Maggie Rogers isn’t Waiting to be Saved by Anything
At 28, Maggie Rogers is just getting started. Her second studio album, Surrender, released earlier this year, is connecting with fans all over the world. The album, for which she is currently on tour, shows an artist growing from the ground up as one of the greatest songwriters of the generation. Since 2016, Rogers has seen a whirlwind of transition amidst success and fame. In her final year at NYU, where she studied music production, engineering and English, Rogers experienced a master class with Pharell Williams. In a mesmerizing video that jump-started her career, Pharell hears Rogers’ “Alaska” and is visibly awestruck. He praises the artist, offering no notes, and commends Rogers for “doing her own thing.”
Six years later, Rogers’ latest album corroborates the Grammy-winning producer’s feedback. Surrender is comprised of twelve songs detailing the artist’s recent hardships, reflections, and redemptions. Interestingly, Rogers wrote the album while taking classes at the Harvard Divinity School. Seeking a sense of grounding, the artist enrolled at the university and successfully completed her master’s program with a thesis also titled Surrender.
On the album, Rogers mixes her love of electric dance-pop rhythms with melancholy piano beats and cutting lyrics. The album is not infiltrated with cliche stereotypes, buzzwords, or a forced sense of naivety. The songs aren’t trivial pop anthems, but beautifully-written truths about the world and bite-size pieces of clarity that transcend a single moment. Rogers writes songs that stick with the listener as good writing does. She’s a pro at sticking her feet in different waters and coming out clean.
The intros of Overdrive, Want Want, Shatter, Be Cool and Symphony have notes of 80s synth-pop and rock. They are infused with new-wave sounds and serve as the dancier tracks on the album. I’ve Got a Friend is a deeply personal ode to a close friend, Rogers singing, “I’ve got a friend who’s tangled up inside / Tried to hold her hand the day her mother died” and “I've got a friend who’s smarter than anything / Wears all her mother’s rings/ Stands for the right things.” Throughout the song, conversations and voices can be heard in the background. Different Kind of World conveys Rogers’ outlook on the state of the world today. That’s Where I Am and Anywhere With You detail the ins and outs of the artist’s relationship with another; “Would you tell me if I ever started holding you back? / Would you talk me off the guard rail of my panic attack?/ Look me straight in my center and tell me from the heart? / Are you ready to start?”
Confessions like “You never touched me, but I felt you everywhere” reveal the powers of longing and lust (That’s Where I Am). Horses, Honey and Begging for Rain exemplify some of Rogers’ rawest lyrics combined with slow, indie-folk melodies.
As a whole, Surrender is an album that shows Rogers at her best–and most honest; revealing Maggie Rogers as an artist who’s not waiting to be saved by anything, because she’s doing it herself.