You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
This episode contains explicit language.
Maggie Rogers had a breakthrough moment when she was a student at NYU's Clive Davis Institute.
Pharrell Williams visited her class, and when he heard her song,
Alaska, his reaction was dramatic and caught on video.
The video of Pharrell listening to Maggie's song went viral,
and Alaska became a hit, with over 40 million streams on Spotify alone.
Maggie Rogers is now playing sold-out shows across the country just a year after graduating from college.
In this episode, Maggie tells the story of what came before that day in class,
all the steps and missteps that eventually led to her writing the song, Alaska.
My name is Maggie Rogers and I'm very excited to be on Song Exploder.
I grew up writing music and grew up producing my own music and this is something that I've always done.
I played banjo and made folk music and grew up in this rural place and identified myself in that culture.
Too young, too thoughtless, I said to myself, with idealistic visions all perched on the shelf,
and I'm still hoping, waiting for you to come home.
You know, I grew up in a really rural area in Maryland and moved to New York when I was 18.
I went to the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music to school the arts at NYU for college to study engineering,
production, and the music industry.