If you're not changing, you're not growing; you're not being present. Change is essential.
— Maggie Rogers
I find, as a woman and as a producer, I spend a lot of time convincing people I actually did the work.
I spend a lot of time reading and try to make sure that I can get a little bit of alone time every day.
Music is about connecting with people on a personal level and doing that one set of ears at a time.
Being 'back in my body' means being able to do the things I love, but do them in the way I love, and in my way, and in my time, giving myself the opportunity to just be me.
I want to have a long career. But that's based on wanting people to buy into my voice and not into a fabricated image.
What I love about going home is that, if I turn my phone off or don't open my computer, nothing's changed. Obviously, the world has changed for me, but home looks and feels exactly the same.
I think one of the most important things for creativity is boredom.
It's been really fun to see what happens to my body when I don't have an instrument attached to it.
There were a couple of months when I was approaching graduation where I started to think of graduating from college as the afterlife. Because it's this kind of crazy thing that you always know you're going to finish school inevitably, but nobody ever really tells you what happens afterwards.
The reality of my life is it's about 25 percent music, and everything else I do is so I can get that 40 minutes later to go play. And it is unquestionably worth every second of it.
There are a lot of things worse to be than the 'Pharrell girl.' I hope that'll wear off.
I always saw myself as this quiet, introspective, thoughtful person.
I titled it 'Alaska' because the song sort of represents everything that happened in my life surrounding a hiking trip I took for a month in Alaska.
People want to see a magical fairytale story, but the reality is that I spent a lot of time making music alone in my bedroom.
I feel really held in being vulnerable. That's always been the kind of music that I've gravitated to as well, but to feel really supported by my audience in that is a real privilege.
This job forces you to ask yourself so many questions: Do you want money? Do you want power? Do you just want to be good at your craft? I don't know what I'm doing. I just want to be happy. But I know I have to keep making music.
Lyrically, I've always thought about albums as a record of a period of time.
I remember going to church at home on Christmas in 2016, and people wanted to take my photo. When I'm home in Maryland, I don't leave the house. That's a weird feeling.
Like most people in college, I just wasn't really sure who I was.
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.'
I really wanted to make a record that would feel fun to play live.
The music industry is so cool because it's constantly changing.
I think so many of the themes from the natural world mimic emotional themes in our lives.
It's really easy to go viral, but I think it's really hard then to have a career.
When someone said, 'Let's go to a club' in New York, it often meant heels and tight dresses and money.
Friends came on the road, came on tour, came in my music videos; I got in the studio with them. I'm a really loyal person, and I don't have a really large group of friends, but the people I hang out with I really, really care about, and they continue to be a part of my life.
I kind of always get described as this, like, 'nature girl'... I've lived in New York for the last five years.
I didn't actually start playing the banjo until I was in high school.
I've learned that I'm a lot stronger than I thought I was.
My goal really was to make pop music feel as human as possible.
I think, as a musician, or even as a citizen of the world, I just want to be a part of something or feel connected to something bigger than myself.
I've always had an instrument attached to my body.
That's why people come to live music, right? To see something go wrong, something human, something vulnerable.
Everybody thinks that touring is really glamourous, but I pretty much sit in a room all day. I have a sort of office where I do emails, and I go for a run, and then at the end of the night, I go to bed. It's not like some crazy party.
I've always measured a good day as one where I can read, write, and run.
When you're super passionate about something, you're more willing to do all of the grunt work. You know, like, I'm so willing to live on a bus for my whole life because that means I get that one moment on stage or that one moment in the studio that totally fills me.
I come from such a small place, and I've always really thought that if you make good music, then people will find it.
The reality of the music industry is that I was a 22-year-old college graduate who was able to walk into boardrooms and be the one in charge. It's incredibly empowering. I wasn't ready - I definitely was not ready - but I was prepared as I possibly could have been because I had studied the music industry.
I grew up writing songs and producing music, and I studied music production in college.
I spent my whole life in Maryland, but I wanted to experience more - fighting to get to urban areas where there was culture.
I'm kind of a terrible musician. I'm a very functional musician. I play just about every instrument in a band setting, functionally. But I should not be taking solos.
'Dog Years' is sort of my way of saying goodbye and 'see you soon' to my friends from college.
Music is the most amount of joy or good I can do in the world.
I really want to make a great record, like my 'Rumours' or 'Thriller.'
I played in orchestras all through high school and taught myself how to play guitar.
I studied abroad my junior year of college.
You go to school in New York because you want New York and the life that comes with it.
I got the craziest crash course in rock n' roll that I could have ever dreamed of.
The main rhythmic loop in 'Alaska' is me just patting on my jeans.
