Maggie Rogers

About

Also known as: Margaret Debay Rogers

Maggie Rogers got her big break in 2016 when a video of Pharrell Williams hearing her song "Alaska" for the first time went viral. His reaction said it all: "I've never heard anything that sounds like that." The song had been written in fifteen minutes about a wilderness course, and it set off a chain of events that led to a record deal with Capitol Records through her own imprint, Debay Sounds, giving her more creative control than most artists at that stage. Her debut major label album, Heard It in a Past Life, hit number two on the Billboard 200 in 2019, and she earned a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. Her sound pulls together indie pop, folk, and dance music, a combination she stumbled into after going clubbing in Berlin and realizing she wanted those elements in her own work. She followed Heard It in a Past Life with Surrender in 2022, which doubled as part of her master's thesis at Harvard Divinity School, where she studied the spirituality of public gatherings and the ethics of pop culture. Her third major label album, Don't Forget Me, arrived in 2024.