Maggie Rogers&mdash;in celestial Chanel High Jewelry&mdash; muses <text class="_textbox_1gl8y_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8659973144531" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="73.9312896728516" x="189.478988647461" y="-321.588470458984" data-test="textbox">on her new </text><text class="_textbox_1gl8y_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8829956054688" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="38.2533874511719" x="267.608612060547" y="-321.588470458984" data-test="textbox">album</text><text class="_textbox_1gl8y_17" direction="ltr" height="11.3389892578125" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="74.5721740722656" x="307.054901123047" y="-321.588470458984" data-test="textbox">, upcoming tour</text><text class="_textbox_1gl8y_17" direction="ltr" height="2.60101318359375" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="2.77099609375" x="410.430206298828" y="-321.588470458984" data-test="textbox">, </text><text class="_textbox_1gl8y_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8829956054688" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="177.337203979492" x="152.829605102539" y="-305.588470458984" data-test="textbox">and the beautiful ways she thinks</text><text class="_textbox_1gl8y_17" direction="ltr" height="11.8829956054688" lengthadjust="spacingAndGlyphs" textlength="112.735473632812" x="334.366302490234" y="-305.588470458984" data-test="textbox"> about music.</text>

Photography by Celeste Sloman
Styled by Kat Typaldos

Back in 2014, when <a href="lofficielusa.com/music/maggie-rogers-releases-raw-honest-documentary-watch" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Maggie Rogers</a> was an intern at Spin magazine writing about other people&rsquo;s music, she kept a running list of good descriptive words. &ldquo;I had a document on my computer of crunchy adverbs and adjectives,&rdquo; she told me in late October as she prepared to leave on the international leg of her Feral Joy tour. Music writing, Rogers knows, is notoriously difficult to do well; capturing the feeling of a song can sometimes feel like writing a whole new one. When she talks about music (her own, or that of an artist she admires), Rogers often ends up invoking sensations&mdash;smell, color, mouthfeel&mdash;in ways that can feel synesthetic. That&rsquo;s on purpose. &ldquo;Music is this thing that you don&rsquo;t get to see,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;so you have to rely on all the other senses to try and tell anybody what it was like.&rdquo; These days, Rogers may be the one being written about, but she&rsquo;s still doing her damnedest to make sure that you catch her drift.&nbsp;
After exploding onto the music scene in 2016, courtesy of a viral moment with <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/pharrell-fashion-collaborations-adidas-chanel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pharrell</a> in her NYU classroom, Rogers put out her first album, <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/music/maggie-rogers-heard-it-in-a-past-life-2019" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Heard It in a Past Life</a>, in 2019. She spent the pandemic writing and recording new songs, and getting her master&rsquo;s degree in religion and public life at Harvard Divinity School. In late July 2022, she emerged with Surrender, a love letter to loud, messy nights and hard mornings-after that feels like a real embrace of full selfhood spurred on by a period of isolation. Songs about sex, love, community, fear, rage; the desire to get lost in a crowd, in a moment, in a swell of feelings&mdash;it&rsquo;s all there, laid out and ready for the taking, preferably in the kind of all-consuming concert thrum and thrash it was written for. It&rsquo;s a little messy, and a lot human, and, anyways, that&rsquo;s the whole point. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a thing about writing my innermost secrets down on paper. It feels like if I tell you everything, there&rsquo;s nothing that could hurt me,&rdquo; Rogers says. &ldquo;Actually it ends up being the thing that connects me to people.&rdquo;
Rogers took a break from tour prep to slip into <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/chanel-1932-high-jewelry-collection-gabrielle-chanel-dinner" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Collection 1932 Chanel High Jewelry</a> and get into the murk of human existence with L&rsquo;OFFICIEL. (&ldquo;I was worried for a minute that the security guards weren&rsquo;t going to let me have a bathroom break while I was wearing the jewelry,&rdquo; she said of her time at the photo shoot. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry! They let me pee. I really earned their trust.&rdquo;)&nbsp;

