Maggie Rogers meets fan that kickstarted her career with viral video
At a recent show, American musician Maggie Rogers met the fan responsible for posting the viral video that kickstarted her career.
A video was posted to Reddit in 2016 showing Pharrell Williams reacting to Rogers’ song ‘Alaska’ while teaching a songwriting class at New York University. The video was uploaded by a man named Dimitri and subsequently “went viral” on social media.
In the video, Williams commends the song, stating, “I have zero, zero, zero notes for that. I’ve never heard anyone like you before, and I’ve never heard anything that sounds like that.”
After the video was shared on the social media platform, Rogers, who had been self-releasing music for several years, was offered a recording contract with Capitol Records.
Since then, Rogers has supported artists such as Kasey Musgraves and Haim and embarked on several headline tours. She has released two albums with Capitol, Heard It In A Past Life and Surrender, both of which were highly acclaimed. A third album is set for release soon, with Rogers teasing new material last month.
Taking to Instagram, Rogers shared her encounter with Dimitri with her fans. “So obviously my career started seven years ago with that video of me and Pharrell Williams at NYU blah blah blah.”
“But a couple of years ago I got put in touch with this guy named Dimitri, who, seven years ago, was the original person that uploaded that video to Reddit,” she added.
“I had no idea who he was or what he was like and we kept emailing over the years, and I actually got to meet him for the first time at my show in Toronto the other night. It was really emotional to catch up. It was really crazy that there was this person who fundamentally made my life pivot.”
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