Maggie Rogers
It's not like I see colours. It's just, for me, an incredibly strong association between music and colour.
When I was little, my mum would take me to see the orchestra, tell me to close my eyes and think about the story the music was telling. I always spoke about colours. I'd talk about how purple the oboe was.
I never doubted the music.
The make-up and the costumes were me being scared. I needed to create a boundary between me and the audience. To project this bigger version of myself. Outwardly, it looked good, but inwardly, I began to feel horrible.
This job forces you to ask yourself so many questions: Do you want money? Do you want power? Do you just want to be good at your craft? I don't know what I'm doing. I just want to be happy. But I know I have to keep making music.
The main rhythmic loop in 'Alaska' is me just patting on my jeans.
I've always had an instrument attached to my body.
I feel really held in being vulnerable. That's always been the kind of music that I've gravitated to as well, but to feel really supported by my audience in that is a real privilege.
I got the craziest crash course in rock n' roll that I could have ever dreamed of.
I think, as a musician, or even as a citizen of the world, I just want to be a part of something or feel connected to something bigger than myself.
People want to see a magical fairytale story, but the reality is that I spent a lot of time making music alone in my bedroom.
You go to school in New York because you want New York and the life that comes with it.
My goal really was to make pop music feel as human as possible.
I titled it 'Alaska' because the song sort of represents everything that happened in my life surrounding a hiking trip I took for a month in Alaska.
I studied abroad my junior year of college.
I've learned that I'm a lot stronger than I thought I was.
I always saw myself as this quiet, introspective, thoughtful person.
I played in orchestras all through high school and taught myself how to play guitar.
I didn't actually start playing the banjo until I was in high school.
There are a lot of things worse to be than the 'Pharrell girl.' I hope that'll wear off.
I kind of always get described as this, like, 'nature girl'... I've lived in New York for the last five years.
The reality of my life is it's about 25 percent music, and everything else I do is so I can get that 40 minutes later to go play. And it is unquestionably worth every second of it.
Music is the most amount of joy or good I can do in the world.
Friends came on the road, came on tour, came in my music videos; I got in the studio with them. I'm a really loyal person, and I don't have a really large group of friends, but the people I hang out with I really, really care about, and they continue to be a part of my life.
When someone said, 'Let's go to a club' in New York, it often meant heels and tight dresses and money.
It's been really fun to see what happens to my body when I don't have an instrument attached to it.
I'm kind of a terrible musician. I'm a very functional musician. I play just about every instrument in a band setting, functionally. But I should not be taking solos.
It's really easy to go viral, but I think it's really hard then to have a career.
I think one of the most important things for creativity is boredom.
I spent my whole life in Maryland, but I wanted to experience more - fighting to get to urban areas where there was culture.
I think so many of the themes from the natural world mimic emotional themes in our lives.
What I love about going home is that, if I turn my phone off or don't open my computer, nothing's changed. Obviously, the world has changed for me, but home looks and feels exactly the same.
I grew up writing songs and producing music, and I studied music production in college.
The music industry is so cool because it's constantly changing.
I want to have a long career. But that's based on wanting people to buy into my voice and not into a fabricated image.
The reality of the music industry is that I was a 22-year-old college graduate who was able to walk into boardrooms and be the one in charge. It's incredibly empowering. I wasn't ready - I definitely was not ready - but I was prepared as I possibly could have been because I had studied the music industry.
I really wanted to make a record that would feel fun to play live.
Being 'back in my body' means being able to do the things I love, but do them in the way I love, and in my way, and in my time, giving myself the opportunity to just be me.
I come from such a small place, and I've always really thought that if you make good music, then people will find it.
When I got to NYU, I had applied based on playing folk music, and they said, 'You're the banjo girl,' so I thought ,'OK, I'm the banjo girl.'
Music is about connecting with people on a personal level and doing that one set of ears at a time.
When you're super passionate about something, you're more willing to do all of the grunt work. You know, like, I'm so willing to live on a bus for my whole life because that means I get that one moment on stage or that one moment in the studio that totally fills me.
Like most people in college, I just wasn't really sure who I was.
I spend a lot of time reading and try to make sure that I can get a little bit of alone time every day.
I've always measured a good day as one where I can read, write, and run.
I find, as a woman and as a producer, I spend a lot of time convincing people I actually did the work.
Everybody thinks that touring is really glamourous, but I pretty much sit in a room all day. I have a sort of office where I do emails, and I go for a run, and then at the end of the night, I go to bed. It's not like some crazy party.
Lyrically, I've always thought about albums as a record of a period of time.