Don't Forget Me

“There's something about this record that feels like I'm coming home,” Maggie Rogers tells Apple Music's Zane Lowe about her third full-length <i>Don't Forget Me</i>, which is the Maryland-born singer-songwriter's first project since completing her master's degree in religion and public life at Harvard Divinity School. Being away from the music business, she says, allowed her time to think about her life as an artist while also diversifying her mind. “I was trying to put so much in music,” she says. “Now my life is a lot more balanced and a lot more full—and I'm not saying by any means I have it figured out.” <i>Don't Forget Me</i> finds Rogers still on a path toward “figuring it out”, marrying the kineticism that made her breakthrough single “Alaska” such a sensation eight years prior with bigger sonic structures and wiser lyrics. Opener “It Was Coming All Along” thrums with plush synths and strings, as well as a sampled phone call that brings Rogers' lyrics about “trying to be brave these days” to life. “The Kill” possesses a grandness that recalls a sunny drive on an open road, which makes its story of a doomed relationship hit even harder. That energy, together with a wiser perspective, enabled her to her explore stories from beyond her personal realm. Take “So Sick of Dreaming”, a sauntering, Nashville-tinged cut about the travails of twenty-something life punctuated by a frustrated monologue about being stood up for Knicks tickets. (“And by the way, the Knicks lost,” she dryly notes.) It's based on “a story that a friend had told to me the night before about another friend of hers that was going through this thing”, she says. “I never would've thought it was material; I had only written songs about things that were so personal to me.” Broadening her songwriting is another way Rogers lets loose on <i>Don't Forget Me</i>—and it's apparent across the album's 10 songs, which are confident even when they're grappling with regret and frustration. “I'm so focused and clear about the things that I want, and I've had different goals for every record or things that I really want to accomplish,” Rogers says. “The goal on this album cycle is, I'm trying to have fun. And if I don't think it's going to be fun, you probably won't find me there.”