“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I’ve always measured a good day as one where I can read, write, and run.”
― Maggie Rogers
“That’s why people come to live music, right? To see something go wrong, something human, something vulnerable.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“If you’re not changing, you’re not growing; you’re not being present. Change is essential.”
― 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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“Writer’s block is your self-critic getting in the way, because creativity will just flow otherwise.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“The music industry is so cool because it’s constantly changing.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“Folk music usually romanticises the road. ‘Back in my Body’ tells the opposite story.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I dress as a combination of space cowgirl and San Francisco art teacher.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I studied abroad my junior year of college.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I think so many of the themes from the natural world mimic emotional themes in our lives.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I find, as a woman and as a producer, I spend a lot of time convincing people I actually did the work.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“Graduating from college and starting your life as an adult is a giant transition no matter what.”
― Maggie Rogers
“When I’m joking around, I’ll say I’m a pop star, because it’s silly.”
― Maggie Rogers
“What I love more than anything in the entire world is making music. It’s what I studied in school.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I’m a private person. I am quiet.”
― Maggie Rogers
“Ask me my influences, I always talk about Bjork and Beck because they’re independent voices in the music industry.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I know some artists who write every day, and for a while, I felt really guilty that I didn’t.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I didn’t decide on what college I was going to go to until the day I had to.”
― Maggie Rogers
“New York is so strange. Every time I’m there, I very rarely see someone who’s dressed cool.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I’m kind of a funny writer because I write very sporadically.”
― Maggie Rogers
“When I write songs, it happens very quickly, sometimes 10 to 15 minutes, and I draw inspiration from everything.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I grew up in a really rural area in Maryland.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I love being outside.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“Musicians have been political literally since people were writing songs.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I love pop music. It’s just fun, and it feels good, and it’s easy.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I’ve always wanted to play violin.”
― Maggie Rogers
“Bjork – she wears really weird stuff, and it’s amazing.”
― Maggie Rogers
“’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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I like songs that you can have both the physical release and an emotional release.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I’m a feminist, so it’s just a really nice creative energy to work with a lot of women.”
― Maggie Rogers
“In terms of my voice, I’m very clear about who I am as a person and what I think.”
― Maggie Rogers
“As a producer, as a songwriter, I’ve spent a lot of time either in my bedroom or in studios, alone.”
― Maggie Rogers
“The Pharrell video cut my body and soul in half.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“It’s funny because, based on the music I was making before, if you’d asked me who was the one gatekeeper or influencer whom I’d want to hear my music, I don’t think Pharrell would be the first person I’d pick.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“It’s not like I see colours. It’s just, for me, an incredibly strong association between music and colour.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I never doubted the music.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“The main rhythmic loop in ‘Alaska’ is me just patting on my jeans.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I’ve always had an instrument attached to my body.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I got the craziest crash course in rock n’ roll that I could have ever dreamed of.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“You go to school in New York because you want New York and the life that comes with it.”
― Maggie Rogers
“My goal really was to make pop music feel as human as possible.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I’ve learned that I’m a lot stronger than I thought I was.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I always saw myself as this quiet, introspective, thoughtful person.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I played in orchestras all through high school and taught myself how to play guitar.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I didn’t actually start playing the banjo until I was in high school.”
― Maggie Rogers
“There are a lot of things worse to be than the ‘Pharrell girl.’ I hope that’ll wear off.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I really want to make a great record, like my ‘Rumours’ or ‘Thriller.’”
― Maggie Rogers
“I kind of always get described as this, like, ‘nature girl’… I’ve lived in New York for the last five years.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“Music is the most amount of joy or good I can do in the world.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“’Dog Years’ is sort of my way of saying goodbye and ‘see you soon’ to my friends from college.”
― Maggie Rogers
“When someone said, ‘Let’s go to a club’ in New York, it often meant heels and tight dresses and money.”
― Maggie Rogers
“It’s been really fun to see what happens to my body when I don’t have an instrument attached to it.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“It’s really easy to go viral, but I think it’s really hard then to have a career.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I think one of the most important things for creativity is boredom.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I spent my whole life in Maryland, but I wanted to experience more – fighting to get to urban areas where there was culture.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I grew up writing songs and producing music, and I studied music production in college.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I really wanted to make a record that would feel fun to play live.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I come from such a small place, and I’ve always really thought that if you make good music, then people will find it.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.’”
― Maggie Rogers
“Music is about connecting with people on a personal level and doing that one set of ears at a time.”
― Maggie Rogers
“Like most people in college, I just wasn’t really sure who I was.”
― Maggie Rogers
“I spend a lot of time reading and try to make sure that I can get a little bit of alone time every day.”
― Maggie Rogers
“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.”
― Maggie Rogers
“Lyrically, I’ve always thought about albums as a record of a period of time.”
― Maggie Rogers
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