MAGGIE BAUGH - '24 - Independent Release

With over 1.5 million Spotify streams on each of her 2021 singles, “Drinking to the Broken Hearts” and “Think About Me,” country singer-songwriter Maggie Baugh set her path in motion for a ride that would culminate in 2023 with the release of her debut full-length, Dear Me.

While the album delivered the breakout title track and spawned several fan favorites, “Send You To Hell,” “Looking At The Sky,” “Take Me To Church,” and “From Where I’m Standing,” as uber positive as this past year was for the hot rising talent, the new year looming always brings a realization that some things need to be left behind in order to move forward.

With “‘24,” her first new music since the album, Maggie Baugh transparently tackles those new years eve resolutions, says goodbye to yesterday’s heartbreak, and offers an optimistic toast to the dawning of things to come as she resets her life without his memory holding her in the past.

Written by Baugh, Elena Jones, Tyler Bank, and Andrew Capra, the song leans on a soft tempo pacing that masterfully allows the emotional vulnerability of Maggie’s vocal to carry atop the waltz like feel of the glide in the melody as she paints the vivid, nearing midnight picture through each of the verses.

“Cheap champagne in a coffee cup, I told myself I had to stay up to watch the last few minutes fade away,” she sings on the opening line as she drifts into the conflicting internal emotions waging war between her head and her heart and the memories of what could have been.

Enhancing the battle within, she allows herself to wonder through the second verse who he’s kissing at midnight while confessing that, “I never would’ve guessed on being alone this time.”

But it’s the cleverness in the way that she juxtaposes each verse around the chorus that really pinpoints her immense amount of struggling, making this feel as though she’s peptalking herself while working to overcome the hurt to move forward:

“I’m leaving you in '23 in a rose colored memory

Just two kids with wild dreams

Who were so damn sure

And I'm raising a half full glass

To one more night of looking back

Cheersing everything had behind the closing door

So here's to hoping I don't love you anymore in '24”

Though in many ways “‘24” absolutely sees her still gripped by the past, Baugh expertly provides a shot of hopeful optimism when she hits a breakthrough in the bridge while likely facing her own mirror, “I moved on, but you still stay in the year of you and me…That's where you'll always be!”

With a wordsmith way about her style of writing, “’24” continues to prove that Maggie Baugh poetically knows how to reach the honesty of the depths of emotions that we all experience, earning her another strong heartstring connection with the listener as she kicks off her highly anticipated next chapter.

(Review Written By: Jeffrey Kurtis)

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