Maggie Rogers: ‘I make main character music’

“What Sex and the City character do you identify with?” is one of the first questions Maggie Rogers asks me on our Zoom call. It’s 8:30 am in LA, and Rogers sounds groggy; it’s probably the first time she’s spoken today. We exchange pleasantries and apologise to each other for the time of our interview. It’s 4:30 pm in London, and this interview is the last work-related activity I do before my Galentine’s Day Sex and the City screening at Rio Cinema. It’s one of the few television shows Rogers has watched, so her interest is immediately piqued. I tell her I’m unsure what character I am, but she’s unconvinced: “Everyone knows who they are!” she exclaims. “OK, I’m a Miranda,” I confess, “because I’m kind of anal and uptight.” She praises me for my honesty: “I think it’s quite hard for people to admit they’re a Miranda because she is so uptight. But I’m definitely a mix of Carrie and Miranda.”

While Miranda doesn’t make much sense, I can definitely see Carrie: both women possess a freeness that is enviable. While most people know Rogers from her viral video with Pharrell from 2016, where she played him “Alaska”, the lead single from her EP Now That the Light Is Fading, in one of her classes at New York University, I know her best through her second album, Surrender that came out in 2022. Surrender was a component of her master’s thesis at Harvard Divinity School, where she studied “the spirituality of public gatherings and the ethics of power in pop culture”. The album is loud and electrifying; you feel each track through your entire body. It’s indescribable. It’s holy. At the time of its release, she told L’Officiel USA that she was trying to “provide a big release for a lot of anger and rage that I was just naturally harbouring in [the pandemic]. Everyone was. This was just the way that mine came out.”

Last Thursday (February 8), Rogers released the lead single to her third studio album, Don’t Forget Me (both the album and single share the same name). In this record, Rogers wasn’t trying to capture a particular feeling, as on Surrender. Instead, she trusted her instincts and allowed the music to come out of her without a mission or goal. “What I capture in Don’t Forget Me is my most unguarded self. I wasn’t performing for anyone. I was just playing. My friends [who have heard the album] have all said that this is the version of me that they know.”

Below, Rogers tells us more about Don’t Forget Me, her feelings about turning 30, and her hot takes on film and television.

I love ‘Don’t Forget Me’ and the video for it. It was filmed in Maine, where you stayed during the pandemic and spent summers at a rural camp. While it feels like an intimate look at you, it also feels like an intimate look at Maine. What does the state mean to you?

Maggie Rogers: Maine is a place where I feel very free. It’s a place where I feel relaxed, unguarded and safe. I’m sure everybody has a different relationship with where they spent the pandemic. But Maine is somewhere I’ve always liked to retreat to, whether in my everyday or public life. It feels like a place where one of the truest versions of me exists because my family moved there for a little bit when I was a kid, and it’s one of the only places that has been really consistent in my life. I feel like nobody can find me there, and it’s amazing. I get to ground myself there and be alone. The landscape there is also so powerful and dramatic that it brings out a sort of deep reverence within me. It’s just so special.

I know you’ve gone in between long and short hair your whole life, but in the music video, seeing different clips of you with differing hair lengths really caught my eye. In each clip, you looked like you were at different, pivotal points in your life.

Maggie Rogers: What I love about hair is that it is externalised change. You can see time passing, and I know where I am in my life, depending on what my hair looks like. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and my friends and family are so familiar with it. They’re like, ‘Oh, Maggie’s gonna get a pixie and be kinda moody for a while.’ I often cut my hair short when I am in a moment of deep self-interrogation, and I think that as an artist, or just as a person, I oscillate between introvert and extrovert, and that’s what my job requires of me.

But in the video, it’s funny because friends just took all that footage. I wasn’t trying to make a music video. I was just on vacation. When I decided to make a music video for ‘Don’t Forget Me’, I realised I didn’t have enough footage. When I was getting all these Super 8 rolls developed, I found a couple of rolls that hadn’t been developed from the pandemic and developed them. So we just used that footage because I was trying to put a video together. But I’m happy that where I’ve been in the last five years is represented in that video.

What is ‘Don’t Forget Me’ about? What inspired the song?

Maggie Rogers: To me, ‘Don’t Forget Me’, is a song about the reality of life, love and loss. Everybody tries their best, and sometimes we hurt each other; you can’t avoid it. A lot of the new record is about mutual culpability and the ways two people contribute to loss. Breakups aren’t just one-sided. So, in that way, ‘Don’t Forget Me’ is about just wanting it to all mean something. And, of course, it means something. That’s the part of the song that makes me the most emotional. Nobody is going to forget you if you’ve really been in love. That’s the nature of it. But still, there’s a vulnerable part of us that wants it all to be worth something in the end.

In your letter accompanying the single, you mention that in this album for the first time: ‘Some of the stories on this album are mine, but for the first time really, some of them are not.’ Why did you decide to do that? 

Maggie Rogers: There was no thought behind it, which is why it was so cool to me. I was just playing around. I went to the studio, not trying to write a song, not thinking I had anything in my brain to write about. I had no mood board and no references. In the past, it had been like, ‘I want to make this type of album,’ and I’ve been so focused and specific. But I think I’ve come to a point in my career where I trust my creative ability and don’t feel I need to prove anything. I trust I can get into the studio and know what to do because I’ve been doing this for 15 years. I think the creative process is just being able to translate whatever creative instinct or feeling.

