I’ve been grooving harder than anything to this Maggie Rogers track for the last month or so.

If you need a quick primer; music is a love of mine, so much so that I take some time away from it. I won’t really look for new things and explore for months on end, plus not really listen to anything other than a track that immediately comes to mind. Its sort of a weird pattern I get myself in, because when I come back to it there is a very physical & mental rush and relief.  I like to think my musical hiatuses (hiati?) are for my greater good because I’ll lose a whole day digging into the artist & song. This is all to say I’m sorta emerging from another one at the moment, and damn. The latest time I resurfaced I came across this video:

I fell in love. Now thats where my trepidation comes in.

I worked in some fashion the music and web industries and particularly their intersection of new media and breaking new artists, so I can’t fully surrender my skepticism that Maggie Rogers is an artist I’m absorbing whole cloth without being tailored to from some combination of aggregator, data processing, tracking, and our taste making overlords.

I’ll give you the story:

I follow Pharrell and his ‘IAmOther’ space on Youtube, and in the recommended location it had a video of him at NYU Clive Davis Institute as the semester guest.

Everything lined up for me, a long form video, Pharrell, and a highly regarded institution. I clicked play.

I figured I’d watch what Pharrell has to say about creativity, artistry, and the students’ work. I thought’d be interesting to see how he deals with young talented hopefuls and how they respond to him in this obviously less formal and staged environment; plus for my own vanity if he hears/says things that were similar to my opinions.  (To pretty solid degree our opinions aligned; so hooray for me.)

I’d like to talk about the other artists, but that would be getting away from the point of this piece. In short they were all pretty good. I suppose the music to expected from talented students, explorations and/or mashups of genre that ultimately come off as uneven, too derivative, or lacking an opinion / confidence, but all very promising.

Then fucking Maggie Rogers sat down.

Pharrell’s excitement is palatable form the jump. The second the groove really sets in. He is clearly trying to control his feelings & not give too much up to the young artist. I would also assume, he’s attempting to remain analytical; no doubt he’s been privy to tracks that, though promising, fell apart in one aspect or another. The track has a clarity in production and clear ‘goal’ and ‘viewpoint’ throughout; it feels like an achievement.

This feeling of an achievement is what worries me as a viewer. Thought Experiment: if you wanted to break a new artist what a better way than creating a mostly organic experience between that artist, someone like Pharrell, and an institution to give it legitimacy.  No doubt, there is a delicate math to this since I believe we on a whole are more aware of the ‘sell’.  This brings me back to my own web history & Youtube subscriptions. The above video came out in March 2016, so its not exactly a new revelation, just a piece of content that went unnoticed by me when first published.

However it somewhat recently popped in my recommended videos list, as stated at the top. I watched it, continued to check her out and came to see that the video for the track was releasing soon on her Vevo and also deluge of videos titled “Here’s the girl who wowed Pharrell . . .” & “Check out Pharrell’s reaction to this . . .” & “Who’s Maggie Rogers? .  . .” now and somewhat recently published in my recommended videos list. This was all also soon followed by the release of another track “Dog Years”, which I love.  SO I’ve come to a “chicken or the egg” situation and based on my knowledge and brief stint in the industry it very well could be either. Plus Pharrell’s hat says ‘Plant’ right on it. – The signs are everywhere *briskly places tinfoil hat on head*

This is really all to say we are in an interesting time with discovery but ultimately noone wants to feel duped or suckered. I suppose I’m thinking too much about it and should just be happy something I love surfaced to my attention and gave me the immediate sensation that I was ‘on to something’ and I can appreciate the subtle execution if that is the case. Though at the same time, I’m of the mind that if its good its good, just put it out and push it out.

Anyway, I’m done with my poorly thought out rambling. Enjoy Maggie Rogers, she’s dope.