Behind the moving pop songs of Apple TV+’s ‘Trying’: Interview

About two minutes before the end in each episode of Apple TV+’s Trying, the show really comes for you.

Trying, about Nikki (Esther Smith) and Jason (Rafe Spall) and their struggles and success with the adoption process, is already constantly tugging viewers between laughter and tears. But in those final moments, each episode cuts between key characters, often in solitary moments; it bares their vulnerability in montage form set to the stirring songs of one Maisie Peters.

Peters, 20, was doing sound check at a London nightclub when Trying‘s production team stopped by on a location scout. Her music caught the attention of director and producer Jim O’Hanlon and took hold. 

“I thought, ‘God, that music is really good, and the lyrics sound really sophisticated — much more grown up than just ‘young people’s music,'” O’Hanlon told Mashable in a virtual video interview. “So I went back and researched her, found she had this song ‘My Favorite Ex.'”

The song features in Season 1, episode 2, when the adoption agency begins vetting Nikki and Jason’s former partners, looking for red flags that might make them ill-suited for parenting. Peters herself appeared as a London busker in the same episode and returns in Season 2, performing at a bar. (She and O’Hanlon joke that Trying, over the course of its seasons, will track this mystery singer’s road to success.)

Guy Garvey wrote the music for Season 1, performed by various artists, but Peters took over for Season 2, writing and performing all the songs. (Paul Saunderson composed the original score for all 16 episodes.) “On this one we kind of wanted Maisie to be the central artist and the glue,” O’Hanlon says, citing About a Boy‘s use of Badly Drawn Boy as inspiration. 

The eight new original songs don’t mention any character names or plot points, but they’re deliberately drawn from Trying‘s second season arcs. Before anything was even filmed, Peters had access to the script and took notes of what she wanted to sing about.

“I made notes on everything,” Peters tells Mashable in a phone interview “Character notes, notes about London, imagery things because I like to put a lot of imagery in my songs… I would do any lines that were interesting to me, or overall what I felt like the tone of the episode was and what was the message of it. And then just general — if someone had a ponytail, I’d maybe write that down. When I went later and I started writing songs for it, it was actually super easy, it was like having a cheat sheet.”

“I was just astonished that she wrote them all off the back of reading the script, which was great for us” O’Hanlon says. “We could cut the montage to the actual song, rather than to some sort of temp track and then she has to mold her song to our pictures. She gave us this song, we tweaked a little bit before and went, ‘Oh maybe change that lyric or that lyric or could that chorus be a bit bigger or smaller or whatever.’ … By the time I started editing, I had seven of the eight songs.”

In truth, O’Hanlon says, Apple was nervous handing the reins of such a big project to a 20-year-old artist — but the director trusted his instincts. “She nailed the tone and the feel and the mix of emotion and humor,” he says. “She’s always very witty.”

That wit, a kind of playful specificity in her lyrics, is what makes Peters’ songs stand out in the first place, like with “My Favorite Ex.” It’s the perfect fit for Trying, which isn’t a traditional romantic journey that climaxes with soulful pop and words about love and forever. It’s about ongoing love stories that stretch and mature and sometimes fall apart, as we see with other characters. Peters’ lyrics had to speak to all of that, and they do.

“It’s funny that a lot of the soundtrack is love songs, I don’t typically write a lot of love songs,” she says. “But writing love songs, so many of them, made me realize actually that…it’s not as far-fetched of a feeling or song as I maybe once thought it was.”

“There’s a lot of nuance for them and there’s a lot of fear,” she elaborates. “But there’s a lot of hope, and there’s a lot of love in all different ways which I think is really cool.”

One example is “Helicopter,” from Season 2, episode 4, when Nikki chides Jason for not taking better care of himself because she’d be lost without him. Peters’ vivid and concise lyrics articulate that helpless fear for someone you love so completely, but they’re also playful, poignant, and upbeat.

Babe without me you are just so defenseless
From motorbikes and girls who might try to break your heart
so I’m pretty sure that I should make you breakfast
and then I should never leave the front seat of your car

You are important so of course it maddens me
when you’re nonchalant about your own mortality
Please be more careful when you cross the road
You’re a perfect arrangement of rickety bones

Peters and O’Hanlon both also mention “Lunar Years,” a song originally written for Season 2, episode 1 but shelved because it wasn’t about Nikki and Jason, but about their best friends. O’Hanlon and his team loved the song so much they snuck it into episode 4 with Peters’ bar cameo. 

“It was kind of funny sarcastic song about wishing someone wasn’t getting over you as quickly as they are,” she says. “But even then, that’s a different type of love and I really enjoyed getting to write that sort of song, as well as all the other different types of songs.”

I guess people just change you got good I got better
But I still care about you and I think I’ll care forever
…
I know something that you don’t know
These days all our friends think you’re kind of an asshole

“Working [this show] last year was one of my favorite things I’ve ever done,” Peters says. “It was just the joy from beginning to end, it was so creatively freeing and cool to do something different. And I love these songs! It’s really been a journey, but I’m I’m very lucky to have been on it with such good people.”

Trying Season 1 is now streaming on Apple TV+. Season 2 drops May 21.