Maggie Rogers
I remember going to church at home on Christmas in 2016, and people wanted to take my photo. When I'm home in Maryland, I don't leave the house. That's a weird feeling.Collection: Christmas
That's why people come to live music, right? To see something go wrong, something human, something vulnerable.Collection: Music
If you're not changing, you're not growing; you're not being present. Change is essential.Collection: Change
There were a couple of months when I was approaching graduation where I started to think of graduating from college as the afterlife. Because it's this kind of crazy thing that you always know you're going to finish school inevitably, but nobody ever really tells you what happens afterwards.Collection: Graduation
'Dog Years' is sort of my way of saying goodbye and 'see you soon' to my friends from college.
The thing about fans is you don't get to choose your own. But every time I meet a fan, I'm like, wow, we would totally be at the same house party.
I'm kind of a funny writer because I write very sporadically.
I really want to make a great record, like my 'Rumours' or 'Thriller.'
Graduating from college and starting your life as an adult is a giant transition no matter what.
I just kind of, like, know who I am. I think that comes from having an incredibly strong sense of purpose for a very long time.
I listened to birds and crickets, looking for the ways that rhythm appears most naturally in the world. I listened to the Smithsonian's field recordings of pygmy choirs from Africa.
Writer's block is your self-critic getting in the way, because creativity will just flow otherwise.
It's interesting because all I want to do is make music. I want to sit in my room, play the guitar, make beats, sing... And I have never made less music than when being a musician became my job.
Folk music usually romanticises the road. 'Back in my Body' tells the opposite story.
When I'm joking around, I'll say I'm a pop star, because it's silly.
I dress as a combination of space cowgirl and San Francisco art teacher.
What I love more than anything in the entire world is making music. It's what I studied in school.
I'm a private person. I am quiet.
Ask me my influences, I always talk about Bjork and Beck because they're independent voices in the music industry.
Ask about music growing up, I'll tell you I grew up playing classical music, and I didn't grow up in a musical household.
I've never made R&B. I've never made gospel. I've never made hip-hop - I don't think I'm going to, but I just want to keep challenging myself.
The craziest thing is I didn't know I could sing like this - ever. My voice has changed, or I've grown into it, woken up.
The reality is my career started with a song that wasn't finished and a video I didn't know was going on the Internet. It happened so out of my control.
I know some artists who write every day, and for a while, I felt really guilty that I didn't.
It took me two years to write 'Fallingwater,' but it's one of my favorite pieces I've ever made, and it was worth waiting for.
I only get compared to women, which is crazy because often the women they compare me to... we just have a similar hairstyle. Whether it's Joni Mitchell or Florence and the Machine - our music doesn't always sound anything alike. But we just all have long hair.
I didn't decide on what college I was going to go to until the day I had to.
New York is so strange. Every time I'm there, I very rarely see someone who's dressed cool.
Something really intense happened to me during the 'SNL' performance. It felt like the person I was made to be faced the person I'm becoming. It was the first time I felt like I was able to make any sense of ownership of my work.
For me, it's important to ask what are you making, and what's the public's relationship to that. And I say public relationship because I don't really care so much about any sort of reception.
When I write songs, it happens very quickly, sometimes 10 to 15 minutes, and I draw inspiration from everything.
I grew up in a really rural area in Maryland.
I love being outside.
I just didn't really know who I was, so I didn't really know what I sounded like. And so I did a lot of writing, and I studied abroad, and I fell in love, and, like... I got to be like any other college student.
Musicians have been political literally since people were writing songs.
I love pop music. It's just fun, and it feels good, and it's easy.
You need music that is compelling and intellectual, but you also need music that just feels good and you can laugh about and dance to, and I think I'm trying to marry the two in some way.
I do play a lot of instruments. I started with the harp when I was young and then sort of moved to guitar and piano.
I've always wanted to play violin.
Bjork - she wears really weird stuff, and it's amazing.
'Alaska' was filmed at my family's farm in Maryland; 'Dog Years' was filmed at the summer camp I grew up going to in Maine.
I like songs that you can have both the physical release and an emotional release.
I reached a place where I wanted to make more music, but I didn't know what I wanted. So I stopped labeling music by genre and just got into a studio to be creative. Now I write whatever feels instinctive.
I'm a feminist, so it's just a really nice creative energy to work with a lot of women.
In terms of my voice, I'm very clear about who I am as a person and what I think.
I've always been a very visual creator. I make mood boards or sit with coloured pencils and scribble and try and figure out what I'm trying to work through musically.
As a producer, as a songwriter, I've spent a lot of time either in my bedroom or in studios, alone.
Part of success is having a good story, and as a journalist, I totally understand. But it meant that my many, many years of focus and hard work got kind of prepackaged into a Cinderella story. I'm super grateful that it happened, but it left me feeling like I never got to be a full human in the experience.
The Pharrell video cut my body and soul in half.
The only thing I wanted to do in my music is be human and communicate all the aspects of that, which often means being vulnerable.