Maggie Rogers is learning to let go.
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More specifically, the Maryland-born singer/songwriter is practicing the art of surrender with her second studio album, which is aptly titled Surrender. In a celebration of Surrender with Spotify at Electric Lady Studios, Rogers explained how this practice has manifested in her music, and more broadly, in her life.
“Surrender can have negative connotations, but to me, it’s such a positive thing—it means to give into feeling, to give into experiencing all there is in life and emotion,” she said. “To me surrender is about giving in, feeling everything there is to feel, even when that’s exhilarating when it’s terrifying and that being a real expression of life.”
This perspective has deeply affected Rogers’ latest album, which drops on July 29.
“For me, titles have often come very immediately and a lot of times have been the first thing that happens on a record. When I finished touring Heard it in a Past Life in October/November 2019, I knew it was going to be called Surrender. I knew I wanted to make a classic record and I wanted to spend some time to really dig into making one,” she explained. “When you call a title upon yourself, you call this thing into your life—now I have to let go and feel this thing.”
Rogers added that Surrender is “just about [her] life” rather than about the “crazy viral moment” that first broke Rogers onto the music scene. (Rogers is referring to the moment when her song “Alaska” was played for Pharrell Williams.)
Consequently, Surrender was built on the interworkings of Rogers’ emotions and passions, one of which is songwriting.
“I love writing,” she said. “I only wrote one song on this record when I was in grad school, which is ‘Honey.’ When we left Electric Lady—it was in the middle of this record that I decided to apply to grad school—I had this vision that I would make the record and then go to grad school, and there would be this clean split. I’d have my personal life and my public life, and they would be really separate, and the two lives wouldn’t cross. We left Electric Lady in the summer of 2021, and I thought we were done. I got on the plane and listened to the record down and knew there was a hole on the B Side, the track listing just wasn’t right. So I was like OK, I’m going to have to surrender, I’m going to have to let go.
“And I think the greatest lesson was that they weren’t supposed to be two separate things. There was an integration, at least in my life, that ended up being really important for me—weaving in all my thinking about spirituality and power and these systems of oppression that are a part of our life and peace and more to my life in music. There is a deep creative inspiration when it comes to songwriting and essay writing,” she said.
Pre-order or listen to Surrender HERE.
Photo courtesy of Spotify