ALESSANDRA CODINHA: Where&rsquo;s the first stop on your tour?
MAGGIE ROGERS: Leeds, on <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/celebrity-halloween-costumes-2022" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Halloween</a>. 
AC: Does that mean a costume?
MR: It does. I love any excuse to dress up. I&rsquo;m going to be in a little sailor suit and [everyone in] my band all have striped shirts. It feels within the aesthetic world. We&rsquo;re not coming as the cast of Scooby-Doo. 
AC: Right. Everybody can go to the bar after and feel normal.
MR: Exactly, yes. I would actually totally wear this costume in my normal life. Especially with this haircut; it&rsquo;s so <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/glenn-martens-jean-paul-gaultier-collection-spring-summer-2022-couture" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gaultier</a>. 
AC: I was going to say, very New Wave. I love it. How long have you had <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/beauty/17-short-hair-styles-for-2021" target="_blank" rel="noopener">short hair</a>?
MR: Almost two years now. It has gotten consistently shorter, but I cut it off for the first time in September 2020, with a friend and kitchen scissors. I had wanted to do it a lot earlier, and my friends just kept being like, &ldquo;&hellip;Sleep on it.&rdquo; I&rsquo;ve had short hair most of my life. I had it all growing up, and then it&rsquo;s something I did in the sixth grade, then again in my sophomore year of high school, and my junior year of college. It&rsquo;s something I&rsquo;ve done every five or six years since I can remember. There&rsquo;s a real cycle to it. I can always tell, it&rsquo;s like, Oh, it&rsquo;s coming. 
AC: That must be interesting, because you erupted into the public eye looking one way and then you&rsquo;re like, well actually&hellip;
MR: &ldquo;The public eye&rdquo; is what&rsquo;s funny, because this is something I&rsquo;ve been doing forever and people are like, &ldquo;New record, new look!&rdquo; I&rsquo;m like&hellip;I&rsquo;ve had this haircut for two years. You just haven&rsquo;t seen me. 
AC: You mean you didn&rsquo;t do this just for me?
MR: [Laughs.]

"I was hungry for the feeling of playing live music...or the idea that something could just happen."

AC: Actually, your album did come at a suspiciously perfect time for me specifically. I just did this thing called the Hoffman process, a personal-growth program in which this idea of surrender is really pivotal. And I&rsquo;ve got some big life decisions and changes happening, as does seemingly everyone I know. I was listening to Surrender a few times through before we spoke, and I was like: &ldquo;Is this album for me?&rdquo; It feels very fitting for life right now. So, thank you.
MR: That, to me, is the best part about music. It can translate from one person to another. In just the act, in general, of writing my innermost feelings down, that connective tissue is when someone else says, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve felt the same way, too.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s where it doesn&rsquo;t feel as lonely or isolating, or just really vulnerable to write. That&rsquo;s where vulnerability becomes an asset, rather than an insane thing that I&rsquo;m doing for sport. 
AC: When you&rsquo;re songwriting, are you taking in a lot? Are you reading, are you listening to music, are you watching movies, or are you like, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want anybody else&rsquo;s voice in my head?&rdquo;
MR: Like the hair thing, it&rsquo;s not conscious; it happens on a cycle, the same way that seasons do. There are times where I just naturally take in more and times where I isolate more.&nbsp;Particularly during the pandemic, I found that I was listening to a lot of ambient music and only watching TV shows that were really familiar. I did actively stop taking in information, but I think it was also just because the world was so chaotic. I had enough feelings that I didn&rsquo;t want anybody else singing about their feelings to me. For this record, I think it&rsquo;s much less about aesthetics or inspiration, and more about trying to capture a feeling. I was hungry for the feeling of playing live music, for the feeling of being in a crowd, for that feeling of having a night out, for that feeling of distortion or heaviness, or the idea that something could just happen. That was the biggest thing I feel like we lost, the idea of chance. Like something could just happen to you, because instead everything had to become so intentional and deliberate. I think a lot of this record was trying to attain that feeling, and provide a big release for a lot of anger and rage that I was just naturally harboring in that time. Everyone was. This was just the way that mine came out.
 AC: I do feel like we&rsquo;re all still dredging through a lot from living in that ambient terror for so long. I was in New York for much of that time, and the air was thick with fear and angst. You can&rsquo;t shake that off so easily after two-plus years.&nbsp;
MR: It&rsquo;s interesting. We&rsquo;re coming back to the world as if it&rsquo;s the same, but nothing is the same. The ways in which things have changed are sometimes glaring and sometimes really subtle. I leave for my first tour tonight, and I&rsquo;m so excited to be back on the road. It feels like going home. Touring was the first thing I did after <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/pop-culture/where-celebrities-went-to-college-meryl-streep-natalie-portman-oprah" target="_blank" rel="noopener">college</a>, and I did it for four years straight. It feels like the last couple of years I&rsquo;ve been trying to put my feet into other things to search for purpose or meaning or structure, and coming back to touring is just like, &ldquo;Oh, this is what I do.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s incredibly validating and fulfilling.

