Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American musician Maggie Rogers.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
Margaret Debay Rogers is an American singer-songwriter and record producer from Easton, Maryland. Her big break came when her song "Alaska" was played to Pharrell Williams during a master class at New York University's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. She was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 2019. She graduated from Harvard Divinity School in May 2022.
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.
I'm a private person. I am quiet.
I think one of the most important things for creativity is boredom.
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 dress as a combination of space cowgirl and San Francisco art teacher.
I've always wanted to play violin.
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.
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 like songs that you can have both the physical release and an emotional release.
'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'm kind of a funny writer because I write very sporadically.
I'm a feminist, so it's just a really nice creative energy to work with a lot of women.
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.
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.
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.
Folk music usually romanticises the road. 'Back in my Body' tells the opposite story.
Musicians have been political literally since people were writing songs.
Bjork - she wears really weird stuff, and it's amazing.
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.
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.
I didn't decide on what college I was going to go to until the day I had to.
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 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.
That's why people come to live music, right? To see something go wrong, something human, something vulnerable.
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.
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.
New York is so strange. Every time I'm there, I very rarely see someone who's dressed cool.
Graduating from college and starting your life as an adult is a giant transition no matter what.
Writer's block is your self-critic getting in the way, because creativity will just flow otherwise.
The main rhythmic loop in 'Alaska' is me just patting on my jeans.
When I'm joking around, I'll say I'm a pop star, because it's silly.
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 love pop music. It's just fun, and it feels good, and it's easy.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
I grew up in a really rural area in Maryland.
It's not like I see colours. It's just, for me, an incredibly strong association between music and colour.
I've always had an instrument attached to my body.
I never doubted the music.
'Dog Years' is sort of my way of saying goodbye and 'see you soon' to my friends from college.
Ask me my influences, I always talk about Bjork and Beck because they're independent voices in the music industry.
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.
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 do play a lot of instruments. I started with the harp when I was young and then sort of moved to guitar and piano.
As a producer, as a songwriter, I've spent a lot of time either in my bedroom or in studios, alone.
I spent my whole life in Maryland, but I wanted to experience more - fighting to get to urban areas where there was culture.
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.
I love being outside.
I know some artists who write every day, and for a while, I felt really guilty that I didn't.
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 Pharrell video cut my body and soul in half.
If you're not changing, you're not growing; you're not being present. Change is essential.
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.
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.
What I love more than anything in the entire world is making music. It's what I studied in school.
In terms of my voice, I'm very clear about who I am as a person and what I think.