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Maggie Rogers on her long-form music: “I’ve always loved art that takes time”
In a nondescript building in a tiny Pennsylvania town, Maggie Rogers was getting ready for her big moment. Lititz, Pa., is where arena acts come to rehearse their shows before heading out on national tour, and every detail matters. “Sunday Morning” caught up with Rogers there, just weeks away from her concerts at Madison Square Garden.
In a career-defining event, she sold out the New York City venue. “Twice!” she laughed. “I don’t know how to, like, compute that in my brain. I don’t understand it fundamentally!”
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To be clear, it wasn’t Rogers’ first time on a big stage; she’d already shared them with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, and a stint opening for Coldplay. She was also a 2020 Grammy-nominee for best new artist.
But for Rogers, who studied music at New York University, playing Madison Square Garden was a homecoming of sorts. Walking through Washington Square Park, not far from her former dorm room, she pointed out the benches where she used to write songs. It was at NYU where Rogers got what you might call her big break – or at least a big break, when superstar producer and musician Pharrell Williams visited her class. Rogers played him a song she’d been working on called “Alaska.” “What I remember is really just staring at my shoes and, like, holding on tight,” she said.
Williams’ response: “Wow! Wow! I have zero, zero, zero notes for that, and I’ll tell you why: you’re doing your own thing. It’s singular.”
The video clip of Williams’ master class went viral, but Rogers – who actually started out studying music engineering – still needed to learn the craft of writing and performing, which is just what she did. “I’ve played, like, every bar and club on the Lower East Side, and every DIY venue in Brooklyn that existed in my time here,” she said.
Now, at the age of 30, Rogers has built a close relationship with her fans, many of whom watched her go from small clubs to being an artist that record labels were fighting over.
Remember that demo she played for Pharrell Williams as a college student? So far, the music video of the finished version of “Alaska” has been viewed more than 23 million times.
It’s all been an incredible journey, considering Rogers says she didn’t actually play music publicly all that much as she was growing up on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Her interest was more personal, private and quirky: “Basically, as soon as I could ask for music lessons, all I wanted to do was play the harp,” she said. “My first CD purchase was a double-purchase of the orchestral score to ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,’ and Britney’s ‘Baby One More Time.’ Which, like, maybe is all you need to know about me!”
And you hear it in her songs – a pop sensibility with a tremendous intellect behind it. Rogers says the whole arena thing is fun, but what she’s really hoping to do is form a deep, long-term connection with her listeners along the themes of love and heartbreak and the weird wondrous thing that it is just to be alive. “I really prefer to work in long form,” Rogers said. “And I really feel a lot of gratitude for listeners that want to have an active listening practice, and who also have the patience to want to spend an hour of their time listening to the way that I, you know, sequence the record, or who has appreciation for those things. I’ve always loved art that takes time.”
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Something else that separates Rogers from your typical pop star: Back in 2021, she took time away from her music to enroll in a graduate program at Harvard University focusing on religion and public life. “I really needed a second,” she said. “I needed to sort of reorient my life, and I needed to be new at something. I had been living in a world where everything was about me and my career for, like, five years, and then applying that to music, and to concerts, and to these really large public gatherings.”
Large public gatherings that have become, for both Rogers and her fans, something almost spiritual: “This couldn’t have happened in any different way,” she said. “Like, I’m reaching Madison Square Garden and stepping on that stage, and being like, ‘I’m really ready for this.’ And that, in itself, is such a gift that I’ve sort of tried to keep from contextualizing this for myself. Because as soon as you figure out what it is, it changes, you know? I’m always at the eye of the storm! It’s really calm where I sit. And I’ll never, ever be able to know what it looks like from the outside. But what I can know is when I’ve really dedicated myself to my art, and when I think I’m at my best. And I like to think that I’m doing both of those things as much as possible.”
You can stream Maggie Rogers’ 2024 album “Don’t Forget Me” by clicking on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full):
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Story produced by Julie Kracov. Editor: Remington Korper.
