Listen to Matt Maltese’s tender pop – often dubbed schmaltzcore – and you might not expect his music to be full of laughs. But go back through the British-Canadian singer-songwriter’s records since 2018 debut album ‘Bad Contestant’, and amid the gorgeous, swooning arrangements, you’ll find plenty to make you chuckle.
“I just really enjoy making someone laugh, as much as the idea of bringing them an emotional thing with the music,” he tells NME over Zoom from New York, in the middle of a short promo tour of TV appearances and record store shows. “Finding the root of that is probably from school, and using comedy to not be bullied. But I think it’s what I connect to the most when I listen to people’s work – can they make a joke in among the sadness that’s just the right kind of joke and just the right kind of funny?”
Maltese’s sixth album, ‘Hers’, brings back the wry humour of his earlier albums after a period of “more earnest” writing. “There’s always some motherfucker / Seeking the affection of my girl,” he sings on ‘Always Some MF’, his lovelorn croon gliding over a gently shuffling mix of sax and strings. “Let’s play, let’s play, motherfucker / You ain’t a fly on the ass of my love for her.” As the first song written for this record, it set the tone for everything to come.
“It was the first piece of music I wrote that felt strong enough to start from,” he recalls. “When you’re banging your head against the wall trying to find good ideas, you’re open to saying things that are more ridiculous.”
Matt Maltese credit Sophie Jackson
What would you say is the most ridiculous lyric on this album?
“There’s a few in ‘Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow’ – even the first line is so silly [“I picture you naked at the worst time / Eating with my family, playing live”]. Anything overtly sexual, I’m like, ‘That’s ridiculous’, but I think it was important to sing about that. I weirdly felt like there wasn’t a lot of lyrics I would hear by men about sex that I thought had this emotional sensitivity to them or a silliness or lightness. Even the idea on paper is so ick, of a man singing about being into that. I think there was something about reframing that in a way that still felt me and silly.”
A lot of male artists write about sex in a way that’s more horny…
“Yeah, it’s like, ‘How do you make horniness sensitive?’ [laughs] Please don’t make that the headline…”
With ‘Hers’, you were writing about experiences and incidents from a while ago, rather than things that were fresh. There’s a challenge to keeping the rawness of the initial feelings there, but was there also a challenge of not letting yourself get sucked into those old emotions again, too?
“Yeah, it’s hard. For me, the wallowing bit is disrupted by the comedy. What space and time often do to the situation is they allow me to make a joke about it. On day one of the situation, I probably don’t want to do that, but on day 20, I’m ready. The feeling I normally get most of the time after writing a song I think is decent about a situation that was hard is a really pleasing feeling. It does give meaning to the things that happened, rather than take you back three steps or something. It actually feels like it pushes me forward three steps. But when you’re not writing a good song, it’s [the opposite].”
“[Songwriting] really comes down to the simple thing of, ‘Do I want to keep that on the whole time and not skip it?’”
You’ve written about love in differing forms across your career – a subject that’s been such an eternal source of inspiration for artists since time began. What is it about love that means there’s always something to say?
“Every person is different, and I think my own perception of love is that just every year, the context of your own life and the relationship you’ve had changes your idea of love. Love is the core of experiences which are always new and, even if it’s with the same person, each year is a new experience of that person. It’s just a constantly evolving, strange, wonderful thing – one year, you might be completely against love; one year, you might be completely for it. There’s just too much to write about!”
As well as your own music, you write for other people like Celeste and Tom Misch. There’s a lot of discourse around the craft of songwriting in the current age – length, virality, etc. What makes good songwriting, and does that ever change with time?
“I don’t think it changes much. It really comes down to the simple thing of, ‘Do I want to keep that on the whole time and not skip it?’ The best songs that we look back on as a human race are still going to be the ones where the verse was really good and the chorus was really good. Maybe there’s more of an emphasis on vibe than there was before, but I also think that’s just an expression of how much music is out there, and it’s now incredibly important stylistically that the music is recognisable and unique in its own way.”
You’ve said that making a record that you love needs to be all-consuming. Why?
“That comes from just being aware there’s so much talent in the world. Anything less than giving your all, without sounding like a Year Three sports coach, is not really worth it for me, at this point. It’s almost arrogant not to be completely consumed and give everything I have to the record. That’s what the greats have done; 75 per cent of your effort is not going to be great.”
Who are the artists now who are making you want to keep your own bar of quality up?
“There’s so much good new music. I love Black Country, New Road. Saya Gray’s album is so good. People like Father John Misty are always so good. MJ Lenderman. That Ethel Cain record is so good. Lyrically, it feels like people are being weirder and stranger and funnier, which is cool. Even in pop music, it feels like people are just getting better. The pop music of today is five times as good as it was 10 years ago – and the comedy in today’s pop music is amazing.”
On Instagram recently, you celebrated the 10th anniversary of the first song you ever put out, ‘Even If It’s A Lie’. Looking back at what you wanted to do with music then, how has that evolved? What would you of 10 years ago make of what you’ve created and achieved since?
“At the beginning, I wanted to be really prolific. I do feel like I’ve made a lot of records, and I feel happy that I’ve done justice to that ambition. My North Star has changed a bit in the sense that maybe at the beginning, I went through the thing most artists go through, which is just being incredibly obsessed with validation from peers and press outlets. I felt fortunate enough that, with the first record, I achieved some of those things, and then I felt a bit lost, too. It was a bit like, ‘Oh, that four-star review didn’t make me feel complete’ or ‘That musician posting about me on their Instagram Story didn’t actually make me have a good day; it gave me 15 minutes of joy’. There was a lot for me at that age of reckoning with why I was doing it and what I was doing it for.
“I’ve definitely arrived at just making work that I myself enjoy and that I would want to listen to. Hopefully, that person 10 years ago would just be pretty gassed that I’m still doing it. Back then, I was like, ‘I still want to do this at 65’. These days, I’m taking it more year by year. I really want whatever I put out to be genuinely the greatest thing I could do. Maybe the next 10 years will have a few less records than six, but it will hopefully all be good.”
Matt Maltese’s ‘Hers’ is out now via Tonight Matthew
English (US) · 