Self-described “witchy feminist rockstar” Maggie Rogers is hitting the road again.
I discovered Rogers by chance in early 2019, shortly after her first studio album, “Heard It in a Past Life” came out. Since then, Rogers has released two albums, “Notes from the Archive: Recordings 2011–2016” (2020) and “Surrender” (2022). During this time, I have grappled with simultaneously wanting to gate-keep Roger’s musical genius and impose it on all of my family, friends and acquaintances. Despite my greatest efforts, I have been unable to keep Maggie Rogers to myself.
I most recently saw Rogers in concert on July 29, 2023 at The Mann Center in Philadelphia with some of my best friends. The day itself was memorable — a torrential downpour leading up to the concert, thousands of cut flowers handed out to audience members, and a rainbow. To top it all off was Rogers’ performance itself, in which we were given a sneak peek (not the first) of her upcoming album, “Don’t Forget Me,” playing its title track towards the end of her set, before its release on April 12, 2024.
“Don’t Forget Me” adds yet another layer to her musical versatility proving that she transcends genres of folk, pop and dance. The lyrics — conveniently displayed on the screen behind Rogers as she performed — unmistakably appeal to anyone in their twenties:
So close the door and change the channel
Give me something I can handle
A good lover or someone who’s nice to me
Take my money, wreck my Sundays
Love me ’til your next somebody
Oh, but promise me that when it’s time to leave
Don’t forget me
Rogers attests to the vulnerability of wanting to be loved, yet feeling so alone in that seeming impossibility. The speaker in this song does not ask for true love or commitment, but the bare minimum: “someone who’s nice to me,” revealing a candid grasp on the ephemerality of post-adolescent life. While Rogers’ speaker seems to understand this reality better than most, her fear also comes across in these lyrics — echoed in the album’s title. Her almost pleading chorus, “Don’t forget me,” signals the fear many of us twenty-somethings have that all the good things we come across at this stage of our lives are only temporary.
Straying from the confessional tone of her previous albums, “Don’t Forget Me” is not necessarily a biographical album, but one with a varied and universal appeal — the bittersweet liminality of burgeoning adulthood. In an interview with “The New Yorker,” Rogers told Amanda Petrusich that when putting together the album she was “‘picturing a girl in her twenties on a road trip,’” and that she imagines the record “‘[taking] place within the span of twenty-four or forty-eight hours. It felt like writing a movie, scene by scene.’” Her sentiment comes across quite clearly in the record, and reading this interview gave me a framework through which to hear “Don’t Forget Me.”
With her familiar folksy twinge, “Never Going Home” echoes Simon & Garfunkel’s 1968 ode to the cross-country road trip, “America.” “Catch a glimpse of someone with kind eyes, dancing / Whose jacket’s the same color as the seats in your car,” Rogers sings. “Never Going Home” beautifully encapsulates the theme of transience that is prominent throughout the record and maps it onto the romanticized ideal of hopping in a car and never looking back.
Rogers slows things down in “I Still Do,” a piano ballad that brings to mind a classic Bob Dylan lament. Rogers’ voice is dreamlike as she sings, “Love is not the final straw / But it’s always a reason to risk it all.” I can easily imagine Rogers entrancing audience members with this song in a dark room amidst the smell of cigarettes and whisky as she eggs us on to “risk it all.”
A more upbeat highlight from the record is “On & On & On.” Its title a nod to Rogers’ track “On + Off” from her first studio album, the song features motifs contained in her earlier hits, such as “Want Want” — pithy lyrics and a staccato beat.
If there’s one thing that can be said about Maggie Rogers, it is her range. And yet, “Don’t Forget Me” comes across as a cohesive blending of Rogers’ varied capabilities. While every track features something different to be enjoyed, the album itself is so quintessentially Maggie. From the electro-pop hit that got her discovered by Pharrell Williams, “Alaska,” to the more meditative verse featured on “Surrender,” — largely in conversation with the existential questions she pondered during her time at Harvard Divinity School — “Don’t Forget Me” sees Rogers truly coming into her own as an artist.
In her upcoming tour, Rogers will be hitting several major arenas around the country — Madison Square Garden, Wells Fargo Center and TD Garden, to name a few. To prevent internet bots from buying up all the online tickets, Rogers opted to hold in-person pre-sales at a discounted price. In doing so, she continues to put fans first, allowing us to partake in an experience curated by Rogers herself, but meaningful to all.
