I am a sucker for a good, sharp pop album, and Sugar Water—pop singer Maude Latour’s 2024 debut—hits the spot. Her songs are accessible and of-the-moment, but she bends them into surprising shapes, balancing singalong choruses and high-energy beats with off-kilter production choices and existential lyrical themes befitting a college philosophy major.
Latour will start her Sugar Water Tour at The Independent on March 5, bringing the album to life for the first time. Over Zoom, I caught up with Latour to learn about her plans for the tour, the emotions and ideas that animate her songwriting, and the kinds of parties she imagines in the afterlife.
48 HILLS You’re kicking off the tour in San Francisco on March 5, so congratulations. How does it feel to have made it to this moment?
MAUDE LATOUR It’s my first time touring an album, which feels different because I’m playing so many new songs all at once. I’m super excited. I’m so curious to find out how people feel about the album, because I think the songs don’t have their full life form until they’re played live, and that’s when you really see what they mean.
48 HILLS What are the kinds of challenges that come with translating these songs into a live experience? What are you thinking about when you’re in the process of putting the show together?
MAUDE LATOUR If it was up to me, I would get onstage and I would just talk for the whole time. I love to chat with the audience. I wanna be like, “So what do you guys think of that?” I think I’m working on letting the music speak for itself, not explaining everything, and having trust in the audience that I can put my faith in the silence and the space between us.
48 HILLS What are you hoping to accomplish with the tour?
MAUDE LATOUR I think I’m hoping to look at the album in a new way, and breathe new life into these verses. I was making this album for two years, and it was such a secret thing, and then I just put it in the world. And like, some of the deeper cuts on it, I’m like, “Do you know the song ‘Save Me’?” I think I’m gonna learn about the album through playing it live.
48 HILLS Are there any songs that you’re particularly excited to perform?
MAUDE LATOUR So many. I was opening for FLETCHER in the fall, so the audience didn’t know my music. I’m very excited for “Cursed Romantics.” I think “Too Slow” is gonna be really fun with everyone, I’m excited for “7 (interlude)”, I’m excited for “Bloom.” If you can’t tell, I’m beyond excited. [laughs]
48 HILLS Are there any particular songs that you’ve noticed fans being really interested in, that you’ve really seen a response to already?
MAUDE LATOUR I know people like “Cosmic Superstar Girl,” so I’m really excited for her to be in the world. I think people like “7 (interlude)” as well. It’s a deeper cut of the album, but I think it’s an emotional one. I’ve never sung a song that pining, so I’m very curious to do that with everyone.
48 HILLS What is your approach to performing live?
MAUDE LATOUR I’ve always dreamed of making my shows feel like a holy space. I love the concept of sacred places, like places of worship and meditation areas—places where we can feel something bigger than us. These concerts are my own attempt at making this place where we can feel the divine in the room together. It’s only possible when there’s people coming together, and everyone is equally contributing to that energy in the room. So I want these shows to be a place where people talk to strangers and meet each other, where you can somehow break the rules of normal life and realize we all feel the same things and we’re all connected.
48 HILLS That’s a really beautiful idea. How do you think you can facilitate the building of that space?
MAUDE LATOUR In the past I’ve done different things to get the audience to get closer to that. We’ve taken synchronized breaths together, and I’ve made people say hi to the people next to them. Those are some of my old tricks. And I have some surprises in store that will be fun.
48 HILLS One thing I notice in your music and that I really like about it, as a queer person myself, is that you write about queer desire and queer connection. You’ve described the tour as a holy space, and in an Instagram caption as a safe space. How do you think your music can provide that safe space?
MAUDE LATOUR I noticed this on the FLETCHER tour: When the songs exist with those beliefs in their core, the people who listen all share a value system. And when you can get all those people in a room—so many different ages, people who are all dressed up, people who are the exact opposite—somehow, even though these people are so different, we all know the same songs and the same words. Singing together is an ancient, true, human thing, and it’s so powerful. I think the act of singing together is so important.
And since I started putting out music, it’s been really important to me that the main character of the songs is the person with power in the story of the song. Even if it’s a breakup song, an angry song, a sad song, it’s inviting you to accept all your extreme emotions. It’s important to me to not make songs where you’re like, “Oh, I feel like shit, and now I’m nothing.” I turn to music for confidence. I write it to feel like myself again, and so I hope it feels like that when people put the headphones on.
48 HILLS So when you’re writing the song, you’re providing a place for the listener to see themselves in the song.
MAUDE LATOUR Totally. These are my affirmations. If I’m gonna put it out into the world – and this is just my own taste – I don’t want it to be a song that makes someone spiral or doubt themselves. Although there’s so much beautiful music that sometimes I turn to that encourages that, I’m really conscious about the atmosphere around it. I want you to feel on top of the world when you’re feeling every type of emotion.
