British pop star and singer-songwriter Maisie Peters closed out the North American leg of “The Good Witch Tour” in Boston Oct. 11 with a sold-out show at Roadrunner. Following the release of her sophomore album, “The Good Witch,” Peters planned and executed her most ambitious tour yet, all while opening stadium shows for Ed Sheeran’s “Mathematics Tour” around the globe.
“The Good Witch” is an album of growth and healing following her debut album, “You Signed Up For This,” a ballad-heavy album focusing mostly on heartbreak. Through catchy melodies and lyrics jam-packed with wit, Peters has declared this fall a “healing girl autumn” for herself and for her fans, asserting her success as a pop artist over any man who has ever made her feel less than.
Grace Enger, a New Jersey-based singer-songwriter, opened the show with an acoustic set featuring original songs from her new EP, “Well Here We Are.” Singing solo with just a spotlight and her guitar, Enger’s plaintive and clear voice captivated the crowd as they filled the venue. A short 15 minutes after her set, Peters took the stage with a punk-rock rendition of her album’s opening and title track, “The Good Witch.”
Peters and her band left everything on Roadrunner’s stage for closing night, performing a total of 22 songs with few breaks. Peters was a lively and animated performer, making use of the entire stage and encouraging fans in the sold-out venue to scream their hearts out during every song. The singer-songwriter maintains a strong connection with her fanbase, actively interacting with them on Discord, Instagram and TikTok, and this show was no exception. Peters took a pause to ask audience members for relationship horror stories and biggest red flags as a lead-in to her brutally honest, facetious single “Run,” in which she pokes fun at her past relationships as a sort of cautionary tale for listeners, singing, “If a man says that he wants you in his life forever — run.”
Her performance of her single “Not Another Rockstar” had the crowd frenzied, with their tiny witch hats slipping off their heads from all of the dancing. Peters’ lyrics dripped with sarcasm as she told the stories of her “tortured artist” exes who never took her seriously — “Who’s the rockstar now?” she jokingly ad-libbed in the song.
In “There It Goes,” Peters let her lyrics speak for themselves, with no flashy choreography or heavy drums to back her up. The song romanticizes the aftermath of a breakup, waking up one day and starting to enjoy life’s simple moments again: “The comedown of closure / The girls and I do yoga / I wake up and it’s October / The loss is yours.” For many concert-goers, screaming along to this song was a great catharsis.
Peters took a moment in the middle of her set to reflect and celebrate the success of the North American leg of the tour. She recounted her time living in her parents’ house, performing her songs for them and busking in her free time.
“I would play at open mics, and at pubs, and at my school and at other schools’ proms, and I just did it because I really loved doing it,” Peters said. “I don’t know if I had any big, wild ‘Hannah Montana’ dreams, but I just think it’s so crazy that somehow, it’s been like eight years since then. And that sounds like a long time, but it also hasn’t felt like a long time. I still feel 17 and, like, I’m nervous for my parents to hear my song that I swear in. But now, there’s literally 3,000 people in Boston, and I just think it’s so cool.”
Peters then transitioned into a mashup of several songs spanning across albums and different times in her life, weaving in One Direction’s “Night Changes,” which seemed to especially hit home for the singer on the last night of her tour.
The love shared between the singer and her bandmates was evident, especially during their performance of “The Band and I,” recounting the band’s past performances and memories in a nostalgic song reminiscent of Taylor Swift’s “Long Live:” “If we’re living the dream, I hope we never wake up.” Peters even conducted the audience in singing “Happy Birthday” to her keyboard player, Tina Hizon, instructing everyone to belt as loudly and as off-key as possible.
For the encore, Peters came out on stage with Grace Enger to sing a duet of the album’s closer, “History of Man,” one of her most poignant and lyrically powerful songs: “He stole our youth and promised heaven / The men start wars, yet Troy hates Helen / Women’s hearts are lethal weapons / Did you hold mine and feel threatened?” The two sang in harmony, facing each other. Enger left the stage for Peters and her band to perform their final song, “Lost the Breakup,” a fun and vindictive anthem that perfectly encapsulated the overall theme of “The Good Witch”: “One day, you’re gonna wake up, and oh shit, you lost the breakup.”
Following the tour, Peters will head back to the United Kingdom for a breather before starting the tour’s U.K. and European leg Oct. 17 but hinted that “The Good Witch Tour” might be heading back to the United States for a second time, promising a couple in the audience that she would officiate their wedding when she returns to Boston again.
