NEW YORK (AP) ā wrote and recorded her new album, āDonāt Forget Me,ā over five days last winter. The songs came quickly and chronologically, as if she was writing ādifferent scenes in a movie.ā
āIāve been writing songs now for 15 years, and so I think Iāve just come into this place where I really trust my process and my craft. I think because of that, I was in a place where I was willing to just play,ā Rogers said in a Zoom interview ahead of the album's release.
The result is a record that Rogers calls ārelaxed,ā one that finds her āunguarded and present."
The mood is lighter than Rogersā electric 2022 album which was in many ways a release of pent-up pandemic energy ā a collection of songs that begged to be experienced live and with a crowd. And it leans more heavily on acoustic sounds than 2019's the first album Rogers released after to her song, in a New York University class went viral.
As Rogers : If āHeard it in a Past Lifeā is air and āSurrenderā is fire, āDonāt Forget Meā is earth.
Like her past projects ā and her studies at ā community is a through-line of āDon't Forget Me.ā Rogers name-drops friends and tells their stories alongside hers. She has welcomed the way the new songs have united crowds, and looks forward to continuing to foster that joyous, present, environment on tour.
āI'm excited to be able to meet people in it,ā she said, referencing the album's Friday release.
That community-first quality of her music is something that fans, too, embrace: New Yorkās Gaia Music Collective, for example, organized a āone-day choirā of Rogersā song āLight On.ā Four hundred people gathered an arrangement of the song, a cappella.
āShe also is thinking about music as a connective force, as a thing that can bring us and our stories together," said Matt Goldstein, the group's founder and co-director. āItās no accident that her music feels good to sing together.ā
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: āSurrenderā felt like an album that had to be moved through and experienced with a crowd. How do you see this album being embodied?
Rogers: This record was always made for the car. I really wanted to make a record that felt like a Sunday driving record, because to me, those are some of the most intimate moments that Iāve had with music or with an album ā when Iām singing along to a song in the car and it feels like that artist or that song is like a friend in my passenger seat. Those are some of my favorite records, and theyāre the records I turn to for comfort over and over again. And you know, in this big, crazy, completely insane, existential, world, if thatās something that I could offer to the world through my music, I think that that is really special.
AP: Could you say more about how you see your three studio albums in relation to each other? I liked how you described each of them as elements ā air, fire, earth.
Rogers: I think categorizing them in that way is just a way to help give context to them. To me, theyāre all really important reflections on different periods in my life. And my songwriting is pretty consistent at the center of all these things. Itās mostly the way that like my producer brain has chosen to dress up the songs at their core, and that has more to do with creative expression or curiosity more than anything.
In each record, Iām just trying to be as present and authentic as I can. āDonāt Forget Me,ā what I love about it, is that itās this really, like kind of woven tapestry. Like in so many ways I created a character that sort of led me through this album, rather than trying to make a snapshot of my life in the exact moment. But there are real truths woven into that character and into those stories.
And you know, it comes out two weeks before I turn 30 and in a way it feels like this big ode to my 20s and everything Iāve experienced. Even if the narrative plot line isnāt exactly 1:1 with my life, the essence of all of the feelings within all of the songs feels really, really truthful.
AP: Looking ahead, what do you think you learned after putting what you had studied at Harvard into practice while touring last year?
Rogers: Itās funny because I spend all this time thinking about live music and the way people come together around it, and I had this thought that when I got on stage that it would be like, you know, that meme of the woman with the math problem above her head? I was like, thatās going to be me. And then I got on stage. And what I love about being on stage is that Iām not thinking, Iām just moving. Iām just feeling. Itās like deeply instinctual.
When I think about the tour that Iāll be on for the next year, I think Iām mostly just really excited to have fun. Like, Iāve worked for so many years and been in so many bands, whether it was like at some underground club in New York City or being 18 and playing in bars or being on the road in a van at the beginning of my career, that now I feel really comfortable on stage and I love playing live. Iām so happy that live music is back in this way.
AP: You around the holidays about a journal entry you found from the end of your time at NYU.
Rogers: So trippy.
AP: How does that kind of reflective writing fit into your daily practice and songwriting now?
Rogers: Itās such a massive part of my life. I mean, I write every day. I kind of canāt sleep without it. Itās usually the last thing I do at the end of the day. And it, like, really is a meditation.
I wrote a ton through grad school and have continued working on essays and I'm turning my masterās thesis into a book. My long form writing practice feels as much a part of my life as my short form songwriting practice, and it helps me to stay really present in my life because I'm paying attention to detail all the time.
AP: You said that writing this album felt like writing scenes from a movie. Do you look to films for inspiration when you're developing a storyline and character like this?
Rogers: No, I mean, the movies that I love often have a strong female lead ā like, ā10 Things I Hate About Youā was a really big, big part of āSurrender.ā And was a big part of this record. I donāt know ā maybe it makes me a basic bā, but, like, Iām a lover of a Meg Ryan rom-com, or a Julia Roberts movie. But thatās just what I like. That to me has the same sense of comfort as the album that is the passenger in the passenger seat that youāre singing along to in your car ā they hold the same space for me.
Elise Ryan, The Associated Press
