New on the Music SCENE: Maggie Rogers

Maggie Rogers returns with her latest soul-searching single, ‘Don’t Forget Me’, the title track taken from her upcoming album.

(Image: Margaret Eshalman)

Rogers has been on a bit of a sound journey, for those not well-versed in her music.

Breaking onto the scene with nature-infused spine tingling dance track, Alaska, Rogers made an impact with a uniquely soulful, folky sound that emphasised outdoorsy (think American summer camp in the forest) energy, with refreshingly light, cool, and compelling French club dance loops and kick beats.

Her first album, Heard it in a Past Life, leaned into this energy, exploring love, heartbreak and the youthful desire to experience something.

Her lyricism was sharpened into a weapon like a twig found on the forest floor at a scout camp. Organic sounds became beats. Effortlessly warm vocals paired this all together evoking the feeling that listeners were sitting around a campfire as owls hooted, leaves rustled, and the shores of the lake gently lapped behind us as we looked up at the stars.

When a few years later her second album Surrender was released, we saw a different side to the artist. Carelessness, movement, and desire pushed her sound toward the hair-raising. Warm vocals and strumming acoustics nearly vanished. Replacing them were urban sounds of grungy electric guitar; rustling leaves replaced with metal, static, frustration.

This latest song then seems to indicate a partial return to Rogers’ initial sound – folk-infused but slower, perhaps, and without the light dance beats.

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