Maggie Rogers is a singer-songwriter from Maryland who got “discovered” by Pharrell Williams during a masterclass during his time as an Artist-in Residence at NYU.

Rogers grew up musical, playing harp as early as age seven and being introduced to all kinds of artists from Vivaldi to Lauryn Hill from a young age. By high school she was playing harp, guitar and piano and singing in the choir.

At NYU, she studied music and music journalism. During which she interned for Lizzy Goodman, where she transcribed and edited hours and hours of interviews with famous musicians. It was in her senior year that a video of her showing her song “Alaska” to Pharrell Williams went viral and launched her career in the limelight. She has later admitted that she struggled with the narrative of her “discovery” because she felt it erased her years of hard work and dedication.

After the video, several different labels tried to sign her, and she negotiated hard with bigwigs she had previously read about in her trascriptions. She would come to each interview prepared with information about who she was meeting with and was basically involved in a bidding war over signing her, which ended up with her having much more control than many artists at her stage of career.

Rogers debuted on TV on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and has performed on Saturday Night Live. Last year at the 62^nd Grammy Awards Rogers was nominated for Best New Artist and has opened for artists like HAIM, Mumford and Sons and Kacey Musgraves