Album Review: Maggie Rogers’ "Heard It in a Past Life" Is Easy Listening, For Better or Worse

Maggie Rogers stunned Pharrell (and the rest of us) with "Alaska". Her follow-up album can't reach that same peak.

If you want to see just one way sexism works, take a look online and see how many people credit Pharrell Williams with discovering 24-year-old singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers.

"Discover" is… pretty generous. In fairness, Pharrell’s never claimed credit. In the viral video of him listening to her drip-dropping demo "Alaska", he just sits in her New York University studio and absorbs Rogers’ electronic soundscape and slinky vocals, awed and speechless. A star is born. You just need one person in a room to believe in you, et cetera. The thing is, she came to him in 2016 with a song and sound that was already fully formed.

It’s a great moment to behold. And it’s no surprise Pharrell was so taken by "Alaska", given that his work with the Neptunes basically pioneered the whole 'building beats around popping mouth noises' movement.

That track, unfortunately, is almost an anomaly on Rogers’ debut studio album (her third overall). As Pharrell said at the time, "You couldn’t compare it to anything else." And what surrounds it on Heard It in a Past Life can be compared to a whole lot. Though, as I write out the album title, maybe that’s the whole point. Still, it lacks the 'new-seeming' spark that once rendered Pharrell, and us, wordless.

The record launches with a jittery loop, leading into the too-easy disco chorus of opener "Give a Little". Idiosyncratic clicks and squeaks interrupt—like fingers running the rim of a wine glass—yet there’s no denying the AM-influenced melody, on follow-ups "Overnight" and "Light On" too.

These are not necessarily complaints! It depends on your appetite for adult contemporary music, I suppose. (In a NYT profile, even Rogers wasn’t sure if she should celebrate topping the 'adult alternative' chart.)

"The Knife", in which she sings of coming to some kind of revelatory insight, probably finds the best marriage of layer-upon-layer sonic tweaking and good-old-fashioned Stevie Nicks-style bewitchery.

Even better is the Nigel Godrich-esque "On + Off" (from 2017), which builds to a proper breakdown, only unearthing how catchy it is after a full listen, rather than seeming instantly familiar (and tired) like many others. Its enigmatic lyrics—"Take me to that place when I need someone; when I’m shaking or my mind starts coming undone"—are more involving than the generic aphorisms found elsewhere.

However, "Alaska" just can’t be beat, and in both title and spirit, it recalls then 16-year-old Rachel Sweet’s own squeaky-strange 1978 single, "It’s So Different Here". By comparison, the rest feels like more of the same.

You can't accuse Heard It in a Past Life of being rushed: it has taken two years, in fact, for Rogers to deliver it. She's credited with writing and producing every tune on the record, alongside some notable collaborators (most regularly, producer Greg Kurstin, from The Bird and the Bee, who released their own album of Hall and Oates covers, which is extremely telling). As an auteurist work, however, it doesn't fully articulate the kind of artist she could be, or even wants to be. The "Kate Bush does Wuthering Heights" era-evoking cover also feels like a misdirect. This here is 'easy-listening', and that should indicate how easy it is to listen to, in the background, rather than plant you, Pharrell-like, in your seat for its entire runtime.

3/5

Heard It in a Past Life is now available.