Vogue is one of the latest magazines and news outlets to feature Easton native Maggie Rogers, a young musician who rose to fame after capturing the attention of singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams during a critique session at Pharrell’s Masterclass at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute. He became teary-eyed upon listening to her hit “Alaska,” which she produced in only 15 minutes. “Wow. I have zero, zero, zero notes for that. It’s singular…and that is a such a special quality,” Pharrell remarked after hearing the song. This summer, the video of Pharrell’s critique went viral, and suddenly a 22-year-old farm girl from the Maryland’s Eastern Shore catapulted into the spotlight.
Rogers has talked a lot about her upbringing in the Easton area in the dozens of interviews she’s done since Pharrell helped launch her career seemingly overnight. She talked about her small-town upbringing in Easton, and she was unfamiliar with a lot of the pop music icons and their music, including “Thriller” by Michael Jackson, which she only listened to recently. However, this lack of exposure to pop music may be an advantage for Rogers and her unique talent. This allows her to “experience new sounds without bias and fold them into her creative process without aping them,” Vogue author Mark Guiducci writes.
Rogers released the video for her debut hit “Alaska” in October 2016, which was filmed in Maryland on her parent’s land. You can watch it here.
Photo by Katia Temkin, courtesy Facebook
