Song Exploder - Maggie Rogers - Alaska

Episode Date: August 24, 2017

Maggie Rogers had a breakthrough moment when she was a student at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute. Pharrell Williams visited to her class, and when he heard her song "Alaska," his reaction was dramatic, and caught on video. The video of Pharrell listening to Maggie’s song went viral, and "Alaska" became a hit, with over 40 million streams on Spotify alone. Maggie Rogers is now playing sold out shows across the country, just a year after graduating. In this episode, Maggie tells the story of what came before that day in class—all the steps and missteps that eventually led to her writing the song "Alaska." songexploder.net/maggie-rogers

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. Maggie Rogers had a breakthrough moment when she was a student at NYU's Clive Davis Institute. Ferell Williams visited her class, and when he heard her song, Alaska, his reaction was dramatic and caught on video. The video of Forel, listening to Maggie's song, went viral, and Alaska became a hit, with over 40 million streams on Spotify alone. Maggie Rogers is now playing sold-out shows across the country just a year after graduating from college. In this episode, Maggie tells a story of what came before that day in class,

all the steps and missteps that eventually led to her writing the song, Alaska. My name is Maggie Rogers, and I'm very excited to be on Song Explorer. I grew up writing music and grew up producing my own music, and this is something that I've always done. I played banjo and made folk music and grew up in this world. place and identified myself in that culture. Too young, too thoughtless, I said to myself with idealistic visions all perched on the shelf and I'm still hoping, waiting for you to come home. You know, I grew up in a really rural area in Maryland and moved to New York when I was 18.

I went to the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at To School of the Arts at NYU for college to study engineering, production, and the music industry. And I think because I was suddenly starting to learn about engineering and production in the way that it is, like, properly done, it made me really question the way I had always just done it, like, at home, and it made me a little bit insecure, and I didn't really know what to do. After my freshman year of college, I went on a hiking trip to Alaska. It was a month long. It was a program called Knowles, where I was training to be an outdoor guide, and I didn't see another person

other than the group I was hiking with for a month. Alaska was really hard, and that actually was kind of amazing. But when I got back from Alaska, I went through an awful period of writer's block, and it was really crippling because music was sort of always the way that I've identified myself and my thoughts and my personality outwardly.

I've always known what I'm interested in and what I'm feeling because of the way my music sounds. And so suddenly there was no music, and I felt super lost, and it was really weird. And I didn't also feel like I was a folk musician anymore. During those two and a half years, I definitely tried making music a couple times and made some of the worst music I've ever made.

Whenever I had a homework assignment, you'd have to make a minute of music, and whenever I wouldn't feel like getting emotional and writing a real song, I would just make these like holiday raps. Jack O'Lantam, Jack O'Crazy, Jack O'Crazy, Baby, uh-huh. Tick-T-Tac-Tac-Tac-Tac-T-K-K-A-T-Y. It was just awful, not being able to remember what it was like to make music. And, like, wondering how I always did this and thinking,

was this just something I was good at when I was a teenager? If that's true, I'm screwed, because I faced my entire life around this thing I love to do. And, like, maybe it's not there anymore. So I decided to work in journalism for a little while, and it made me miserable. Doing something else and committing and trying to have another job made me so unhappy. And it made me realize, oh, I'm actually really passionate about this other thing. I was like, hooray, I'm not going to be scared of this anymore. I'm going to really give this a shot.

And then at least I'll know if I'm capable of this or not. To graduate from the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU, you must complete a thesis. And part of, I think, what helped break the writer's block is that I was going to school for this, and I had a final project to turn in, and I was going to fail. So I had to turn something in. I, like, was in trouble. So I studied abroad in Paris during my junior year, and it was nice because suddenly I was I wasn't going to music school.

The pressure had been lifted a little bit. And I just studied art and literature. And some of my best friends from NYU are native Berliners. So I went to visit them. And that was the first time I heard house music. When I got to college in NYU, you know, when I'd hear about the club, it was always referencing

like sort of West Village, high-end girls wear high heels, there's expensive cocktails. I always thought that that's what dance music was, I totally see the glamour and allure of, but it just didn't really feel like something I was interested in. So when we were in Berlin, I remember my best friend Leia. When she said club, I was like, I don't know, dude, I don't know if that's for me. But we're getting dressed and she said, you have to wear sneakers or else they're not going to let you in.

And when she said that to me, I was like, okay, I'm interested. Like, what does this mean? Hearing house music was amazing because what I love about folk music so much is, is that it has a sense of place, it's really intimate, but it's also really primal, and it's as ancient as a human culture, but also so is dancing. I was sort of looking around the room at this club and watching everybody move,

and realizing that it was also sort of one of the most primal ways we interact with music, and it was this incredible emotional release. It felt like a form of mental health to go dancing. I felt so much better about everything. And also so much unity and community with everybody reacting to the same pulse in the same way. I had never thought before to listen to an 11-minute house song, but I started to understand that 11-minute format as the same meditation is walking. And that was the click.

