Designer: Megan Lam (Architecture)
Interview
This interview has been edited for clarity. Tastemakers Magazine (TMM): I think that it’s really cool how you’re able to do all that you do and you’re still in college. How do you balance being a college student and also wanting to do music full time, while being an independent artist? Maude Latour (ML): My music career has been in the background of my entire college experience. I made a promise to myself that I would always choose music between the two in choosing how to spend my time, and just be committed to that first and foremost. There’s so many awesome parts of it. I feel like I’m majoring in my project. I’m taking classes to nurture my curiosity, and stay inspired by linguistics and philosophy and romantic poetry and screenwriting and everything very creative. For me it really works but it has been getting harder lately. I actually need it to be summer right now. TMM: You mentioned philosophy, and I’ve noticed that you post a lot about philosophy on your Instagram story. So I’m wondering, how does that connect to your songwriting?
Spring 2021
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ML: It’s changed how I argue and how I think about other people’s beliefs. I do really go in and out of loving it and hating it. There’s a lot of discussion on the self and identity, and being an individual or not being an individual, or like nothingness and everythingness, how we know things and how we can prove that we know things. And it’s all quenching the same desire to me, just like being ravenously curious and thinking about love in art and aesthetics. It’s all part of exploring and that’s what I use music for as well. I really love how they complement each other.
TMM: That’s awesome. I feel like that goes along with the fact that people love how honest and genuine your music is. What is your creative process like and how are you able to create such genuine art that people resonate with? ML: Totally. I mean, I have a really deep promise to myself that I will only write songs that have to come out. I will only make songs when it’s burning up inside of me and it needs to exist, and that’s the role songwriting plays in my life. It’s like a journal. It’s like a check in. It’s never for the sake of making a song, it’s always because I need it to go through something. I only want to make songs that I rely on, and use to capture my life. Because those are my rules for it, I think it ends up being that for other people as well. TMM: I have heard you say on a livestream that you’re waiting to put out the music that you really want to be making and that it’s going to be crazy. What is that going to be like? ML: Oh gosh, totally. So it’s a funny dilemma that comes with that, in that I have these predictions for how a future body of work will sound and I’m realizing that I don’t want to box myself into that. I haven’t had the creative luxury yet fully to say “Oh, there’s enough people listening now, let me make a six minute song.” One of my goals is to earn an audience that will listen to every single syllable and analyze every moment of it. That’s where I see this certain project that I dream about every single night. TMM: I’m really excited to hear it. So, going back to career-wise questions, do you see yourself signing with a label eventually?
