In a world of Andrew Tate, we can only hope that the next generation chooses to be a little more Matt Maltese. A one-man antithesis of toxic masculinity with a polo-neck and a piano, the 29-year-old has spent the past decade writing increasingly self-aware, unfiltered vignettes on life and love, peppered with observations that are frequently funny, often heartbreaking and regularly both at the same time.
Starting in cult alternative circles, playing fish-out-of-water sets at Brixton’s post-punk mecca The Windmill, he’s since been adopted by a whole new fanbase. It began online with breakthrough hit As the World Caves In — more on that later — and his popularity has since taken him around the globe several times over.
With more than five million listeners tuning into his Spotify each month, the appetite for the floppy-haired balladeer’s self-effacing yet sincere swoons is higher than ever.
He recently pushed it even further with his sixth album, Hers. On luscious lead single Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow he implores his lover to treat him “like a piece of meat”; on the sumptuous slow jam Pined For You My Whole Life he declares he should get “a PhD in yearning all the time”.
There’s a willingness to go deep into the romantic trenches that’s totally devoid of machismo — so much so that he’s previously declared “the best work is where you allow yourself to look pathetic”.
Sitting in the sun of Soho Square, he doubles down on the idea. “I haven’t heard that many men sing about the intimate sides of relationships and not need it to have any bravado. It feels vulnerable and some of the lyrics are so pathetically horny that it goes beyond vulnerable,” he laughs. “But I think it’s the most interesting thing I can do. I’ve been really fortunate just to be born in this time and to be a white man who’s an artist — it’s a crazy good lottery ticket, right?
“It’s allowed me to explore masculinity and not be ashamed. And it’s not that I think I’m gonna make a big difference, but if I’m going to make any difference it’s going to be by singing about how to approach these things that happen in long-term relationships and say: ‘Don’t be a prick about it.’ ”Coming to this realisation has been a journey in itself. When he first started out, releasing debut album Bad Contestant with major label Atlantic Records in 2018, Maltese admits he “was obsessed with being critically acclaimed. I wanted to be Father John Misty and Jarvis Cocker’s lovechild”.
That album was reviewed well, but didn’t have enough commercial success to save him from being dropped shortly afterwards. With “about nine months worth” of money left before he had to get a job, Maltese self-produced his second LP Krystal on a £1,500 budget and seemed destined to return to relative obscurity — but then the internet decided otherwise.
First released in 2017, As the World Caves In is an unlikely song to propel anyone to star status. A grandiose piano epic about an imagined apocalyptic romp between Donald Trump and then-prime minister Theresa May, it is — to put it mildly — far from classic TikTok dance fodder. Yet around the start of the pandemic, the app sent it viral and now, nearly half a billion streams later, Maltese’s star has never stopped rising. If a viral social media song is a fairly common tale these days, then the specifics around this one are more revealing. He signed to Atlantic on a 10 per cent royalties deal. Maltese tells me that, at its peak, As the World Caves In was earning the label “£25,000 a week”. Maltese is yet to see a penny of earnings for the track.
“That song’s on 460 million streams or something, but I have to pay back 10 times my debt to break even,” he explains. “And that’s the thing, you’re not getting a £50,000 advance as a 19-year-old for no reason. I remember complaining to my dad who was like, ‘Try being a software developer for Microsoft and getting paid £40,000 a year to make them billions of dollars’. It’s just the way the world works.”
Rather than being resentful, Maltese has used the experience to reframe his outlook. Instead of signing another big deal, he chose to release Hers through a distributor. Now, he’s about as financially savvy as a burgeoning pop star under 30 can be — helped by a self-sufficient operation where he can write, play and produce it all, as well as maintaining a successful side hustle as a songwriter for artists including Celeste, Tom Misch and Matilda Mann.
“The financial reality of things has shaped a lot of my musical decisions, weirdly, but I think that’s been a positive,” he says. “What you do with a blank chequebook is so different to when you think, ‘Well, I could spend this on continuing to live in London.’ I think every artist should go through it, because it’s an insanely different feeling.”
On the one hand, Maltese has spent the past few years getting into the weeds of being an artist on a business level. On the other, he’s seen his fanbase Benjamin Button itself, changing from “divorced dads and second-year philosophy students” to fervent hordes of teenage girls.
He’s been receiving a lot of gifts. “In Asia, I get a lot of dolls of myself,” he nods. “I have to leave a lot of them behind because I have a weight limit on my bag, but there are a few that are particularly demented that I’ve kept, just to show the descendents when they don’t take me seriously…”
Now several tours into the mania, he’s fairly used to the outpouring of emotion in the arena. “I can barely remember a show when it wasn’t like that now, in America at least,” he says. “As soon as you’ve got one screaming girl that’s all you remember, because she’s louder than all of the dads.”
But the online aspect of becoming an unexpected teen heart-throb has still been throwing out its curveballs. Hers is an album acutely, overtly about a relationship, and when Maltese revealed the artwork — featuring the singer sitting on a sofa alongside a pair of women’s legs, feet in the air — his Instagram following immediately turned detective.
“I’m never going to be the guy that’s posting ‘Two years with my bae’, that doesn’t come naturally to me. But it has been fun making a bit of theatre of it,” he says of the image’s breadcrumb trail. “I do think it’s important that people know the album is about a person, and that people know it wasn’t an actor on the front cover because someone did ask me that. Can you imagine if that was an actor? F***ing hell. Just auditioning legs…”
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine ever Maltese getting to the level of ego where he’s judging dismembered female body parts for his own artistic advancement. Channelling the spirit of Harry Nilsson, Randy Newman and other such warmly classic songwriters, instead he’s reached a sweet spot where humour and heartfelt sentiment, pithiness and a candid lack of pretence can all co-exist.
“The less you think about what other people are going to think, that can only be a good thing. I don’t think any great music has been made by thinking, ‘How does this make me look?’” he says.
“My job, or what I like doing, is making mundane things romantic. When you choose to pay attention to the 0.001 per cent of life and make an eternal thing out of those moments, that is quite a lovely thing to do and also quite a delusional thing to do. And there’s something about that mix that I like.”
Matt Maltese’s latest album, Hers, is out now
