It was almost a decade ago that Maggie Rogers became a household name overnight in a viral video taken at an NYU masterclass during her final semester at Tisch. Pharrell Williams, an artist-in-residence at the time, visited a session of Rogers’ music production class to provide feedback on student work. Upon hearing “Alaska” – which would become the lead single on Rogers’ 2017 EP Now That The Light Is Fading, Pharrell was visibly overcome with emotion, exclaiming, “I’ve never heard anyone like you before, and I’ve never heard anything that sounds like that. That’s a drug for me.”

Pharrell’s statements may have kick-started Rogers’ career, but what he noted isn’t unique to him – that same infectious energy can be felt among the crowd at any venue Rogers plays. Her effervescent performance quality captivates each and every audience member in a rare capacity–Rogers feels every word she’s singing throughout her entire body.

In 2019, Rogers released her first record Heart It In A Past Life. Since its release, she’s been nominated for a Grammy, performed on SNL, amassed over a billion streams, and embarked on multiple sold-out headlining tours and festivals worldwide. She’s about to head back on the road this summer with the release of her third album, Don’t Forget Me – which she wrote in five days, in chronological order, primarily using first takes and demos. This past year, she gave her fans a taste of the record by performing then-unreleased tracks at live shows.

“Getting to let the really wonderful community of people who come to these live shows in on my creative practice and on some of the work that I was making just felt like some of those boundaries between studio and stage and artist and performer started to come down a little bit,” she tells V. “Ultimately, the thing that I love the most about playing live is the sense of connection. It’s something that I nurture and that I think about a lot and want to protect, it’s just really important to me.”

In 2022, after completing her sophomore album Surrender, Rogers began studying at Harvard, graduating with a Masters of Religion and Public Life with a thesis examining “Cultural Consciousness, the Spirituality of Public Gatherings, & the Ethics of Power in Pop Culture.” She tells V that being able to spend a year investigating what being an artist means to her was freeing. “In many ways, Don’t Forget Me is the first piece of art I’ve made since I’ve gotten to have all that deep thinking time – the integration and freedom that I felt in making that is the result of just really spending time investigating who I am and what I believe, and I feel really confident and grounded in my life as an artist.”

For more on Rogers’ highly-anticipated third studio album, V caught up with the multitalented singer-songwriter ahead of the project’s release as she discussed the evolution of her artistry, what she loves most about performing live, and where she derived inspiration from while writing this album intuitively.

V Magazine: You’ve had such an incredible career in such a short time. How has your creative process evolved in the five years since releasing your debut album?

Maggie Rogers: Oh, my gosh, that’s such a massive question. Well, the things that I’m interested in creating and making have grown as I’ve grown, and I think that the real way that my process has evolved is that I’ve just gotten more confident in it. You know, I’ve been writing songs and making records for 15 years, and it’s just something that I love doing. At the core of all my records, my songwriting has always been at the center. I’ve let my production brain run wild and have real curiosity about how I want to dress up and present those songs, but I don’t know, I think it’s just like anybody else growing up – you change and develop and grow and mature. And I feel like I can hear that in my work as well.

V: Speaking of songwriting, you’ve also discussed that for the first time, not all of the stories that you’ve written about on this project are your own. Some come from your past, but a lot of them are derived from characters that you’ve created or stories from your friends. You mentioned that your second single “So Sick of Dreaming” was inspired by a story from a friend of a friend – with this album being so stripped down, did you find it easier to take inspiration from other areas?

MR: I made this record so quickly that it was a really intuitive process. In writing something that was in some ways fiction, I was able to tell some of the greatest truths about my life. Some so many memories and moments are woven into the tapestry of what this record is and what it means. Specifically, I’m turning 30 at the end of April, so this record in a lot of ways feels like all these different moments throughout my 20s rolled into one. And that feels really special.

V: So you found your own stories within the stories that you were inspired by?

MR: I mean, what’s the difference between a writer and a character, you know? These songs aren’t direct journal entries about things that happened to me, but the feelings are really real, and things that are deeply from my life.

V: Yeah, definitely. And speaking of finding inspiration, you shared a recommended reading list for your previous album Surrender that included books that you read, reread, and loved while making the record from authors like Maggie Nelson, Patti Smith, and Virginia Woolf. If you had to make a similar list for Don’t Forget Me, what would be on it?