Washington — Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, said Sunday that the entire presidential pardoning process “cries out for reform” following some controversial commutations and pardons made by President Biden, including when the president issued a blanket pardon of his own son, Hunter.
“This whole process cries out for reform because otherwise you undermine the justice system,” Klobuchar said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
The White House announced early Thursday that President Biden was commuting the sentence of nearly 1,500 people, marking the widest reaching clemency granted by a president in a single day. Among the individuals, many of whom had been placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, were some who have sparked controversy in recent days — including a judge involved in a so-called “Kids for Cash” scheme.
Klobuchar interjected that she “did not like that one,” adding that she did not agree with all the pardons and commutations.
“I have no doubt there were some righteous pardons in this group,” Klobuchar said. “But there were a number that I think make no sense at all.”
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Further, she said she didn’t agree with Mr. Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, earlier this month.
Klobuchar noted that she has also disagreed with a number of pardons that President-elect Donald Trump made during his first term. And the Minnesota Democrat said that while the pardon ability is part of the Constitution and has a long history that she said wouldn’t be changed, she would advocate for reforms.
“We should have some kind of an outside board that governors have,” she said. “Governors have the ability to give mercy to people after years have gone by, but a lot of them have boards that make recommendations and other things, instead of people just doing it in the middle of the night.”
Klobuchar suggested that over a year-long period, a board could look at individual petitions rather than large groups, which she argued undermines the work of FBI agents and prosecutors who took on the cases.
“Might you want mercy 10 years later?” Klobuchar said. “Yes, you might. But let’s at least look at these on a factual basis and a risk basis, instead of just in the middle of the night a month before a president leaves.”
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Rep. Mike Waltz says Orbán “clearly has a good relationship with Trump” that could be key to Russia-Ukraine diplomacy
Rep. Mike Waltz, the Florida Republican who is Donald Trump’s pick for his national security adviser, said Sunday that the president-elect has a good relationship with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that he suggested could play a key role in bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.
“Orbán has regular engagement with the Russians, and he clearly has a good relationship with President Trump,” Waltz said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “I would hope the entire world would want to see some type of cessation to the slaughter that is happening in eastern Ukraine.”
Orbán, an authoritarian leader with ties to Russia, met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last week, along with Waltz and Elon Musk. Days after the meeting, Orbán announced that he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that “we are taking every possible diplomatic step to argue in favour of a ceasefire” and peace talks. He later appeared to float a Christmas ceasefire and a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine.
Waltz wouldn’t say whether Orbán’s message to Putin came out of the meeting with Trump. But he noted that “we’re going to continue to talk,” and that “President Trump’s made it clear he wants this war to stop.”
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“We need to stop the fighting,” Waltz said. “If that is some type of ceasefire as a first step, again, we’ll take a hard look at what that means.”
Trump has repeatedly pledged that he would end the war between Russia and Ukraine immediately upon returning to the White House while claiming that Putin would never have invaded the country if he were president. Waltz said that since Trump’s victory in the election, the framework of discussion with world leaders surrounding the war between Russia and Ukraine has shifted to talk of how the conflict comes to an end.
“How do we end this conflict? How do we do it in a way that restores stability, stops the carnage, and hopefully makes this a permanent end, not just a pause?” Waltz said. “Those are all things that we’re thinking through.”
The meeting with Orbán came after Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Dec. 7 in Paris after which Trump called for an immediate ceasefire and for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to begin.
Zelenskyy said following the president’s statement that the war “cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures.” And though he said he had a “good meeting” with Trump, he warned that a ceasefire “without guarantees can be reignited at any moment.”
The Biden administration announced last week it would be sending another package of weapons to Ukraine, valued at $500 million, according to Reuters. Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova, also appearing on “Face the Nation” on Sunday, said that her country’s ability to fight off Russian forces is “still a question of artillery and weapons and air defense, most importantly, and the more we can have, the faster we can- the more efficiently we can defend.”
But Markarova noted “we are not asking for other troops. Ukrainians are still capable of defending our own country. We’re asking for the military support.”