New York (AFP) – Maggie Rogers She wrote and recorded her new album, “Don’t Forget Me,” over the course of five days last winter. The songs came quickly and arranged, as if she were writing “different scenes in a movie.”
“I've been writing songs for 15 years, so I think I've just gotten to this place where I'm really confident in my work and my craft. I think because of that, I was in a place where I was just ready to play,” Rogers said in a Zoom interview before the album's release.
The result is a record Rogers calls “laid-back,” one that finds her “unguarded and present.”
The mood is lighter than Rogers' 2022 Electric album “Give up,” Which in many ways was a release of pent-up pandemic energy – a collection of songs that begged to be experienced live and with an audience. It relies more on vocal sounds than in 2019 “I heard it in a past life.” The first album released by Rogers next Video of Pharrell Williams' reaction to her song, “Alaska” In a New York University classroom it went viral.
As Rogers He explains that: If “I heard it in the past” is air, and “surrender” is fire, then “Don’t Forget Me” is earth.
Like her previous projects – and studies in Harvard Divinity School – Society is a common line of “Forget Me Not.” Rogers name drops his friends and tells their stories along with hers. She welcomed the way the new songs united the crowds, and looks forward to continuing to foster that joyful and present environment on tour.
“I'm excited to be able to meet the people on it,” she said, referring to the album's release on Friday.
The community-first quality of her music is something fans have embraced too: New York music group Gaia, for example, organized a “choir for a day” to Rogers’ song “Light On.” Four hundred people gathered To learn and perform Arrange the song a cappella.
“She also thinks about music as a connecting force, as something that can bring us together and bring our stories together,” said Matt Goldstein, the group's founder and co-director. “It's no coincidence that her music feels so good to sing along with.”
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: “Surrender” felt like an album that needed to be moved and experienced with the audience. How do you see this album being fleshed out?
Rogers: This record was always made for the car. I really wanted to make a record that felt like a Sunday driving record, because for me, those are some of the most intimate moments I've had with the music or with the album — when I'm singing along to a song in the car and I feel like that artist or that song is like a friend in my passenger seat . These are some of my favorite records, records that I turn to for comfort again and again. And, you know, in this big, crazy, completely crazy, existential world, if that's something I can offer the world through my music, I think that's something really special.
AP: Can you say more about how you see your three studio albums in relation to each other? I liked how you described each of them as elements – air, fire, earth.
Rogers: I think categorizing them this way is just a way to help provide context to them. For me, they're all really important reflections on different periods of my life. And my songwriting is very consistent at the heart of all of those things. It's mostly how my producer mind has chosen to dress up the songs at their core, and that has more to do with creative expression or curiosity than anything else.
On every record, I just try to be as present and authentic as possible. “Forget Me Not,” what I love about it, is that it's really, like a kind of woven tapestry. As in many ways, I created a character that kind of led me through this album, rather than trying to capture a snapshot of my life at the exact moment. But there are real truths woven into that character and into those stories.
And, you know, it comes out two weeks before I turn 30, and in a way, it feels like a big ode to my twenties and everything I've been through. Even if the narrative plot line isn't exactly identical to My Life 1:1, the core of all the emotions within all the songs feels really honest.
Maggie Rogers performs on day three of the Lollapalooza Music Festival on Saturday, August 5, 2023 in Grant Park in Chicago. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP)
AB: Looking to the future, what do you think you've learned after putting what you studied at Harvard into practice while on tour last year?
Rogers: It's funny because I spend all this time thinking about live music and the way people gather around it, and I had this idea that when I got on stage it would be like, you know, that ironic image of the woman who has a math problem on top of her head? I was like this would be me. And then I got on stage. What I love about being on stage is that I don't think, I just move. I just feel. It's like a deep instinct.
When I think about the tour I'm going on next year, I think I'm mostly just excited to have a good time. For example, I've worked for many years and been in many bands, whether it was in an underground club in New York City or when I was 18 and playing in bars or being on the road in a truck at the beginning of my career that I feel like now I'm really comfortable on stage and love playing live. I'm so happy to have live music back in this way.
AP: You are I posted a video In the Holidays is about a journal entry you found from the end of your time at NYU.
Rogers: Very triple.
AP: How does this kind of meditative writing fit into your daily practice and songwriting now?
Rogers: It's a big part of my life. I mean, I write every day. I kind of can't sleep without it. This is usually the last thing I do at the end of the day. It is, as it were, truly meditation.
I wrote a lot during my graduate studies and continued to work on articles and turn my master's thesis into a book. My long-form writing practice feels as much a part of my life as my short-form songwriting practice, and it helps me stay really present in my life because I pay attention to detail all the time.
AB: You said that writing this album feels like writing scenes from a movie. Do you look to movies for inspiration when you're developing a story and character like this?
Rogers: No, I mean, the movies I like often have strong female leads – like 10 Things I Hate About You, which was a very big part of Surrender. And “Thelma and Louise” He was a big part of that record. I don't know – maybe that makes me second-rate – but, like, I'm into a Meg Ryan rom-com, or a Julia Roberts movie. But that's just what I like. This, to me, carries the same sense of comfort as an album that represents the passenger in the passenger seat that you sing along to in your car – it occupies the same space for me.
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