One of the best parts of this gig is that I never know when the next surprise may jump out and smack me like a big cartoon fist that leaves me flat on my back with animated songbirds tweeting in circles around my head.
There I was minding my own business, speed-watching another pre-recorded episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—we zap all commercials, the occasional dull guest, and any performer who doesn’t hold our interest—when Stephen introduced a singer by the exquisitely ordinary name of Maggie Rogers and kapow! Within fifteen seconds I’d set down the remote; within fifteen minutes I’d ordered this album.
My pitiful ignorance aside, Rogers is hardly an unknown, having gone viral in 2016 via this remarkable video of her as a visibly anxious student at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, sharing a demo recording of her song “Alaska” with classroom guest Pharrell Williams. Pharrell’s bug-eyed astonishment at what he’s hearing is pure and beautiful, as is Roger’s shell-shocked reaction to his effusive praise. Before I even knew that clip existed, I experienced an echo of it during that Late Show performance, and again during my first listen to Don’t Forget Me, Rogers’ third major-label album since the bidding war that followed that 2016 encounter.
The first thing that strikes you about Maggie Rogers is THAT VOICE. It’s big—like, Brandi Carlile big—but Rogers wisely focuses as much on nuance as power, flitting up and down her expansive register, her vocal melodies and inflections forever shifting, always in control but restless and full of drama.
The next thing that hits you about Rogers is that, as Pharrell was among the first to witness, she’s performing a sort of musical alchemy, combining elements of two distinct genres that often feel like they clash tonally—singer-songwriter and dance/house—into a fresh style that combines serious organic introspection with exuberant electronic drive. It’s a marriage of opposites that really shouldn’t work, and in her hands absolutely does.
Opener “It Was Coming All Along” sets a kind of quarter-life crisis moment of overwhelm—possibly pandemic-related—to a rolling, tumbling arrangement matching acoustic rhythm guitar with synthesizers that pulse but never dominate. The airiness of the arrangement amplifies a haunted aspect to the lyrics as Rogers sings of a quest to “Find the moment it went wrong.” It’s a tune that feels like it taps into and channels our collective consciousness in a genuinely memorable voice. 
“Drunk” then hits the gas with a headlong, careening-almost-out-of-control tempo. The contrast between the crisp yet molten synths and the acoustic guitar and her unfiltered voice works better than it has any right to here. What holds it all together, though, is that these songs are actually about something, in this case the desperation lurking inside a moment of intense attraction: “I’m drunk, not drinking / Lost in wishful thinking.” Even as she sings with urgency and abandon about feeling out of control, the arrangement is very precise, as is every choice she makes with her voice.
“So Sick Of Dreaming” is exactly what its title implies, a song of romantic disillusionment, but rather than a weepy ballad, it’s framed as a sort of breezy rhythm and blues number. The vocal melody and acoustic rhythm guitar feel like yacht rock while the rhythm section is pure r&b—another stylistic mashup that probably shouldn’t work as well as it does.
The album’s lead single—and the song that hooked me when she performed it on The Late Show—“The Kill” is downright impressive. Musically, it’s a billowing, thrumming, pulsing, almost Tears For Fears-ish number, grounded by its intense lyric, a bracingly honest and incisive examination of a tumultuous relationship. Starting out as a blistering critique of a former lover who preyed on her vulnerability and insecurity, it takes a turn as Rogers owns up to her share of responsibility for the unhealthy dynamic. The track is also a great example of how Rogers uses dance/house elements to give her songs a kind of relentless momentum; the resonant synths just push and push and push, even as you’re captivated by the coiled, arresting tension in her vocals.
After that very strong opening quartet of tracks, the midsection of this album settles into a steady, albeit less remarkable groove. The wistful, nostalgic “If Now Was Then” is pure vibe; “I Still Do” offers a late-night, longing-for-lost-love ballad; and the hypnotic “On & On & On” again pairs acoustic guitar and synth bass with an r&b foundation. “Never Going Home” opens up like by-the-book singer-songwriter folk-rock until that pulsing beat shows up again to push things along as Rogers smoothly shifts her vocals into fifth gear.
“All The Same” ventures deeper into familiar singer-songwriter territory, with just piano, acoustic guitar and a bright spotlight on Rogers’ earnest and often gorgeous vocals. This process of deconstruction feels complete with the closing title track, which lives inside what feels like a James Taylor arrangement: acoustic guitar, piano, bass and drums framing a frank and vulnerable meditation on the confounding search for romantic connection. It might have come off as a bit precious if not for how honest her lyrics are, and the fact that she sings them like a blues balladeer, making choices that Bonnie Raitt or Susan Tedeschi would give a nod and a smile.
Don’t Forget Me was co-produced, and most of the instruments on it played, by Rogers’ frequent co-writer Ian Fitchuk, who appears to be the best kind of creative partner, both sympathetic and sharp-eared, helping to ensure that the sometimes complex formulas behind Rogers’ musical alchemy result in only the best kind of explosions.
Maggie Rogers is no longer a fresh-faced co-ed; she just turned 30 and you can feel that inflection point in the music found on this album as she moves back and forth between youthful vulnerability and a more worldly (though never cynical) perspective. What Rogers consistently is, is an unflinching explorer of her own foibles, an authentic chronicler of her own humanity. Sometimes those insights may sting, but always, they reveal. They sure got my attention.