In a nondescript building in a small Pennsylvania town, Maggie Rogers prepares for her big moment. Lititz, Pennsylvania is where arena acts rehearse their shows before heading out on national tours, and every detail counts. “Sunday Morning” caught up with Rodgers on-site just weeks after her concert at Madison Square Garden.
In a career-defining event, she sold out venues in New York City. “Twice!” she laughed. “I don’t know how to calculate that in my head. I don’t fundamentally understand it!”
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To be clear, this wasn’t Rodgers’ first time on the big stage. She had already shared them with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, and an opening stint with Coldplay. She was also nominated for the 2020 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
But for Rodgers, who studied music at New York University, performing at Madison Square Garden was a homecoming of sorts. Walking through Washington Square Park, not far from her former dorm room, she pointed to the bench where she used to write songs. Rogers got her big break, or at least her big break, at New York University, when superstar producer and musician Pharrell Williams visited her class. Rodgers played him a song she had been working on called “Alaska.” “All I remember was just looking at my shoes and clutching them tightly,” she said.
Williams’ response was, “Wow! Wow! The notes are zero, zero, zero. I’ll tell you why. You’re doing your own thing. That’s unique.”
A video clip of Williams’ master class went viral, but when Rodgers started studying music engineering, she needed to learn the art of composition and performance, and that’s exactly what she did. “I’ve played every bar and club on the Lower East Side, and all the DIY venues in Brooklyn that existed when I was here,” she said.
Now 30, Rodgers has developed a close relationship with her fans, many of whom watched her grow from a small club to an artist that record companies competed with.
Remember the demo she played for Pharrell Williams when she was in college? To date, the music video for “Alaska” has been viewed more than 23 million times.
It’s all been an incredible journey, considering Rodgers says he didn’t really play music in public much as he grew up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Her interests were more personal, private and eccentric. “Basically, as soon as I could ask for music lessons, all I wanted to do was play the harp,” she said. “My first CD purchase was a double purchase of the orchestral score for ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ and Britney’s ‘Baby One More Time.’ That’s all there is!”
And you can hear it in her songs. A pop sensibility and tremendous intelligence behind it. Rogers says everything in the arena is fun, but what she really wants is to create deep, long-term connections with listeners through themes of love, heartbreak, and the weird wonder of just being alive. It is said that it is about building. “I really prefer working in long form,” Rodgers said. “And I wanted to actively practice listening, and I sequenced records, and I’ve always loved time-consuming art.”
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Another thing that separates Rodgers from your typical pop star: Back in 2021, she took a break from music and enrolled in a graduate program at Harvard University focused on religion and public life. “I really needed every second,” she said. “I needed to change the direction of my life and do something new. I had been living in a world where everything was about me and my career for about five years, and I wanted to apply that to my music. , even concerts and really large public gatherings.”
For both Rodgers and his fans, the mass gathering became almost spiritual. “This couldn’t have happened any other way,” she said. “For example, when I arrive at Madison Square Garden and step on that stage, I’m like, ‘I’m really ready.’ Then things change quickly, so I always try not to apply that to myself. It’s really peaceful where I sit, and I can never tell what it looks like from the outside, but what I can know is that I’m really into my art. I think I’m at my best when I give. I do both as much as I can.”
Click on the embed below to stream Maggie Rogers’ 2024 album Don’t Forget Me (free Spotify subscription required to listen to full track).
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Story produced by Julie Krakoff. Editor: Remington Coper.
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