Maggie Rogers – ‘Don’t Forget Me’ album review: an undercooked and uninteresting effort
THE SKINNY: The way Maggie Rogers burst into the music scene was a beautiful and mythical one, captured on video. There she is, a shy NYU student telling Pharrell about her journey from banjo-slinging folk musician to finding her sound during a drop-in masterclass. Then she hits play, and for the next three minutes, as ‘Alaska’ plays, you can see the awe painted across Pharrell’s face. The rest is history.
As a track, ‘Alaska’ is stunning, combining Rogers’ folkish past with a new, fresh, modern edge. That unique texture, along with her beautiful vocals, coloured years of stellar releases. Even as she began to expand beyond that, dropping the production edge for something more typically indie-focused on the 2022 release, Surrender, there was still something a little interesting and different to it, either in lyrical approach or instrumental layering. But on Don’t Forget Me, Rogers has left too much behind. She’s lost the spark that made her special.
The album is being marketed as a spontaneous and raw package. When she announced the release, she led with that, stating, “This album was written over five days, two songs a day.” Sadly, you can feel that in the worst way. What could be seen as a back-to-basics return to her roots instead simply feels unpolished. On tracks like ‘Drunk’ and ‘I Still Do’, the vocals feel more like a rehearsal or an early demo than the finished product.
Maybe there’s even an element of ego involved. Now, seven years on from the release of ‘Alaska’, with two albums and a big career under her belt, there’s an uneasy feeling of simply getting away with something. When an artist develops a real, dedicated fan base, it’s easy to rest on the laurels that they’ll like whatever they’re given. Don’t Forget Me doesn’t feel like the best Rogers could have done; instead, it feels like something good and nice enough to make her listeners happy simply because it’s new.
It doesn’t, however, feel new. It pales in comparison to the inventiveness of Now That The Light Is Fading. She’s boiled herself down to the neat description of a folk-pop artist, and the music feels stagnated. From the generic rhymes to the uncomplicated sound that sometimes even feels amateurish, the record is oddly dated.
There is nothing insulting about Don’t Forget Me. But there is also nothing to make it stick in the mind. It’s nice, and that’s about it. Maybe it needed a bit longer than five days on the drawing board, but either way, the album offers little to hook onto beyond a toe tap to some background music.
For fans of: Weak tea and the nothing month of April.
A concluding comment from a rhyming dictionary: “Great work, Maggie.”
Don’t Forget Me track by track
Release Date: April 12th | Producer: Ian Fitchuk and Maggie Rogers | Label: Debay Sounds
‘It Was All Coming All Along’: A nice opener that feels like a real song played by a real band in a real room by real people. With a country feel to it, this could be an old Taylor Swift piece, and I’m not complaining about that, but it doesn’t have the lyrical complexity to grip you any further than it just being nice. [3/5]
‘Drunk’: ‘Amateurish’ may feel harsh here, but its hard to think of another word that more accurately describes this number. The guitar effect feels like the kind that an amateur producer would apply. The rhyming feels pulled from a dictionary. There are even moments where the vocals feel unfinished and hugely undersell her talent. Considering the works Rogers has managed earlier in her career, this feels miles behind in ability. [1.5/5]
‘So Sick Of Dreaming’: As one of the album’s singles, ‘So Sick Of Dreaming’ is another nice enough track held together by a lovely instrumental and a sweet simplicity. But when the talking comes in at the end, she presents her own version of Swift’s ‘We’re Never Getting Back Together’ but without the irony that makes it bearable. [2.5/5]
‘The Kill’: The switch-up in instrumental here is interesting, getting the ears pricked again. But there’s no catchiness, missing the hooking quality that boomed her earlier works to success. [2.5/5]
‘If Now Was Then’: This got my hopes up. As the track builds and builds, the climaxing end feels like a reunion with Roger’s old production greatness, reclaiming her title as a master of intricate yet well-balanced layering. [3/5]
‘I Still Do’: This tender piano ballad has some beautiful lyrical moments but, once again, isn’t interesting enough to be much beyond ‘nice’. Her voice again feels unfinished or undersold, as if this surely couldn’t have been the best take, sounding more like a rehearsal than the album cut. [2/5]
‘On & On & On’: Any hopes that this would be a sonic nod to her 2019 track ‘On & Off’, are quickly dashed. Instead, this one again feels like another infantile Taylor Swift cut or old-school country pop in a way that even the stars that led that sound have grown out of. [2/5]
‘Never Going Home’: The instrumentals on this album feel so limp and cheesy. It’s hard to understand what made Rogers abandon her old, intricate sound for this. [1.5/5]
‘All The Same’: The return to a stripped-back, acoustic feel is welcome, but once again, the rhyming dictionary feels out, and there’s nothing special enough to make me care. [2/5]
‘Don’t Forget Me’: A plain and simple country ballad. This song could have been written by a million artists over decades, and even I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. [3/5]
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