Also, I didn't identify with the pop world, but all of college had the same roommate. She was like, Max. If you're going to tell me that you don't know, don't like pop music, you need to look at your face every time this Carly Ray Jepson record comes on. And I was like, oh shit, she's totally right. I think I love pop music. And I do. I love pop music. So I was like, okay, all of these elements are pointing me to the fact that maybe I can just make music that sounds like me and I don't have to worry about where I fit in. When I decided, okay, what does it sound like if I try and make pop music? I said to myself, this would be

way more fun if I was doing this with friends. I've never co-produced something before. I've always just produced my own music. I wonder what would come out of me if I was working with other people. The first person I sought out was somebody who was a couple years above me named Doug Schatt, and I really admired his work ethic and his ability, and mostly I just liked hanging out with Doug. We were sitting in the studio, just talking, and suddenly I had this drumming, loop in my head and I stopped us in the middle of conversation and said hey hey hey record this so he recorded me patting on my jeans pair of Levi's 501s and that started the session and I said give me another track and I started snapping

and then we added this Doug dropped in this like sample that he had of this Congo pattern and then melody moving slowly through a The melody for me is so sing-songy. It's like a folk melody and it just happened. There was no chords. But, you know, a melody coming out of nowhere. It's not nowhere. It took me two and a half years to make that melody.

Not actively, but it was this... All of this was just like running around up there somewhere. And then they just like hit the paper and I pick up the pen and all the lyrics come out. And that's exactly what happened. It was this, like, creative outpouring after all of this writer's block. And I just knew that, like, I wanted to pick up where I left off.

I mean, for me, songwriting is about storytelling. And I knew that I had a couple years to cover. I started where I left off in Alaska. I was walking in this place. I was walking through the wisty streams. Took my breath away. But the song is not about the state of Alaska. That was, and probably still to this day,

is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, but it's more about everything I was processing during the process of walking through Alaska. The thing I love about walking so much is that you find a rhythm, sort of like dancing, you find your step. I find dancing and hiking to be both incredibly meditative. The pre-courced line specifically, and I walked off you, I walked off an old me.

The pre-chorus line specifically, and I walked off you, I walked off an old me. That came from something I just used to explain this period of time to people. I would say, this happened to me, this happened to me, and then I went to Alaska and I just walked it all off. So I just did the same thing in the song. I just wrote exactly what I had been like telling people the whole time. The lyrics to Alaska, there's no like hidden meaning. It is like the most direct, literal account of things that happened to me. I was walking in this place.

I suddenly felt like I had this transition and the beginning of my sophomore year, I cut on my hair off. It's just like, yeah, that's totally what happened. Cut my hair so I could rock back and forth without things. This song, it starts out in past tense. I was walking and in the pre-chorus and I walked off you. But then the chorus is in the present tense. So it's just going back and forth between past tense and present tense

because I was reflecting on this experience. There are so many sections of ooze in this song that like those function very frequently as the main synth. When we were recording the vocals, I was just standing at the vocal mic being like, okay, another track, another track. In the second pre-chorus, there's a group of ooze that come in. You can hear the air in them. They're really atmospheric.

I wanted these to sound really far away. When I decided, all right, I'm going to try making pop music, I still wanted to bring all the elements of folk music to it because that's who I am and what I love. So reverbs like this, giving it a really roomy atmosphere. It was a way for me to give it a sense of place. The lead line is a tone two sorris. And Doug played that line. That's a morning dove.

I came into this project with all of these sound samples, knowing that I wanted to work them in. And those I had been sort of collecting for the last two years on hikes or travels, just sort of thinking like, all right, I'm not making music. What if I just collect this crayon box of colors for me to play with? That sound for me is like, it just, it makes me feel calm. I associate that sound with slow mornings, coffee.

It's like a little warm outside. It's really comforting. That counter melody comes in right at the end when we're just going to repeat ourselves for a little while and let everybody like to do your thing. Makes it a dance banger. We finished the song. We're in the studio pretty much just enough time to finish the song

couple hours. Doug texted me a bounce of it on my way home, took the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I listened to the song and I was like, oh, fuck, this is way too poppy. I don't like this at all. I sent it to my parents and my mom called me and she was like, that's really nice, honey. I was like, cool. I showed my roommate when I got home and I was like, I don't know, I think it's too poppy. And she was like, yeah, maybe, but look, you finish something. And I was like, yeah, that feels good. cool, now have something to turn in for school. So Doug initially did a quick mix, which is what I played in class. That day, Farrell Williams came to give a masterclass at Clive Davis.

That masterclass and his reaction to Maggie's song was filmed. Wow. Wow. I have zero, zero, zero notes for that. I recorded the master class with Farrell in March of my senior year. The video was on the internet in March of my senior year. The video was on the internet in March of my school. my senior year. And then nothing happened. I graduated from college in May 20-something of my senior year

of 2016. On June 1, the video of me and Farrell went viral. And I ran away. I was super freaked out. I put Alaska out and then went hiking for like three weeks. And when you listen to the song nowadays, how do you feel about it? What do you hear? I think the dynamic shape of this song, you can hear me thinking through it. It starts. in one place and I'm like remembering and starting to come to a place of acknowledging where I am. And by the end it is the celebration of freedom, of being free from writer's block, of recognizing myself as like a fully functioning adult. It's just like acknowledgement of being free. And now here's Alaska by Maggie Rogers in its entirety.

Visit SongExploter.net for more on Maggie Rogers, including a link to buy this song. You can also watch the music video and see the video of Farrell that day in Maggie's class. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out of full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Keish Keis Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs.

And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April. and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings,

John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks.

If you love Song Exploder, please leave a review or a rating over at iTunes.com slash SongExploder. And if you want to show off your love of Song Exploder, you can get a t-shirt at songexploder.net slash merch. Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons. and is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting-edge podcasts made possible by a grant from the Knight Foundation. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder.

You can find all the past and future episodes of the show at SongExploder.net or wherever you download podcasts. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia.