In an ordinary building in a small town in Pennsylvania, Maggie Rogers was preparing for her big moment. Lititz, Pennsylvania is where actors come to rehearse their shows before heading out on a national tour, and every detail matters. “Sunday Morning” caught up with Rogers there, just weeks away from her concerts at Madison Square Garden.
In a career-defining event, she sold out her New York City headquarters. “twice!” I laughed. “I don’t know how to calculate it in my mind. I basically don’t understand it!”
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To be clear, this wasn’t Rogers’ first time on a big stage. She has already shared it with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez and opened a stint at Coldplay. She was also a 2020 Grammy Award nominee for Best New Artist.
But for Rogers, who studied music at New York University, playing Madison Square Garden was a homecoming of sorts. As she walked through Washington Square Park, not far from her former dorm room, she pointed out the benches where she used to write songs. It was at NYU where Rogers got what we might call her big break — or at least A Her big break, when famous producer and musician Pharrell Williams visited her class. Rogers played him a song she had been working on called “Alaska.” “What I remember is just staring at my shoes and holding on tight,” she said.
Williams responded: “Great! Great! I’ve got zero, zero, zero notes for it, and I’ll tell you why: You do your own thing. It’s individual.”
A video of Williams’ masterclass went viral, but Rogers — who had already begun studying music engineering — still needed to learn the craft of writing and performing, which is exactly what she did. “I played, like, every bar and club on the Lower East Side, and every DIY place in Brooklyn that existed in my time here,” she said.
Now, at 30, Rogers has built a close relationship with her fans, many of whom have watched her go from small clubs to an artist that record companies were fighting over.
Remember the demo she played with Pharrell Williams when she was a college student? To date, the music video for the final version of “Alaska” has been viewed more than 23 million times.
It’s been an amazing journey, considering that Rogers says she didn’t play music publicly as much while growing up on Maryland’s East Coast. Her interest was more personal, private, and exotic: “Basically, as soon as I could ask for music lessons, all I wanted to do was play the ukulele.” “My first CD purchase was a double purchase of the orchestral score for ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ and Britney’s ‘Baby One More Time’. Which, perhaps, is all you need to know about me!”
And you hear that in her songs – a pop sensibility and tremendous intelligence behind it. Rogers says it’s all fun, but what she really hopes to do is create a deep, long-lasting connection with her listeners around the themes of love, heartbreak, and the strange, wondrous thing it is to just be alive. “I really prefer to work long term,” Rogers said. “And I really feel a lot of gratitude to listeners who want to practice active listening, who also have the patience to spend an hour of their time listening to the way I do, you know, sequence a recording, or who have an appreciation for those things. I’ve always loved the art that takes time.” .
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Another thing that separates Rogers from the typical pop star: In 2021, she took time away from her music to enroll in a graduate program at Harvard University that focuses on religion and public life. “I really needed a second,” she said. “I needed to redirect my life, and I needed to be new at something. I was living in a world where it was all about me and my career for about five years, and then I applied that to music and concerts and these really big public gatherings.”
For both Rogers and her fans, large public gatherings have become something almost spiritual: “This couldn’t have happened any different,” she said. “Like I get to Madison Square Garden and step on that stage and say, ‘I’m really ready for this.’ And that in itself is a gift that I’ve kind of tried to keep from putting this into context myself. Because once you know what it is, it changes, you know?” I’m always in the eye of the storm! It’s really quiet where I’m sitting and I’ll never be able to tell what it’s like from the outside but what I can tell is when I’ve truly dedicated myself to my art, and when I think I’m at my best .
You can stream Maggie Rogers’ 2024 album “Don’t Forget Me” by clicking the embed below (free Spotify registration required to hear the full tracks):
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The story was produced by Julie Krakoff. Editor: Remington Koerber.