48 HILLS I hear that in the music. I was wondering – hearing you talk about that – when you’re writing a song, what is the process of putting your songs together?
MAUDE LATOUR I’ve had so many different processes over the years. I think the most effective way is to be so in touch with your feelings. As I’m evolving and doing this for longer and longer, I need to dig even deeper to write new music. I need to not numb out and doomscroll and walk into a session on autopilot. The other day I finally had a little breakthrough, like, “Wow, I have been really sad and disappointed,” and cried for the first time in a few weeks. And then I walked into the room and made a song about that, that I actually needed. And I think coming from an emotion – an honest feeling – is the best way to light the spark.
48 HILLS You mentioned that you’ve been making music for a long time now. How do you think your music and your songwriting have evolved over time?
MAUDE LATOUR I don’t even know how to describe how it’s evolved. All I know is that I can’t recreate what it used to be in an authentic way. I also know that I’m still looking for something that I haven’t found yet, and I don’t think I’ve arrived in any way – but also, we all arrive at every moment. Sorry, that’s the most abstract way to ever answer your question. [laughs] I think my early music was a pure capturing of my childhood – my biggest dreams. The world was open and anything was possible. I’m so glad all of it existed, and I think that’s still my north star.
But now I’m actually in the world, and I wanna make something realer to my more complicated feelings. I used to sing about these perfect friendships, how these friendships fulfilled every part of me. And now, seven years later, some of these friendships fizzled in complicated ways. New emotions and contradictions happened, and we went through hard patches, and then we rebuilt it. Trying to reflect that more complicated stuff has been the main driver of what’s changed my music. I try to reflect what I see, and what I see has gotten more complicated. So it’s a harder process now.
48 HILLS Yeah. This is sort of an abstract question, but how do you feel that your songwriting now has evolved to work with that more complicated reality?
MAUDE LATOUR It’s still an ongoing process. Living a creative life, it’s a practice. I used to live my life and be like, “Song, la la la!” And now, if I’m not getting out of my room, talking to people, trying new things – if I’m not taking care of myself – I can’t make a song that is honest. I’m realizing how much of a life project it is to take care of yourself, and to –… um, what was the question? [laughs]
48 HILLS I was thinking, how do you think your songwriting has evolved as your life has gotten more complicated?
MAUDE LATOUR I think I’ve had to write more bad songs, so I can find a good one every 20. [laughs] But I’m working on this now, I think. I’m realizing how vulnerable I have to be. I have to admit sometimes I don’t feel confident, or I don’t know what I’m doing, or I have doubt. Going to darker scarier places. There’s songs I would never have shared – when I’m in a darker headspace or feeling really low, those songs feel secret and private, but maybe I’ll evolve to learn how to share that part of me too.
48 HILLS I imagine it’s a lifelong process too. If you’re making art about your life, it has to change as your life continues. You mentioned that as your music has evolved, it’s been about capturing something. What do you think the thing is that you’re trying to capture? Or more broadly, what inspires your music?
MAUDE LATOUR I think it has always surrounded how to live and see the mundane things around you and love them, be as grateful for them in the moment as we are in hindsight. It’s my project to decorate the boring parts of life. I feel like some of it is instructions, and my own ways to answer how to live as alive as we can be.
48 HILLS The album is called Sugar Water, and that’s a recurring lyrical theme. I was wondering, what does sugar water mean to you? What is that image to you?
MAUDE LATOUR It kind of means exactly that. It is the sweetness, the beautiful things of life, but also how it slips through your fingers like water always moving. You can never hold it. That includes both pain and sweetness at the same time. It has different [meanings] in the album. In the song “Sugar Water,” that’s what I imagine after you die, this crazy party all the gods throw for you with bioluminescent sugar water coming out of fountains, champagne bottles of sugar water popping, this floating magical dream world where everything is accepted and we can just be our true selves.
But later in the album, I try to pin down, “Can I taste all of life, like sugar water? Can I see it all? Can I taste the sweetness as it’s there?” I explain it so many times, and no explanation ever makes it make total sense to everyone. But if you know, you know. [laughs]
48 HILLS I just have one more question. What’s next after the tour?
MAUDE LATOUR Literally same. What should be next? I don’t know! [laughs] I think that the tour will hopefully give me the answer to what’s next. But it is important to me over the next six months to keep writing. I’ve learned so much from Sugar Water, but I’ve also learned what I think Sugar Water didn’t do. I wanna sink my teeth a little deeper. I was really looking kind of backwards on that album, reflecting on this first year and a half out of college. And now I’ve learned so many new things, and felt so many new, weird feelings. I wanna see what’s happening in my heart and soul and mind and life. That’s what’s next.
48 HILLS I’m excited to see what comes of it.
MAUDE LATOUR Yeah, me too!
