#TuneInTuesday: Maggie Rogers

Many may be unfamiliar with the unique artist Maggie Rogers, but the 22-year-old has taken the music industry by storm. On February 16, she released her first EP, Now that the Light is Fading, featuring her hit that left Pharrell Williams speechless.

Rogers has been making and producing music since she was in high school, but her profile really took off after a video of her meeting Pharrell Williams went viral.

According to an article by NPR music:

“Rogers was attending NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and Williams was there to critique the students’ work. The video, which has been viewed more than 2 million times, shows the superproducer looking thoroughly surprised and impressed as he listens to a demo of one of Rogers’ songs, “Alaska.” After the track had finished Williams was left with very few words, “I have zero, zero, zero notes for that.” “I’ve never heard anyone like you before.”

Rogers grew up in a very rural area on the eastern shore of Maryland, where she learned to play the banjo at a young age. She loved to make folk music and spend her time outside, she describes the outdoors as “her space” and a place for her inspiration.

Maggie Rogers EP.

After arriving at NYU she stuck to what she knew, making modern folk music. However, after studying abroad in France she learned to appreciate and understand the spirituality of electronic dance music. The combination of the two genres is what makes her music so unique and captivating.

Her EP features five songs, with her most popular being “Alaska.” The song is about everything she was thinking about when she was hiking in Alaska.

While she was there she was thinking about what she wanted to do other than music because she was not feeling “entirely inspired” at the time. When she eventually came back to song writing she said, “it felt really important to start in Alaska, to start at this place where I went when music wasn’t filling me anymore.”

Not only do her fans love her for her distinct style, but they love her for her.

“It is so much better to support an artist when their values are as good, if not better, than their music,” says fangirl Kat Rhodes.

Rogers has a way of  relating to people through her music and that is what makes this young artist so special. ” I can imagine myself being her friend,” explains University of Kansas student Carissa Kemnitz.