Written By Kelly Holm
If quarantine has got you feeling cabin fever, Canadian chanteuse Maggie Szabo will get you up and moving with her latest single, “Back Where We Started.” Check out the official remix Ft. ESH below! It is the perfect song to work out or dance to, and is thematically similar to Ingrid Michaelson’s “Missing You,” perhaps appealing to fans of Maren Morris or Halsey.
“I feel very at ease performing that song,” Szabo says of the new track. “I initially started writing the song [two years ago] with my Canadian friend, Brandon Delyzer, and we always felt like it was a special one but I didn’t really know what to do with it… finally when I started working with my producer, Sam Hanson, on my new EP, he listened to the song and knew exactly where to take it.”
After a lengthy re-writing and preparation process, the music video for “Back Where We Started” dropped on April 3.
“Between casting my co-star and learning the choreography, we needed that time to really prepare all of the logistics,” Szabo said of the three weeks of technical work that preceded the actual filming. “We shot most of the video in one day, except for some of the driving shots of the car… since there’s only so much time in a shooting day, we really have to make a schedule and stick to it. You can end up taking hours to perfect one shot without even realizing it and before you know it, you’ve run out of time to shoot the rest of the video.”
Once you’ve laid eyes on the final product, it’s easy to forget all the toil that went into creating it. Szabo, however, wears her backstory on her sleeve with pride. Growing up in Ontario, she knew from the age of three that she would grow up to pursue music. After a childhood of singing the Canadian national anthem at sporting events, Szabo moved stateside after high school to realize her dream.
“I moved to LA on my own from a small town,” she said. “[I] didn’t have anyone that I knew here when I first arrived. It was really hard to learn who to trust, and especially when you’re starting out in your career, everyone has advice for you.”
She made friends quickly, however. From making viral YouTube videos with Walk Off The Earth to having her music featured on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, there’s no shortage of accomplishments she’s completed in the City of Angels. The music video for her song “Tidal Waves and Hurricanes” was premiered by Ryan Seacrest, and in 2018 she performed “Don’t Give Up” with the Trans Chorus of LA. Another artist she’d like to make some noise with? Calvin Harris.
“Sometimes when you’re at the same thing for a really long time, like I have been with music, it’s easy to forget to take a step back and really see the progress,” Szabo says. “So when people tell me that they can see how hard I work, it’s a nice reminder that yes, I have been working my ass off to get here.”
And the roller coaster only goes up. If you can’t get enough of “Back Where We Started,” rest assured you’ll be able to feast your ears on the rest of Szabo’s upcoming EP soon. Currently, she says, it’s in the remixing stages.
“Since we’ve all been stuck in quarantine, I’ve been doing a lot of FaceTime writing sessions from home,” she shares. “There’s a new song that I will be releasing with my upcoming EP and the verses tell a story about a night I met someone on the Lower East Side in New York… every time I listen to it, it reminds me of that excitement when you’re first dating somebody.”
So we can trust that she’s got plenty to keep her busy until the day it’s safe to tour the world. If today’s isolation is a struggle for you, she wants you to know you’re not alone.
“I hope when people listen to my songs, they feel comfort in knowing they aren’t the only ones who struggle sometimes,” she says.
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Check out the official music video for “Back Where We Started” here.
Listen to the official remix for “Back Where We Started” Ft. ESH here.