- 2024-04-16
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MUSIC
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Donate to support families affected by the crisis in Ukraine ➔ Maggie Rogers Releases New Album “Don't Forget Me”
American singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers released the third studio album “Don't Forget Me” on April 12, 2024 via Debay Sounds and Capitol Records.
The album is her first body of work in two years since the 2022 album “Surrender”.
The album comprises 10-track, co-produced by Maggie Rogers and Ian Fitchuk.
Maggie Rogers co-wrote 8 songs with Ian Fitchuk, and the other two songs were written by herself.
According to Maggie Rogers, the album was written over five days, two songs a day - three days in December 2022, two in January 2023.
She recorded the album at the Electric Lady Studios in New York City.
She made the album to listen to in the car. Maggie Rogers told AP in an interview, “This record was always made for the car. I really wanted to make a record that felt like a Sunday driving record, because to me, those are some of the most intimate moments that I've had with music or with an album - when I'm singing along to a song in the car and it feels like that artist or that song is like a friend in my passenger seat. Those are some of my favorite records, and they're the records I turn to for comfort over and over again.”- Maggie Rogers said of the album, “There's a warmth to Don't Forget Me. In many ways, it feels like coming home, returning to the music and songwriting that grounded me when I first started making art in my bedroom when I was 16. My friends keep saying it sounds like the version of me that they know. Something looser, or sassier, or sillier than I've shown in public before. I wanted to make an album that sounded like a Sunday afternoon. Worn in denim. A drive in your favorite car. No make up, but the right amount of lipstick. Something classic. The mohair throw and bottle of whiskey in Joan Didion's motel room. An old corvette. Vintage, but not overly Americana. I wanted to make an album to belt at full volume alone in your car, a trusted friend who could ride shotgun and be there when you needed her.”
- She continued, “Some of the stories on this album are mine. And for the first time really, some of them are not. The moments that are mine feel like memories - glimpses from college, details from when I was 18, 22, 28 (I'm 29 now). In writing the album sequentially, at some point a character emerged. I started to picture a girl on a roadtrip through the American south and west. A sort of younger Thelma & Louise character who was leaving home and leaving a relationship, processing out loud, finding solace in her friends and in the promise of a new city and new landscape. I tried to capture her life with the intimacy of Linda McCartney's photographs, spontaneous and open and free.”
She added, “She's starting over, turning the page on a new chapter in her life. Some of the stories and details in the songs are from friends or from the news. Some I just completely made up, or rather, sort of flew out of me. Pen to paper. Fully formed. There they were. I think in this way, some of the deepest truths about my present were able to come forward. I wasn't looking for them or digging them up, harvesting their stories before they had the chance to become fully grown. The truths about my life came from my deepest intuition. Things I wasn't ready to say out loud to myself, but they found a place in the music.”
Maggie Rogers explained about the making process, “Eight of the ten songs were written with my sole collaborator and teammate on this album, Ian Fitchuk. The other two songs I uncovered on my own and were the product of my long friendship with Lee Foster, the Electric Lady manager who, in the days before Christmas, realized I was on a roll and gifted me an extra day of studio time to keep working and catching the songs coming through my hands.
Ian and I co-produced the album together, and he plays most of the instruments on the album. He's such an amazingly gifted player and feeler, and has become an even better friend. We had never worked together before this record, but in late November of 2022, I had a whispering feeling that we could make something interesting together and I DM'd him out of the blue wondering if he'd be open to giving it a shot. I'm so grateful he said yes. These songs and session days are a record of our first time meeting in person, and it's so exciting to feel that we've only just scratched the surface.
Most of the performances you'll hear are first takes. The recordings were initially a collection of demos to be re-recorded with a band. I think this is how and why it all came into being in the way that it did. I just thought we were playing, musically shaking hands for the first time. We met again in March to try to beef up the arrangements, but every time we tried to change them, we kept feeling like we lost something. When we listened back, we realized that taking the pressure off allowed us to drop our guards and pretenses in the studio, the result being a whole lot of character and heart. That week of throwing shit at the wall and testing our ideas turned the casualness of our original process into a deliberate creative choice that we could stand behind as an album. We decided to leave all the pieces that make the recordings feel real and feel human. Like performances, instead of manufactured or gridded perfection. In the end, the album was made because we weren't trying to make an album.
Shawn Everett's mixes were the final key. He made the songs stand up tall and feel elevated and alive. He worked on the mixes alone for two weeks, and then Ian and I spent a week in person getting them just right. I toiled with final details and adjustments remotely through the fall. Emily Lazar mastered the album seamlessly, as she's done with all my records to date.” - source : Apple Music