MR: I made that list for Heard It In A Past Life as well, but since I made this record super quickly, I wasn’t able to read at the same time. I did watch Thelma and Louise around the same time, so that became a real creative touch point – imagining that dusty motel landscape of the American Southwest. So that was very present in my mind. I love movies that have those strong female characters in the center, that’s always sort of been the thing that I’ve gravitated towards. But really, what was so amazing about this record was that I just felt so grounded in my creative process. I made a record because I wasn’t trying to make a record, I was just playing, and getting to use all of the integrated years of dedicating myself to this thing that I just love more than anything else in the entire world. So the process was really simple in a lot of ways. It was super playful. I wasn’t trying to achieve anything or write down the deepest truths about my life. I just made some things that I loved and had a really good time doing it.

V: This record sounds so different to me than your last album, Surrender. Back in 2022, you became one of the first 11 people to receive a Master of Religion and Public Life degree from the Harvard Divinity School, and you’ve spoken about how your education led you to view “performance as a practice of presence” during your previous album cycle for Surrender. Did that experience impact your creative process for this next album as well?

MR: There are no guidelines for what it means to be an artist, and I had this time in my life, mostly because of the pandemic, where I could spend time really thinking about what it means to me. I was so happy to get to spend that year really investigating what I believe to be true and setting some structure around what it looks like to have a long, sustainable career as an artist. In many ways, Don’t Forget Me is the first piece of art I’ve made since I’ve gotten to have all that deep thinking time. The integration and freedom that I felt in making that is the result of just spending time investigating who I am and what I believe, and I feel confident and grounded in my life as an artist.

V: I think that definitely shines through in the album. And speaking of performance, you’re about to embark on another tour for Don’t Forget Me in May. Over the summer, you performed then-unreleased tracks from the upcoming album, including the title track, “So Sick of Dreaming,” and “The Kill.” What did that amazing fan reception for these tracks feel like before they even came out? And did that make you excited as a sneak peek into this tour?

MR: Oh my God, it was so fun. I mean, these songs are so fun to play live. It really felt like this ultimate integration moment because you make songs and then it takes so long for them to actually come out to the world. So getting to let the really wonderful community of people who come to these live shows in on my creative practice and on some of the work that I was making just felt like some of those boundaries between studio and stage and artist and performer started to come down a little bit. Ultimately, the thing that I love the most about playing live is the sense of connection. It’s something that I nurture and that I think about a lot and want to protect, it’s just really important to me. So I think what I got out of it, more than anything, is really that sense of connection.

V: You’re such a dynamic live performer–you have a quality on stage that is just so captivating. This past fall, you headlined the All Things Go music festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion, which you said was the first concert venue you ever attended in your home state. I’m actually also from Maryland, and Merriweather was my first concert as well!

MR: Oh my God! What was it?

V: Fearless, Taylor Swift! In 2009.

MR: No way! Oh, that’s so sick. Mine was the Black Eyed Peas and the Pussycat Dolls in 2006.

V: Oh my God, that’s so fun. I saw you at All Things Go, and I’m so happy that you’re going to be coming back on the Don’t Forget Me tour this summer. What does it mean for you to perform at that venue, as a homecoming of sorts at this stage in your career?

MR: I mean, so much of my career has been dreams beyond dreams. This is so much bigger than I ever imagined it being. But because of that, I’ve gotten to do so many things that there are fewer big bucket list items–like, oh my God, I dreamed about that as a kid. But Merriweather, I just never really thought that playing there would be possible. It’s just such a huge venue. I keep thinking about that version of me that’s 11 or 12, with my Black Eyed Peas lunchbox, so happy to be around live music and that first whiff of discovering something that you’re going make your entire life about. I mean, it all happened there. I saw so many concerts there throughout high school–The Killers, Death Cab for Cutie, Mumford and Sons, Jack’s Mannequin…I spent a lot of time at that venue, and it helped me really inform realistically so much about my life.

V: I love that. I feel like concert-going and that fan culture around attending live performances can be such an influential aspect of growing up, and that’s so cool that you can be that for other people as well.

MR: Oh, my God – I mean, yeah, that to me, is just so, so, so special.

V: This album is so incredible, and it has such a uniquely raw quality. What theme do you ultimately hope resonates the most among listeners?

MR: My friends have said that when they hear this record, it sounds like the version of me that they know. I’ve said that I wanted to make a record that sounds like a Sunday afternoon driving record. And to me, the most special thing about what I do is that I get to spend time with people in some of the most intimate moments of their lives. I hope that I can be a friend in the passenger seat to somebody that hears this and gets to spend a moment with it.