There’s a long-held myth in the creative world that anything good needs to be laboured over, your blood, sweat, and tears poured relentlessly into your craft. Maggie Rogers’ third album, ‘Don’t Forget Me,’ is the latest reminder that’s not always true. Written over five days, the speed behind its creation surprised its creator, who intended for these recordings to serve as demos destined to be fleshed out and reworked later down the line.
Sometimes, though, your first try is good enough, and that was the case here. ‘Don’t Forget Me’ is an album that thrums with life and emotion, sweeping you up on the journey of its protagonist. That character is sort of Rogers, but sort of a figure she imagined – a young girl on a road trip across southwest America, figuring out life and love as she went. Opening song ‘It Was Coming All Along’ finds her feeling “like a deer in headlights” and trying to piece together “the moment it all went wrong”. By the album’s end, the warm, rich ’Don’t Forget Me’, she feels more assured and accepting of where she’s at.
Getting to that destination is a ride. There are reminiscences of driving “upstate / Singing indie-rock songs in the car” with an old partner she couldn’t get it right with (‘The Kill’) and piano-led pondering on how far you’d go for love (‘I Still Do’). The reflections present here are full of wisdom and consideration, delivered in a way that makes you think about your own experiences in a new light. “One day you’ll be looking back / And maybe wish that you were kinder / But ain’t it always the truth / That hindsight makes you softer,” Rogers muses on ‘On & On & On’, inviting you to join her in testing that hypothesis.
The musician has described the sound she wanted to create on this album as being like “Sunday afternoon”, “worn in denim”, and “the mohair throw and bottle of whiskey in Joan Didion’s motel room”, among other things. It’s flecked with Americana spirit, the aching, gentle twang of ‘All The Same’ taking you into dusty landscapes, or ‘Never Going Home’ – one of the album’s most captivating moments – conjuring up scenes of neon sign-lit, spit-and-sawdust bars.
Rogers says the songs on ‘Don’t Forget Me’ “flew out of” her, and you can hear that effortless coursing through them. Everything feels in its right place, but naturally so, as if it was meant to be. It all adds up to a record that provides a resolute answer to its title – there’s no chance of forgetting Maggie Rogers with albums like this.
