Matt Maltese’s album, “Songs That Aren’t Mine”, was released on March 8, 2024, consists of 13 songs, and is 36 minutes long.
Maltese is a 26-year-old British-Canadian songwriter, born on Oct. 26, 1997. He started his music career at the age of 17 with his debut single “Even If It’s a Lie” in 2015, and it wasn’t until early 2021 that his single “As the World Caves In” went viral through TikTok.
The song now sits at over 300 million streams on just Spotify, showing his growth as an artist. As time went on, Maltese dropped other albums like “Driving Just To Drive” as well as his newest album “Songs That Aren’t Mine”.
Unlike his past albums where Maltese is credited on every one of his songs as the writer, he decided to reprise well-known songs, making them his own by changing the tone, tempo, and backtrack of every song. He is known for his piano-playing skills, as seen in his concerts and on social media. It shows his versatility in making music, and he decided to incorporate it into his new album.
The album, “Songs That Aren’t Mine”, was released on March 8, 2024, consists of 13 songs, and is 36 minutes long.
The first track on the album was “This Is The Day” by The The, a fast-paced song with an upbeat tune, which he turned into something more soulful. He does this with all of the songs on the album, giving extra feeling and passion behind the meaning of the lyrics.
From listening to the album, you can hear how Maltese intended to make the album a way to connect deeper with the song’s lyrics using pianos and a slower melody in each song, showing that music can be interpreted in many ways. There doesn’t have to be a change in lyrics, but rather how a person sings the song.
This is shown again in the most streamed song on the album, “Kiss Me,” originally sung by Sixpence None The Richer. Their version is more lively and seems like it is trying to live in the moment, imagining what it would be like to be with said person.
In Maltese’s version, rather than focusing on the tone of imagining a life with them, it is more reminiscent of the past and what they could have. The way he sings the same lines, like “kiss me, beneath the milky twilight” feels somber compared to the hopes that they will be kissed like in Sixpence’s original version. There wasn’t a change in the lyrics, but rather the tone of voice. Throughout the song, the feeling of pain is established and how he urges himself to move on, but alas, he can not.
Another example can be shown through Avril Lavigne’s song “Complicated” where he turned the song that shows anger and resentment into a theme of reminiscing about a past relationship. He reflected on the conflicts in his life using her words, but turning them into his own.
He continues to do this through each song, even collaborating with other artists like Dora Jar, Lina Flores, and Searows throughout the album, which are popular artists that have gone viral throughout the past 4 years that TikTok has become more recognizable with teenagers.
This album is truly for anyone who wants to listen to a new resonance of popular songs that they know and love. Music is constantly evolving, and although the lyrics are the same, the passion and meaning change through Maltese’s new album.
