Early life (1994–2012) Maggie Rogers grew up on the
Eastern Shore of Maryland along the banks of the
Miles River in
Easton, Maryland. Her father is a retired
Ford Motor Company dealership owner and her mother, a former nurse, is an end-of-life
doula. Neither of her parents is musical. She began playing
harp at age seven and loved the music of
Gustav Holst and
Antonio Vivaldi. Her mother often played music by
neo-soul artists including
Erykah Badu and
Lauryn Hill. By the time she was in middle school, she had added piano and guitar to her repertoire and began writing songs in eighth grade. She went to a rural camp which had no electricity in
Maine for many summers. During her high school senior year, she made her television debut at
DelmarvaLife and recorded music for what became her first album,
The Echo (2012). She included her
demos as part of her application to the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, was accepted there and enrolled in 2012. Rogers formed a band called
Del Water Gap with singer-songwriter S. Holden Jaffe. They later split so that each could explore more solo work. Their song "New Song" appears on
Notes from the Archive: Recordings 2011–2016 (2020). Rogers released another
folk album,
Blood Ballet (2014) during her second year at the school. Folk blog EarToTheGround Music said that the album "begs for listeners to confront deep personal emotions." Buzzkill Magazine felt that Rogers "really starts to find her folksy feet" with "Little Joys" from
Blood Ballet. She studied abroad in
France while at NYU and after friends convinced her to go clubbing while they were in
Berlin, she discovered an affinity for dance music. When she returned home, she began distilling elements of dance music into her work. In 2016, after experiencing two years of
writer's block, A video of a visibly moved Williams listening to the song went
viral that June, resulting in millions of views as well as hundreds of thousands of plays of
The Echo and
Blood Ballet. Rogers graduated from New York University's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music in May 2016 with a degree in
music engineering and production and English.
Graduate school (2021–2022) In September 2021, Rogers tweeted that she had started graduate school at
Harvard Divinity School, where she was "studying the spirituality of public gatherings and the ethics of power in pop culture" and to learn "how to keep art sacred". She graduated in May 2022 with a master's degree in religion and public life, writing a thesis which "examined cultural consciousness, the spirituality of public gathering and the ethics of pop power". Her 2022 studio album,
Surrender, was a component of the thesis. From December 1, 2023, through May 31, 2024, Rogers was a Religion and Public Life Fellow at Harvard Divinity School. During that time she researched and wrote for work for her MRPL degree which explored the relationships of religion, spirituality, and pop culture from her vantage point as a performing artist.
Music career (2016–present) in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2018 in
Los Angeles, California, September 2019 After the Pharrell video went viral in 2016, several record labels tried to sign Rogers. Rogers made her
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon debut on February 15, 2017,
Saturday Night Live debut on November 3, 2018, and
Today Show debut on July 12, 2019. In April 2019, Rogers covered the
Taylor Swift song "
Tim McGraw" as a
Spotify Single. On November 1, 2019, she guested with
Dead & Company, a rock band consisting of former
Grateful Dead members, performing
cover versions of the latter's "
Friend of the Devil" and
the Band's "
The Weight" at
Madison Square Garden in
Midtown Manhattan. Also in November 2019, Rogers earned a nomination for
Best New Artist at the
62nd Grammy Awards. Rogers performed during the
2020 Democratic National Convention, appearing remotely from
Scarborough, Maine due to the
COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. She was introduced by the
speaker of the Maine House of Representatives and
Sara Gideon, a
2020 U.S. Senate candidate from Maine. On November 13, 2020, Rogers collaborated with
Phoebe Bridgers on a cover version of the
Goo Goo Dolls' 1998 single "
Iris", which Bridgers said she would make if
Donald Trump lost the
2020 United States elections. The song was released as a one-day exclusive on
Bandcamp and was downloaded 28,000 times at a
pay what you want cost, with all proceeds going to
Fair Fight Action. Despite only being available for purchase for one day, the song debuted at number one on the
Digital Songs chart and No. 57 on the
Billboard Hot 100, making it both artists' first entry on the latter chart. The song also charted in
Australia,
New Zealand, and
Scotland. On December 18, 2020, Rogers released
Notes from the Archive: Recordings 2011–2016 via her label Debay Sounds. The album is a compilation of songs she wrote and recorded in the previous ten years of her recording career. Some of the songs are from her first two independently released albums:
The Echo (2012) and
Blood Ballet (2014). Other songs are from her previously unreleased 2016 rock EP and a band she was previously in with Holden Jaffe,
Del Water Gap. The album was released along with a deluxe version in which Rogers provides an auditory commentary talking through each stage of her music career that the songs in that section reflect. Her second studio album,
Surrender, was released on July 29, 2022. It includes the singles "That's Where I Am", "Want Want", and "Horses". The track "Shatter" features
Florence Welch of
Florence and the Machine providing additional vocals and playing tambourine, and "I've Got a Friend" features
Clairo and
Claud speaking. On January 27, 2023, Rogers collaborated with country star
Zach Bryan on the single “
Dawns”. The single peaked at 42 on the
Billboard Hot 100. On June 24, 2023, Rogers played
Glastonbury Festival, in
Somerset,
UK. On August 5, 2023, Rogers played at
Lollapalooza, in
Chicago, Illinois. On January 24, 2024, Rogers announced the February 8, 2024, release of "Don't Forget Me" as the first single of her third album. On April 12, 2024, Rogers released her third album,
''Don't Forget Me''. The album was written over five days in December 2022 and January 2023. Rogers said of the album, "Some of these 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." On April 24, 2025, Rogers and
Sylvan Esso released a cover of
Broken Social Scene's "Anthems For a Seventeen Year-Old Girl" as the lead single for a cover album to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the band's album
You Forgot It in People. On May 16, 2025, Rogers returned to Tisch School for the Arts, where she attended and graduated in 2016, to deliver the commencement address to the class of 2025. She told the graduates, "The thing about being an artist is that it's not a profession, it's a vocation. It's not something you do, or sign up for, it's who you are." Rogers provided backing vocals for the song "Mind" on the
Dalai Lama's album
Meditation: Reflections Of His Holiness The Dalai Lama, which was released August 29, 2025. The work won
Best Audio Book, Narration & Storytelling Recording at the
68th Annual Grammy Awards. ==Influences==