship and relationship,” to which she replied, “i want i may inform u the entire story. This tune should do within the meantime.” One other requested if the only can be “taking part in whenever you stroll down the aisle to Lola,” and queer icon FLETCHER declared, “i’m so right here for this.”
[Photo via Warner]
“I have been an advocate for this, blurry, indescribable love that is friendship, however [it’s] a lot deeper, and your whole relationships are confused by it.” Latour describes her traditionally all-girls faculty as “a spot the place all these emotions mush.” She’s nonetheless navigating these difficult relationships, which she’s “beginning to notice aren’t totally sustainable” as she grows up and develops deeper emotions. She described these relationships on TikTok as a “complicated lovefriendblur.”
Specializing in these friendships has constantly confirmed to be vital lyrical fodder for her. “I am not in love proper now,” Latour confidently declares. “However I’m nurturing friendships. It took me a second to comprehend that they want as a lot care as a romantic relationship. If it’s performed proper, this will get to be a supply of affection and life for you for years.” As she figures it out, she calls her music “an precise real-time reflection of how I am feeling.”
On her newest monitor “Possibilities,” Latour appears destined for superstardom, prepared to affix her icons, together with No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani. Her upcoming EP is slated for launch Sept. 30 and follows her 2019 EP Starsick 2021 EP Strangers Endlessly.
Relatively than romance, she has different issues to deal with — like getting ready to embark on a serious tour. She’s hitting the pageant circuit, taking part in Lollapalooza, ACL and Music Midtown. Her reveals, which she describes as “rave events,” have created an unbelievable group for her. “It’s this intangible world, and selling and sharing involves fruition in a live performance,” she says. “[The music] will get the closure it wants, and it is cool to fulfill folks and be an actual individual off the display screen.”
She additionally plans to jot down songs each day, spend time within the studio and watch Love Island — a notoriously time-consuming endeavor. Latour is targeted on crafting “excellent pop songs and a sonic universe, the way in which No Doubt does, or the way in which that each artist I like has performed.”
Latour, nonetheless, might want to navigate some change, although alongside the way in which. A lot of her music and video content material — largely shot on the Columbia campus — has been straight linked to New York. With a whirlwind yr forward, she’s bracing for a departure from the town she’s referred to as residence for the previous a number of years. “I’ve lived my life via the lens of New York Metropolis for therefore lengthy,” she notes. “As soon as I lose New York because the backdrop for all the pieces, I am curious what’s going to change it.”
FOR FANS OF: Lorde, Hayley Kiyoko, renforshort
SONG RECOMMENDATION: “Cyclone”
