Maggie Rogers moved out of her NYU apartment on May 31. On June 1, a video of Pharrell Williams listening to her song “Alaska” launched her career after going—shall we say—slightly viral. As nearly two million viewers know by now, the video was from Pharrell’s Masterclass at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute back in February, where he critiqued student work. The superstar was encouraging but constructive with every young musician—except Rogers. For her, Pharrell had only praise, a sense of awe quietly unfolding across his face as “Alaska” played. Occasionally, he glanced over at Rogers while she bobbed along to the beat, as if to confirm her existence.
“I’ve never heard anything that sounds like that. That’s a drug for me,” he said after the song finished, calling Rogers’ sound “singular.” He launched into a brief diatribe about how the best artists are those whose visions offer up something that had not quite existed before, and that Rogers was one of them.#iframe:https://www.youtube.com/embed/G0u7lXy7pDg||||||
Out of this 30-minute workshop, “Alaska” had been snipped and ripped to YouTube by listeners (Rogers' part starts around the 18-minute mark), with many of these bootlegs garnering 50,000+ views each. The song and its accompanying moment were written about across the internet, including Slate, Jezebel, and Reddit, where it originally took off. Rogers hadn’t even heard of Reddit before all this. Hell, “Alaska” just happened to be the only song she had ready in time for the Masterclass. She wrote it in 15 minutes, and by the end of that day, had completed a version with her co-producer Doug Schadt, a 2014 graduate of Clive Davis Institute.
As new fans clamored to hear more from Rogers, her traditional folk albums written in high school—2014’s Blood Ballet and 2012’s The Echo—have gotten 300,000+ streams each on Bandcamp. She gained 100,000 Facebook followers in a matter of days without doing anything. Soon she solidified a relationship with Mick Management—home to Sharon Van Etten, Leon Bridges, and Real Estate, among others—to handle the influx of inquiries from labels.
Last week, Rogers self-released the mastered version of “Alaska,” and already it’s been played more than a million times on Spotify and SoundCloud each. It’s not hard to see why: “Alaska” is one of those songs where the beat is so palpable, the rhythm so ingrained in every fiber of the music, that the actual lyrics become secondary, so long as the flow is maintained through a stunning waterfall of Rogers’ folksy falsetto harmonizing with itself. The whole thing is so catchy while still maintaining a bit of mesmerizing intimacy (via samples Rogers recorded out in the wild), it seems poised to break out further, into the mainstream, as a curious hit as the summer unfolds.
Rogers has found an audience—or perhaps it’s the other way around. After all, she hadn’t turned to the internet looking for fame. It’s an unprecedented model for a viral hit, free of the thirst common in that arena. What started as the rapid sharing of Pharrell’s meme-worthy response turned into the embrace of an exquisite song.
She watched this all happen from her childhood bedroom at her parents’ home in rural Maryland, where she returned after graduation.
“I come from such a small place and I’ve always really thought that if you make good music, then people will find it,” she tells Pitchfork. “I know that’s a really naïve statement and that isn’t always the case, there is so much good music that doesn’t get heard, but it’s been really wild watching people find my old music. It kind of reaffirms my belief that if you make what you want to make, maybe somebody will find it, even if it takes four years.”
Those small-town roots and faith in the universe come through in “Alaska.” Lyrics about self-discovery in the midst of life transitions and a break-up feel optimistic instead of burdened. And rarely does electronic-based music feel this grounded in natural sounds. Rogers says much of her inspiration comes from the outdoors; “Alaska” is based on reflections from a solo hiking trip she took to the state the summer after her freshman year—right as she took a break from making her own music.
“I’ve gotten some really incredible messages about the way this song is making other people feel,” Rogers said. “It’s the story of a time in my life when I was really lost, and it in turn has provided so much clarity for me.”
It was during a study abroad term in France that she fell in love with electronic music and came to understand the ways rhythm and lyrics can best complement each other. It broke her out of her folk mode.
“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,’” she says.
Now the fear is that she might be known as “the Pharrell girl.” She’s trying not to get too caught up in all that, though. “Ultimately, Pharrell is only one pair of ears,” Rogers says. “He could like something and my mom could hate it, and that’s two opinions. Music is about connecting with people on a personal level and doing that one set of ears at a time.”
For now, Rogers is enjoying her independence. She has an EP’s worth of songs ready to go and has plans to make a video for “Alaska” next month, but she isn’t in a hurry to sign with a label. Rogers wants to see what “Alaska” does on its own while she takes her long-planned post-graduation trip to Europe.
“I’m taking it a day at a time,” she says. “I’m excited to see what the world looks like when I get back in July, but it will probably pretty much look like me living in my childhood bedroom and my mom telling me to do the dishes.”
