Maisi

Maisie Harriet Brand Bourke[1] was born in King's College Hospital[2] to comedian Jo Brand and Bernie Bourke, both former psychiatric nurses,[3] and grew up in south-east London.[4] She has one sister, Eliza, also born in King's College Hospital;[2] as of October 2021, all four are vegetarians.[3] 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;[5] the first song she learned to play on the piano was Allen's "The Fear".[6] She initially wanted to be a songwriter,[4] and started writing songs when she was eleven.[7] She underwent a goth phase as a teenager after listening to Lorde's Pure Heroine,[6] and attended the London branch of British and Irish Modern Music Institute,[8] where she found herself surrounded by others interested in performing, and realised she also wanted to perform.[4] In the first week of the course in 2019, she met Alfie Richer, who she later started dating.[9]

On 11 June 2021, Bourke released "Guess I'm In Love",[10] for which a music video was released;[6] Kent and Sussex Courier reported in May 2022 that the song had been streamed "nearly 60,000 times".[7] On 25 February 2022, she released "Yellow Line",[10] 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.[8] 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.[6] As of May 2022, the song has been streamed "over 50,000" times.[7]

In May 2022, she met fellow musician Coupdekat for brunch,[4] having discovered her via TikTok.[11] There, they discussed the loneliness of being a woman in the music industry and how they were often pitted against each other.[4] This prompted the pair to set up a group chat[11] on WhatsApp[12] called Ladies Making Noise in London for the women and non-binary musicians they knew at that time.[11] Initially starting with ten musicians including Piri[11] and Matilda Cole,[13] the adding of other members caused the member list to grow to forty people, prompting them to set up an Instagram page, Loud LDN.[4] Coupdekat used a June 2023 interview to note that the chat had "120 members", and that it had moved to Discord.[14]

On 28 June 2022, she released the single "Quick Fixes",[10] 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.[15] On 8 November 2022,[16] she supported Piri & Tommy on the Scala leg of their Froge.tour,[17] and two days afterwards, she released "123",[10] which saw use in over 3,000 TikTok videos.[17] On 24 March 2023, she released "Over & Over Again",[10] for which a music video was released containing Piri,[5] who she had befriended at the start of 2022 after she moved to London.[17] On 28 April 2023, she featured on Omar+'s "Revenge".[18]

On 25 August 2023, she and Piri released "Head",[19] 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.[17] 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.[20]^: 1:35:26