So, with this record, I stopped thinking about it so hard and just let myself play. As ideas or lyrics came through, I tried not to second guess them. In my head, I was not making a record. It was like a random demo. I’m just going to write something so I can finish the song. As soon as I gave myself permission to write down whatever came into my head, the record was basically done. There’s such a scarcity mentality in the creative industries. I’ve accomplished way more than I ever thought was possible. What if I just had a blast?

I know you can’t say too much, but can you tell us a little bit about what was on the moodboard for this album?

Maggie Rogers: I have said sort of publicly that if my album were elements, Heard It In A Past Life would be air, Surrender was fire, and Don’t Forget Me would be earth. I also think about these records as having central narrators in their instrumentation. This new record is about acoustic guitar. I want it to sound like a Sunday morning. I want to feel like your favourite pair of blue jeans. I wanted to make something that you could sing along to. Something that could just be easy.

This will seem like a rogue question, but I swear it’s connected. Do you know who Jemima Kirke is, and have you ever watched Girls?

Maggie Rogers: OK, so I know who she is, but I’ve never watched Girls or Broad City.

OMG, why? 

Maggie Rogers: Both were filmed in New York when I was an NYU student. I also didn’t grow up watching TV and still don’t watch much of it now. But I remember watching one episode of Girls when I was 19 and in college and just being like, ‘I don’t like this.’ I wish I could say it was too close to home, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t what my college life felt like. I honestly don’t enjoy watching TV where I’m not trying to root for the main character. Do you know what I mean?

No. You need to explain this further.

Maggie Rogers: I mean, come on. I make main character music, for like ‘empowered women.’ You can note in your footnotes that I’m joking, but I’m also not. So I didn’t like Succession or that fucking hotel series.

You didn’t like The White Lotus?

Maggie Rogers: No, I don’t like TV about bad people. That’s my hot take.

“It feels intense when you’re experiencing everything for the first time in your twenties. Everything feels like a big deal... as you get older, you begin seeing patterns, and you learn how to handle your shit” – Maggie Rogers

I asked this question because Jemima Kirke has been doing these funny Instagram stories where she answers people’s questions. Someone asked her, ‘Any advice for unconfident young women?’ she replied, ‘I think you guys think about yourself too much.’ I thought of that post when you discussed how this album has been about you thinking less and having more fun. I wondered if, as you’ve got older, you think about yourself less or worry less about people’s perception of you?

Maggie Rogers: God, I have no fucking idea. I think about myself a fairly normal amount, in a self-loving way? But I think that as I get older, I’m realising that things aren’t that big of a deal. I think that comes with age. It feels intense when you’re experiencing everything for the first time in your twenties. Everything feels like a big deal because it is a big deal, and I don’t think that should be made into a bad thing.

As you get older, you start to have repeat experiences or begin seeing patterns, and you learn how to handle your shit. For example, this morning, I woke up super irritated and sad, and I was like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ Nobody has even spoken to me today. But I just thought to myself, ‘If I play piano for 30 minutes, I’m going to be fine’ – and that’s what I did. Now I feel completely normal.

As you get older, you learn how to self-regulate. But sometimes, some things are a big deal, and they will devastate you. But you also will get through those things. Just try and have some flow in it and also have great friends. My friends are all over this album, you can hear their names and voicemails. My friends are the people who have grounded me in all of this from the beginning and are just so deeply important to me.

The album comes out in April, 13 days before your 30th birthday. How are you feeling about entering your thirties and leaving your twenties behind?

Maggie Rogers: I’m grateful to [my twenties] and so excited for them to be gone. I mentioned earlier that your twenties are just gnarly. I’m starting to feel the centrifugal motion of turning the corner into 30, and it feels really good. I feel so grateful for the accumulated wisdom. Like, my 23-year-old self was losing her goddamn mind. I was famous overnight and terrified. I think that those first years out of college are horrific. It’s so scary, your entire world is changing and you’ve never not been in school. Everything is so intense. Those years are not to be taken lightly.

“I make main character music, for ‘empowered women.’ You can note in your footnotes that I’m joking, but I’m also not”

That was my last question. But it’s not every day you speak to someone who doesn’t watch TV. What television shows have you actually seen?

Maggie Rogers: I have watched every single episode of Friday Night Lights, this weird TV show about football in Texas. It’s amazing. I’ve also watched every single episode of Sex in the City, and I think I saw every episode of Gilmore Girls in high school. I’m also obsessed with this TV show called Nashville. It’s horrible and wonderful and all about music. I think it’s nice that, amidst all my academic pursuits, people know that all I do is watch shit TV. 

Do you watch films?

Maggie Rogers: Yeah. But I’m not big into films; I certainly watch more films than TV. I love going to the movies alone. I love the Criterion Channel; I’m that kind of girl. The last film I watched was Perfect Days by Wim Wenders, which was nominated for the Best International Feature Film at the Oscars this year. I cannot more highly recommend it. It’s the most beautiful film I’ve ever seen. Nothing happens, though. The description is literally like, ’a Tokyo man cleans toilets and loves the trees and listens to music.’ My friend and I sat beside each other, laughed, and sobbed. We couldn’t stop laughing and looking at each other because both of us had to pee the entire time, but we would not leave. Like nothing was happening, but we still couldn’t miss a moment of the film.

I really want to see this film now.

Maggie Rogers: I promise you that I’ll watch at least one episode of Girls, maybe even more than one, if you’re going to watch my two-hour Japanese film.

OK, deal.

Don’t Forget Me is out on April 12 on Polydor and Capitol Records