Maisie B. – ‘Pull The Rug’

Words by Jack Paech // Photos by Isabel Armstrong

Listen to ‘Pull The Rug’ here.

I’ve never found it easy to compromise.

As artists, our art – whatever we create – is often filtered through a hundred insecurities and just as many tense disagreements between band members before it’s fully formed. My role as one member of a five-person band, over time, was calcified and transformed by consistently having to relinquish my ideas into the hands of other people. Talented hands, sure. But they weren’t mine.

Every now and then, a rare kind of artist comes along and effortlessly untangles the thicket of complexities that come with being a songwriter. As her new single, ‘Pull the Rug’, proves: Maisie B takes this necessity to compromise (be it with her bandmates or with conflicting internal influences) in her stride. Instead of letting the minefield break her spirit, she uses it to plot a path into uncharted terrain musically and emotionally.

“Before I started working with my band, I always thought as a soloist, I had to have everything figured out. But I’m learning more and more that’s not the case,” she tells me.

I’m glad she’s learned this lesson. ‘Pull the Rug’ is a marvel of collaboration. It’s an intimate portrait of anxiety that’s delicately cast in an optimistic dye by its light shower of pianos and triumphant brass arrangement. The song sounds like stepping outside into the autumn sun after a depressive episode. And much like pulling yourself out of a rut requires compromising your comfort zone, the song sees Maisie hand her anxieties over to outside forces.

Her innermost fears are fractured, like light through a prism, appearing on the other side as shards of hope, righteous anger, and self-actualisation. This complex net of interleaving emotions is held together by the negotiations she makes between herself and her collaborators. “I’ve been super lucky to work with people who I love and respect both personally and musically,” she says.

I empathise with her on this point. It’s a blessing to look around and find yourself in a room with people who radiate kindness, understanding and an immeasurable talent for self-expression through art.

But we can’t always sail on still, glassy waters. Songwriters must continuously contend with the forever-fraught circumstances of sharing actual, physical space with people who can be just as hard-headed (and fleet-footed) as they are. Though most songwriters I talk to seem to struggle with the balancing act, Maisie walks the tightrope with perfect equilibrium. Trust, apparently, is what keeps her from plummeting:

“My band are wonderful humans. I love them and trust them musically,” Maisie writes, and the earnestness of the sentiment is obvious – even through Instagram DMs.

Maisie’s faith in her bandmates is impressive in itself. She writes to me with the simple, clear vocabulary of someone whose collaborative spirit helps her see the beauty of her work – even when that work gets difficult. She explains that being able to exist “in the middle of all the sounds” is enabled by this trust. This helps us understand that ‘Pull the Rug’ is a song that has taken a village to construct, which makes it even more impressive that Maisie’s voice is never lost in all those details. She makes her truth easy to understand – easy to relate to – but there is nuance in between those bold lines. Or, as she puts it, “I want my music to be the kind that people come back to and find something new each time.”

And I do keep coming back to ‘Pull the Rug’, but not because I understand exactly what Maisie is going through. The distorted memories lying at the heart of this song are not mine to remember and I “don’t pretend” I “know how this feels” – whatever “this” is. But listening to this song gives me an approximation of these emotions. ‘Pull the Rug’ is a lesson in compromising your own self-centred perspective to peek at the richness of somebody else’s inner world.

Maisie’s inner world is hers. But when she shares these small, fragile parts of it, we’re one step closer to an honest interaction. In its sincerity, Maisie’s music makes the wide-open world a little bit cosier and imbues unfamiliar faces with a touch of familiarity. Somehow, in expressing her fears, Maisie makes the world a little less scary.