Maggie Rogers Biography

news-detailsMaggie Rogers, whose real name is Margaret Debay Rogers, was born April 25, 1994 in Easton, Maryland. She has gained interest in music since childhood, starting to play harp at the age of seven. She also loved listening to classic music by Gustav Holst and Antonio Vivaldi while her mother liked to play songs from Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill.

Her love for music grew stronger each year, adding piano, guitar and songwriting to her repertoire in middle school. When she attended the prestigious St. Andrews boarding school in Delaware, she became interested in banjo and folk music. Despite having huge interest in music since she was still a child, Maggie only started focusing on songwriting after she won Berklee College of Music program's songwriting contest.

Turning a broom closet into a makeshift studio, Maggie recorded her first independent album "The Echo" and released it in 2012. The album included her demos as part of her application to Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music in New York City, and she was accepted. In 2014, she released her sophomore independent album "Blood Ballet".

Maggie started gaining attention after her 2016 single "Alaska", which she wrote in 15 minutes for a master class with Pharrell Williams, went viral. It was thanks to a video of the latter getting emotional while listening to the song. This resulted in million of views as well as hundreds of thousands of plays of her two albums. "Alaska" peaked at No. 18 on Billboard's Hot Rock Songs chart.

Following the success of the single, Maggie signed a deal with Capitol Records that allowed her to create her own Debay Sounds imprint. She unveiled her first EP "Now That the Light Is Fading" on February 17, 2017. Its single "On + Off" peaked at No. 44 on Hot Rock Songs chart. That year also saw her making her television debut on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon".

In the following year, she appeared as the musical guest in the November 3 episode of "Saturday Night Live". For her appearance on the show, she performed "Fallingwater" and "Light On". Welcoming 2019, Maggie released her debut studio album "Heard It in a Past Life" on January 18. The effort arrived at No. 2 on Billboard 200, marking her first top ten effort on the chart.