INTERVIEW: MAUDE LATOUR

Photo Credit: Anna Koblish

Interview by Hannah Martin

Maude Latour is an upcoming American pop artist most recognized for the successful single “One More Weekend.” Her music touches on grappling with youth, growing up, love, and relationships. She has released multiple EPs, gaining a loyal fanbase, and recently released her first album, “Sugar Water.” Latour was able to speak about her recent release and her experience on tour below. 

Hannah Martin (HM): So you just started your tour and I just wanted to see how that’s going.

Maude Latour (ML): Yeah. Um, I am currently at a road stop in between, um, Detroit and Philadelphia. We’ve been driving for five hours and we have about five hours left. Actually the time of my life, I’m having so much fun. We’ve had three shows so far and it has surpassed all of my expectations! I can’t believe how much fun I’m having and these shows are incredible and I’m absolutely thrilled and inspired honestly.

HM: That’s so awesome. And it’s accompanied with your album drop Sugarwater. How’s that release been going with your album? Especially while you’re on tour, like it’s very simultaneous.

ML: The majority of songs are from the new album. So it feels so relieving to put these out into the world. It’s like such a fresh start to have absolutely new audiences who don’t know me at all. And also be playing my newest music. And so it’s like such new parts of, like myself. I’m like, this is my first time playing these songs obviously. And they just feel like they’re from such a present moment in my heart that I feel like I’m learning every show more about myself. And it’s just like, I’m really singing them from the heart right now because they’re what I currently musically believe.

HM: Wait, that’s so awesome. It’s like the tour is like experiencing the album with you.

ML: Exactly. Totally. I feel like the headline shows for this album are going to be actually insane. And I’m feeling like a taste of that, but I can’t even imagine if the crowd actually knows the words and they’re screaming along. I think I always understand the song finally when I’m singing it with other people in the room. And it’s like, it kind of takes its final form when it’s a concert. I just, I am still waiting for this missing piece of really singing it with the fans and feeling it together because it just takes on a whole new life.

HM: Well, I’m so excited for that to happen for you. So I think you’re coming to Boston this week, correct? At Roadrunner?

ML: Yes. 

HM: How do you feel about coming back to Boston? Is it a new venue? Have you been there before?

ML: Yeah, a new venue. A massive spot. I love playing Boston shows. Boston has historically been like some of my biggest shows ever, like the most sold-out crowds. And I’ve always played bigger venues in Boston than other cities because I knew so much of my music was about me being in college. And I think just Boston knows how to do concerts really well. It’s such a music town secretly. And also I keep dating people from the Boston area. So I think the songs hit for them subconsciously. They know that we’re connected, you know?

HM: With the album, is it your first full album, right?

ML: Correct.

HM: So how did you feel with the recording process with this? Was it different being at the first one compared to some EPs and stuff like that?

ML: Totally. It was so different. I mean, all of my EPs came together because I would make one song and that would be my next song. And then I would just put the next song out and kind of go one song at a time because I was in college. I was just being a college student. But this was the first time I had two years to make this album and I made as many songs as possible and chose the creative album from that. So I think the way it was my other EPs, I think you listen to them kind of one song at a time vibes. But I think Sugarwater makes sense as a whole journey. And I think you need all of the album to fully see the full picture of it. So my intention was like, I wanted it to be a contained world that you can step into and be changed from and exit it.

HM: That’s so cool. I can understand how that would be a different recording process too. And then from this journey that you want your listeners to take from it, is there something specific that you want them to take from this album or just experience it with you? How do you want them to listen to it?

ML: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like when I listened to it and took part of the journey, by the end it is so, I think it was really representative of this second coming of age that happens after college, kind of, just like saying goodbye to so many things that my earlier work revolved around, which was just living with my friends all the time and being inspired by school all the time and heartbreak and everything.. It felt really like there was a presence of nostalgia for sure on this album. Like, Whoa, what has these past years of childhood and teenage adolescence, young adulthood, like what just happened? And how do I say goodbye to those relationships that are now changing and the different parts of life that change? I think I experienced new adult feelings that I wasn’t expecting, like friends moving and following their own paths and even random tragic grief and loss that happens as you get older. And like losing people and suddenly looking back on high school and younger times was like, Whoa, what was I doing? There’s a lot of hindsight. I think on the album and, um, I think the point of it was kind of to build out this thesis that I kind of was built my college degree around, as well as this concept that is it possible that even though we lose things and things change, and we lose people and we lose time and our youth, and nothing ever stays the same, is it possible that loss is not the negation of love and happiness and peak moments, but it’s just this fuller picture that is essential to creating this wholeness of all of life? And it’s proof of love and it brings us closer to love despite the fact that it is painful and we can hold tightly to our loss in order to know our love.

ML (continued): And I think like by the last song “Bloom,” I feel like thinking about all that grief and the people that I was saying goodbye to on the album, by the end of the album, I could really feel them and everything. And despite knowing that they were truly gone, I was like, Oh, but now that I’ve lost you, I actually really see you and absolutely everything in the whole world. And I’ve never felt you more everywhere than now and how those things can be true at the same time. And yeah, that’s kind of the thesis of the whole album. And I think that just like that learning that and learning how to sit with grief and loss and change has just helped me move through this chapter of post-college confusion.