AC: Does it feel like people are happy to be at live events again?&nbsp;
MR: I think it&rsquo;s a process. There&rsquo;s so much from the pandemic that is buried. There is this release that you can&rsquo;t talk your way through&mdash;it&rsquo;s something that has to be felt. It&rsquo;s something that is really physical. I have found, at least personally, that transitioning into live events over the last six months both as a performer and as a fan has really been a process. At the beginning, in April, May, and June, it was really eerie. I would be at shows, and it was like faking an orgasm. It was like, I know I&rsquo;m supposed to feel something, but I&rsquo;m not feeling what&rsquo;s happening. I&rsquo;m in a crowd of other people all performing having fun, and it just wasn&rsquo;t quite it. 
AC: You still appreciate the effort!&nbsp;
MR: Everyone&rsquo;s got great intentions. [Laughs.] Then I was at this <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion-week/louis-vuitton-mens-spring-summer-2023-kendrick-lamar-virgil-abloh" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kendrick Lamar</a> show in LA in September. There was this moment where all of a sudden it was like you could smell it in the air, or you could taste blood. It felt the way that color moves through water. It appeared suddenly and flooded the arena in this really smoky, foggy, translucent way where suddenly I got a whiff of the feeling, like, it&rsquo;s coming. We&rsquo;re going to have it again. It&rsquo;s still possible. I got the first taste of what it used to feel like to be in live music. I was like, this is the thing that made me fall in love with doing this. It still exists. 
AC: Let&rsquo;s talk about Surrender, which also is the title of your thesis from Harvard Divinity School this year.
MR: I made the record before school. Record-making feels very private; what I was considering at school is the more public side of what I do. I was thinking about the power that artists hold. With every power comes some responsibility. What are the boundaries of that? What do I think is the best way to interact with that? What is an ethical relationship to that, was a big question I was having. How do you use art to bring people together in this time that we&rsquo;re more divided than ever? I don&rsquo;t know if I have an answer. I feel like I&rsquo;m in this second phase of my research, where I spent a year thinking and writing about these things. Also thinking a lot about how to keep music sacred, because in an industry that is so commercial and capital-driven, how do I just create boundaries and keep the good things good and don&rsquo;t let them get soured? I&rsquo;m in this phase of integration right now, where I&rsquo;m just coming back to tour after thinking about touring. It feels really awesome because I&rsquo;m able to bring this other level of intention. I&rsquo;m able to bring this other bit of research to it, and I&rsquo;m starting to connect the dots. Also, I will say, I&rsquo;ve gotten on stage thinking I was going to be that meme with the math equation and suddenly have all the answers and connect, oh, this philosopher and this thing. Really, I just get on stage and have fun. So much of being onstage to me is a practice of being present. It&rsquo;s so much less about the theory of playing than it is just embodiment. I think I&rsquo;m just learning that.&nbsp;

"The last couple of years I've been trying to put my feet into other things to search for purpose of meaning...coming back to touring is just like 'Oh, this is what I do.'"

AC: There&rsquo;s something sacred about that relationship of being on stage and authentically being yourself and communicating that innate truth of your art to somebody.&nbsp;
MR: I think a lot of people do that in a lot of different ways. Music&rsquo;s the way that&rsquo;s always been the best to me. It&rsquo;s also a channel. My tour is called the Feral Joy tour. I was really fucking angry when I made my record, and I needed to find a way to get that out. The record sounds really joyful. It&rsquo;s also dark, and to me when I hear that joy, it sounds hard-won. I think that your capacity for joy expands with your capacity for pain, in the way light looks brighter next to dark, and your experience of living is something that is always growing and changing. I think, onstage, I&rsquo;ve had just as much anger come out as joy. It&rsquo;s often a place where any of the things that I&rsquo;ve been processing come up or come out. There is this really somatic bodily release that isn&rsquo;t something that I can just explain to my journal or to a therapist or to a friend. It has to come out through movement and through singing, because singing is so resonant and so connective that it really feels otherworldly to me. 
AC: Someone told me recently that one reason primal scream therapy works so well is that to scream, your body circulates blood to your vocal chords, to your chest. You&rsquo;re actually moving blood around your body through making noise. And learning that can give people permission to make noise when otherwise they might be embarrassed.
MR: Singing is very much that way too. You also really have to listen to sing. I think that&rsquo;s one of the things that I&rsquo;ve really thought more about over the last couple of years, because, on stage, I have a microphone, and it&rsquo;s my songs, and I&rsquo;m in charge. That&rsquo;s a responsibility in itself. I&rsquo;m on a platform, I&rsquo;m elevated, but if I&rsquo;m just playing, I can play the same show every night and check the box. Actually playing music means that things shift every night. It means you&rsquo;re leaving space for the crowd&rsquo;s energy and how that might shift the performance. Leaving space for this groove we&rsquo;re in is really good right now; let&rsquo;s let it go for a couple of extra bars. I&rsquo;m going to listen and sing from my heart rather than singing the same riff I sang last night. Having that form of listening be integrated into the set is really something that I have been thinking a lot about and working towards.&nbsp;

"I think that your capacity for joy expands with your capacity for pain, in the way light looks brighter next to dark."

