In 2018, Columbia University student Maude Latour was playing a keyboard piano and singing songs to the walls of her dorm room. In just four years, two EPs and one contract with Warner Records later, her career as a popstar seems inevitable.
Latour, who is most known for her songs “One More Weekend” and “Furniture,” is spending her final semester as a philosophy student on tour. This past Monday, she performed to a sold-out crowd at the Songbyrd Music House in D.C. But for her, music has been a welcome addition to her academic career.
“It definitely was an awesome part of me and my friends’ college experiences. They’ve been so involved in my music career, they were my first team,” Latour said. “I’m so lucky. Honestly, it’s the friendships that have made it so awesome to be in college.”
With a voice reminiscent of musician Lorde and a vibrancy comparable to no one, Latour produces high-energy, impassioned music that challenges convention and centers around her highly personal experiences.
“I think it’s so connected to journaling, it’s so connected to my self-recording processes,” Latour said. “I definitely am writing so that I remember things, I’m writing so that I can save a feeling or honor a person.”
Latour’s persona revolves around a highly saturated, fantastical world. In music videos, she towers over buildings, and on album covers, she’s situated among rainbows and stars. It contrasts greatly with her down-to-earth personality, through which she maintains strong connections with her expanding fanbase.
“My fanbase grew so much from the beginning of the pandemic,” Latour said, crediting nightly Instagram livestreams that allowed her to engage deeper with her fans. “I got so close with so many people.”
But Latour, like many, has come a long way since then. She views her 2019 EP “Starsick” as a sort of beginning, as a time when her outlook on life was that of “an idealist utopia.” As for her 2021 EP “Strangers Forever,” she believes her perspective became more focused as she became more aware of her feelings.
“These are the details of running into someone, breaking up with someone, and it’s a little bit more about my intrapersonal relationships,” Latour said of the EP.
But her new single “Headphones,” which was released Feb. 18, steps away from the chaos of relationships and bodes in a new era for the singer: an era that is more centered around herself. For her and the future of her songwriting, this is a welcome change.
“This is my reflection on my whole life, and this is my reflection on who I am right now,” Latour said. “Feelings at 22 are so different, they’re so much more complicated. I can’t write the same songs that I used to write, and I hope that complexity will translate in my music. It’s my goal to make music that ages with me.”
Maude Latour is visiting DC on April 17 at the Black Cat. Tickets can be purchased here. “Headphones” is available to stream here.
