Maisi (other)

Maisie Harriet Brand Bourke, known professionally as Maisi, is a British musician and social media personality from south-east London. She co-founded Loud LDN, a collective of women and non-binary musicians, has released several singles, and appeared on TikTok with her attempts to address her boyfriend's restrictive eating. Her mother is Jo Brand.

Life and career

Early life

Maisie Harriet Brand Bourke was born in King's College Hospital to comedian Jo Brand and Bernie Bourke, both former psychiatric nurses, and grew up in south-east London. She has one sister, Eliza; as of October 2021, all four are vegetarians. Maisi realised she wanted to go into music after her parents gave her Lily Allen's album ''It's Not Me, It's You'' as an eighth birthday present; the first song she learned to play on the piano was Allen's " The Fear". She initially wanted to be a songwriter, and started writing songs when she was eleven. She underwent a goth phase as a teenager after listening to Lorde's ''Pure Heroine'', and attended the London branch of British and Irish Modern Music Institute, where she found herself surrounded by others interested in performing, and realised she also wanted to perform. In the first week of the course in 2019, she met Alfie Richer, who she later started dating.

Music career

On 11 June 2021, Bourke released "Guess I'm In Love", for which a music video was released; Kent and Sussex Courier reported in May 2022 that the song had been streamed "nearly 60,000 times". On 25 February 2022, she released "Yellow Line", a reference to road markings, and explores the regret Bourke felt after only saying a quick goodbye to Richer at a train platform on 23 March 2020 on the grounds the pair were meeting in London the next day; at the time, Bourke lived in London and Richer in Essex, and the pair were prohibited from seeing each other by the territory's Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020. The song's sound was inspired by Baby Queen's EP ''Medicine'', which she had discovered shortly before recording the track, as well as several Charli XCX tracks. As of May 2022, the song has been streamed "over 50,000" times.

In May 2022, she met fellow musician Coupdekat for brunch, having discovered her via TikTok. There, they discussed the loneliness of being a woman in the music industry and how they were often pitted against each other. This prompted the pair to set up a group chat on WhatsApp called Ladies Making Noise in London for the women and non-binary musicians they knew at that time. Initially starting with ten musicians including Piri and Matilda Cole, the adding of other members caused the member list to grow to forty people, prompting them to set up an Instagram page, Loud LDN. Coupdekat used a June 2023 interview to note that the chat had "120 members", and that it had moved to Discord.

On 28 June 2022, she released the single "Quick Fixes", a song about cosmetic adverts she had seen online for expensive skin care, diets, health food, and facial fillers, and was her attempt at conveying their superfluity. On 8 November 2022, she supported Piri & Tommy on the Scala leg of their Froge.tour, and two days afterwards, she released "123", which saw use in over 3,000 TikTok videos. On 24 March 2023, she released "Over & Over Again", for which a music video was released containing Piri, who she had befriended at the start of 2022 after she moved to London.

On 25 August 2023, she and Piri released "Head", a drum and bass song written about their feelings about success going to artists' heads, and which was promoted with a video directed, produced, and edited by Maisi. The song was first played on BBC Music Introducing with Jess Iszatt on 5 August, who had to stop playing it halfway through after reading the track notes and finding it was not supposed to have been played until 11 August. On 3 November, she featured on 020whitton's "Go Away", a song she wrote about a crazy girl she used to know when she was younger, and the following Monday she supported Piri on her "Extra Hot" tour.

Personal life

Bourke maintains a TikTok account, "yoitsmaisi", on which Brand sometimes features. She went viral in January 2023 after a video from her "Teaching My BF to Eat" TikTok series, in which she attempted to diversify Richer's meals beyond chicken nuggets and chips, was viewed over 1,000,000 times; the series attracted coverage from the Daily Mail, The Sun and the Daily Mirror. As of August 2023, she has over 145,000 followers, and her restrictive eating series has been viewed over 20,000,000 times. Bourke has named Amy Winehouse as a "massive songwriting and artistic inspiration", specifically how candid her lyrics were, and how she was as a person. She has also cited lyrical inspiration from Lily Allen and Baby Queen, and musical inspiration from Charli XCX, Baby Queen, Dylan, and Mimi Webb.

In 2022, she and Richer ran that year's Maldon mud race for Macmillan Cancer Support, following the deaths from cancer of her uncle Bill and Sean Lock; Maldon Nub noted in May 2023 that they had raised "more than £2,200". The pair came last after Richer wore a thick tracksuit; they were even overtaken by Joel Hicks, who ran the race naked, and who the organisers had made start after everyone else. The pair ran the race again in 2023; on both occasions, the race was started by Bourke's mother Jo Brand, who had attempted to run the race with Lock in 2010, and had ended up having to be dragged out of the mud.

Discography

Singles

As lead artist

As featured artist

References

{{reflist
Musicians from the London Borough of Southwark
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
People from Camberwell