AC: That&rsquo;s really beautiful. What you&rsquo;re talking about is this idea of being present. You&rsquo;re leaving the door open for magic, for things to be new and different every single time.
MR: Also, when there&rsquo;s room for magic, there&rsquo;s also room for it to be terrible. To me, that&rsquo;s celebrating the humanity of it. Of not being a robot, but being here to be where I&rsquo;m at, and here we go. 
AC: Otherwise, you could just play your album and <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/travel-living/best-nightclubs-nyc" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dance</a> around on stage.
MR: Which I&rsquo;ve done and many people do. It&rsquo;s also very sick. 
AC: I saw an interview where you said this thing about how when you perform you experience your songs again, and sometimes things come out that you didn&rsquo;t know were there. The idea that there are messages in your songs unknown to even you is really interesting to me.&nbsp;
MR: I think part of why I&rsquo;m so excited to start this tour is that it almost feels like the record cycle hasn&rsquo;t started yet. It&rsquo;s like I&rsquo;ve built myself a beautiful house, but I haven&rsquo;t gone to live inside of it. There is something that happens when you live inside the work for an extended amount of time. It&rsquo;s like mantra practice. You just get to know the songs in a different way. It doesn&rsquo;t happen right away. It happens on your like, 14th, 15th, 16th show where you&rsquo;re suddenly like, &ldquo;Oh, this melody section can open up in this way,&rdquo; or &ldquo;That line just hit me in this other way.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s where time really starts to become nonlinear to me. Sometimes I will write lines and songs that come through very strongly. I&rsquo;ll be like, I don&rsquo;t totally know what that is but that feels really right. I&rsquo;ll catch it in a couple of years or in a couple of months and it feels like a letter from my past self for me right now. To me, the temporal nature of it is really fluid. That context opens some windows for some communication or some artistic insight that continues to inform the next record. It&rsquo;s fun to revisit all these different versions of myself in the process of playing all these songs.

AC: I&rsquo;m sure. It must be actually really visceral too to be like, oh, I wrote this when I was in a really shitty place.
MR: &ldquo;Love You for a Long Time&rdquo; was written about a boyfriend that I no longer have. A lot of people get married to that song. I think that it inspires this immense amount of self-reflection but also self-compassion. Every now and then I will play a song and I&rsquo;ll be like, oh, that girl was upset. She was not having fun. It&rsquo;s nice to be in a place where I am having fun singing these songs. Everything&rsquo;s temporary. 
AC: Are you always writing? Are you working on the next one now?
MR: I&rsquo;m working on the next one in a really passive way. Sort of like I was describing the liquid, almost pouring milk into coffee, or the liquid in the color through the water. I can start to smell it. I&rsquo;m starting to catch wind of it, but I haven&rsquo;t seen it yet. It&rsquo;s just starting to come together in my brain. Honestly, what I&rsquo;m so excited about for this next record is that I feel much freer. Whatever came out of me in Surrender, I really needed to get out. There is a certain amount of experience and age that is starting to congeal within my creative process, where I feel much more comfortable just getting into a studio and making shit. I don&rsquo;t feel like I need to explain who I am in the public as much anymore. I&rsquo;m really excited to just see that presence translate into my creativity. If I spent all this time at grad school thinking and writing about the creative process, I still haven&rsquo;t actually gotten to go do it with all the learning and self-reflection. Things feel really open and really exciting right now. I don&rsquo;t really know what&rsquo;s going to happen next, and that feels great.

HAIR Lauren Palmer Smith MAKEUP CHANEL Makeup Artist Nina Park using CHANEL Beauty MANICURE CHANEL Nail Artist Betina Goldstein using CHANEL Le Vernis PRODUCTION Anastasia Suchkov DIGITAL TECH Alex Golshani PHOTO ASSISTANTS Kevin McHugh and Scott Turner MAKEUP ASSISTANT Yukari Bush PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Ben Rigby

Maggie Rogers is Having the Best Time

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