walking upstream…
Maggie Rogers
photo: bryan9026 · cc by-sa 3.0 ↗Maggie Rogers
sourcesWikipedia · Office Magazine
Maggie Rogers grew up in Easton, Maryland, working her way from harp to guitar to banjo — an instrument she credits with getting her into high-school jam circles as something other than 'the seventh guitar in a circle' — before enrolling at NYU's Clive Davis Institute to study music production. A semester abroad in France opened her up to European dance music, and much of her college work was spent trying to reconcile that new electronic pull with her folk roots. The reconciliation went viral in 2016, when a Pharrell Williams masterclass captured his stunned reaction to her song 'Alaska,' built partly from a field recording of her own footsteps, and the clip made her a star before her debut album existed. 'Heard It in a Past Life' (2019) turned that moment into a career; 'Surrender' (2022) and 'Don't Forget Me' (2024) pushed further into looser, more turbulent territory, a self-produced voice that keeps folk's plainspokenness and pop's nerve in the same sentence.
the sound in question
2016
AlaskaMaggie Rogers
walk the tributaries ↓
Björk1990s · Art pop / Electronica / Experimental
Rogers has called Björk's 'Jóga' essential to her own move beyond folk and rock into electronic territory, saying the song showed her 'that I could combine all the things I love — whether it's pop or classical or electronic music.' She's grouped Björk with Patti Smith and Kim Gordon as the 'strong women' — 'fiercely themselves' with 'no limit to their creativity' — she measures her own work against, and named her a musical 'big sister.'
listen: upstream & heresource: The Line of Best Fit ↗
1997
JógaBjörk
2022
That's Where I AmMaggie Rogers
listen forPut 'Jóga' beside 'That's Where I Am': both build a maximalist, string-and-synth-thick arrangement under a voice that's straining, almost overwhelmed by its own emotion, letting programmed texture and human performance argue for the same feeling instead of competing.
Patti Smith1970s · Punk rock / Art rock / Proto-punk
In conversation with Carrie Brownstein for Rolling Stone, Rogers described walking past St. Mark's Church near NYU and thinking about Patti Smith bringing an electric guitar into that same room for a 1971 poetry reading — wanting noise to accompany the words she herself was writing. Smith is one of the 'strong women' Rogers names as an ongoing creative measuring stick, alongside Björk and Kim Gordon.
listen: upstream & heresource: Rolling Stone ↗
1975
Land: Horses / Land of a Thousand Dances / La Mer(de)Patti Smith
2022
Want WantMaggie Rogers
listen forPlay 'Land' against 'Want Want': both start from a plainly stated, almost confrontational desire and let the arrangement escalate underneath it — guitar noise and a 'knock-your-teeth-out' drum sound piling on until the words are being shouted as much as sung.
Sonic Youth1980s–1990s · Noise rock / Alternative rock / No wave
Rogers has repeatedly named Kim Gordon among her key inspirations, folding Sonic Youth's frontwoman into the same trio — with Björk and Patti Smith — she describes as 'such strong women and sort of fiercely themselves, there seems to be no limit to their creativity.' Reviewers of 'Surrender' picked up a version of that same fierceness in the album's rougher corners, describing it as leaning on 'distorted and rigid noises' set against raw, purposefully playful vocals.
listen: upstream & here
1990
Kool ThingSonic Youth
2022
ShatterMaggie Rogers
listen forLine up 'Kool Thing' with 'Shatter': both let a female vocal push through a thicket of scraping, overdriven guitar noise rather than sitting cleanly on top of it, the vocal performance sounding a little 'untamed' by the chaos surrounding it rather than tamed by production.