College student Maggie Rogers catapulted to stardom after an in-class performance of her song “Alaska” went viral on Reddit in 2016. Over the next few years, Rogers struggled to cope with the sudden onslaught of fame while maintaining her creative spirit and artistic honesty. Overwhelmed and burnt out, Rogers decided to enroll at Harvard Divinity School to earn a graduate degree in religion and public life. Now, having navigated how to healthily continue her art, Rogers re-enters the music industry with her third album, “Don’t Forget Me.”
Rogers and producer Ian Fitchuk wrote most of the album over the course of five days of studio time at Electric Lady Studios last December. The pair were inspired; the fruit of their labor is a collection of first takes. The album is instinctual and raw, and that heady energy permeates through each track. The first song, “It Was Coming All Along,” perfectly sets the tone of the album; the pop-rock beat seamlessly reintroduces Rogers’ new sound and reinvigorated mindset with a message of better times being on the horizon.
With the next track, “Drunk,” Maggie plays with rock and roll and a Fleetwood Mac feel. The song makes it obvious that Rogers is not just filling space with random prose set to a random beat; every song is intentional and innovative. “So Sick of Dreaming,” “The Kill,” and “If Now Was Then” embody the quintessential ‘Maggie Rogers sound’ from her earlier work; these songs, like the majority of the record, are a series of breakup stories, but Rogers creates narratives that are not weighed down with blame and vengeance. In an interview with The New York Times, Rogers describes moving on from confessional first-person narratives in her writing: “I was picturing a girl in her twenties on a road trip… In my brain, this record takes place within the span of twenty-four or forty-eight hours. It felt like writing a movie, scene by scene.”
Rogers further explores genre and style with the song “I Still Do.” A gentle piano accompanies Roger’s vocals throughout the entire song; her typical layered harmonies, thumping bass, and driving percussion are absent from the background as Rogers is possessed by Joni Mitchell and puts on a vocal performance for the ages.
The titular track, “Don’t Forget Me,” is a perfect synthesis of the album. As my new favorite Maggie Rogers song, it is everything you could ever need in a piece of music. Both tonally uplifting and lyrically powerful, Rogers expertly cinches a truly unforgettable body of work.
