With the movement of time comes a quickening in creative pace for Maggie Rogers, as her third album Don’t Forget Me, to be released via Capitol Records 12 April, arrives less than two years after her sophomore effort. Whilst her previous album Surrender found Rogers moving from folk-pop to indie-rock, Rogers combines sensibilities for her latest project, displaying the showmanship confidence Surrender evoked amongst the low-fi piano mixes that garnered her a Grammy nomination for her debut Heard It in a Past Life.
Following Don’t Forget Me from track to track, I found myself continually impressed by Rogers’ commitment to traditional songwriting structures. At a time when short, two minute tracks continue to dominate the airwaves due largely to the rise of Tik-Tok, some of the biggest releases in the last few years, from Harry Styles’ ‘As It Was’ to SZA’s ‘Kill Bill’, came in at under two and a half minutes. Yet Rogers manages to mediate these industry-wide adjustments, keeping most of the songs sturdy, yet the album length tight.
Album Opener ‘It Was Coming All Along’ finds Rogers examining her well-known existentialism, questioning the uncertainty of her own life yet finding peace in the inevitability that things will indeed work out. In introducing the project, Rogers’ wrote on her Instagram that she saw the character of the album as “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”. Such nuances, as well as the importance of friendship amidst breakups, resonate here as the track includes an aside from her friend Norah, who insists Maggie ‘slow her roll’, despite her hatred for the man who broke her heart.
Continuing her emotional journey, ‘Drunk’ immediately reminded me of a track from her previous album titled ‘Want Want’, due largely to the pacing if not the hedonistic and manic tone. Easily the most pop-oriented track on the album, the song would fit easily into Top-40 radio, and that comes with the utmost respect. Rogers has spent much of her career teetering on the edge of mainstream success, and it’s tracks such as ‘Drunk’ that make a good case for her crossover.
The third track, previously released as the second single, titled ‘So Sick of Dreaming’, is likely the weakest on the album. Towards the end of the song comes another aside, from Maggie herself this time, on the phone to a friend speaking of a bad date experience in which she took ‘the steaks to go’ and downed ‘two martinis at the bar’. Unfortunately, this aside feels slightly awkward and forced, pulling the listener a little too far away from the cosy Sunday morning Rogers promised in her Instagram post.
The latter half of the album, however, very much elicits exactly the tone Rogers intended, moving from grandiose notions of confusion and anger to more longing and reflection. ‘The Kill’ sees our protagonist looking back on her relationship and recalling the commitment she displayed towards an addictive man, who unsurprisingly couldn’t reciprocate her effort. Whilst this is far from an original analysis, Rogers’ decision to refrain from damning the individual allows for a subtle commentary on the kind of unreciprocated love many young people experience. The display of a balanced, victim-free perspective continues in ‘If Now Was Then’, with Rogers admitting to her own physical and emotional hang-ups that prevent her from fully experiencing the time she shared with her ex-partner.
Outside of the lyrical content, the musical components maintain a stripped-back approach that allows for Rogers’ voice to take centre-stage, a far cry from the heavily-produced Surrender. This is most clear in ‘I Still Do’, in which Rogers is simply accompanied by a piano as she admits to still loving the man who failed to reciprocate her passion. ‘On & On & On’, the album’s shortest track, shifts from reflection to tambourine-led frustration, addressing her ex-lover and his inability to communicate as well as the anger that will continue to survive through the very existence of the track at hand.
By the time we arrive at the album’s eighth track ‘Never Going Home’, the end is in sight and it’s clear that, much like life itself, there’ll be no true closure for the listener nor Rogers. Whilst projects that focus on similar themes, such as Melodrama by Lorde, display a more finite conclusion to the vast array of feelings that come with the breakdown of a relationship, the maturity of Rogers’ experience is far more realistic, if not considerably less cinematic as a result. The penultimate ‘All The Same’ displays the ending of the storm; when all things around you return to how they were before, yet everything feels eternally different. The longing in ‘All The Same’ is certainly the most emotional moment on the record, as, despite all she has experienced and the time that’s passed, Rogers continues to fantasise about what could have been – a futile yet universal feeling.
The final, and title track, is by far the strongest, and it truly surprised me how well it fits into the overall narrative the album presents. Released as the lead single in February, the experience of listening to the track in the context of the whole album shifts the tone considerably. With Rogers pining for a new lover, she finds herself up against her own jaded perspective, requesting that whoever she ends up with not forget her when their tryst inevitably ends. This craving for a new beginning, yet remaining hurt from a previous relationship, is truly universal and reminds the listener of what made the world fall in love with Rogers back in 2016: simple, poignant messaging packed tightly into a catchy yet soothing product.
With her third album, Rogers displays a level of self-control and emotional nuance that makes Don’t Forget Me a truly memorable project, evoking a timeless sensibility that could easily lead to adopting a potentially classic status in years to come.
Words by Ben Carpenter
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