The “Alaska” star’s second album, which shares its title with her Harvard Divinity School thesis, asks big questions about life through confident pop anthems.
After emerging in 2016 with “Alaska,” a folksy electronica song that went viral after impressing Pharrell Williams, Maggie Rogers started checking off the boxes to become a pop star: a debut SNL performance, a Best New Artist Grammy nomination, sets at every festival under the sun. When the pandemic began, she decamped to her family’s home in Maine, where she reconnected with nature and wrote a collection of songs called Surrender—which is also the name of her 2022 Harvard Divinity School thesis. Oh yeah: While working on the follow-up to her 2019 debut Heard It in a Past Life, Rogers was enrolled in a year-long masters program focused on the presence of religion in public life. For the 28-year-old singer-scholar that meant considering questions like: Does an artist hold a responsibility to their audience? And how can performance be a conduit for a transcendental experience?
If it sounds a little Ivy League Hannah Montana—finals by day, Met Gala by night—Rogers’ return to academia served her well. On Surrender, she sounds renewed, submitting to the pull of her heart without apology. She plays hooky from adulthood on the upbeat “Be Cool” and gives into her carnal instincts on “Want Want”; she’s turning off the radio and listening to the wind instead of suffering through “that song I’m supposed to know/By some fucking bro,” as she teases on “Anywhere With You.” She’s still processing her whirlwind rise to fame, and learning what to prioritize: “Took me all this long to figure out/It’s not worth it/If I can’t touch the ground,” she sings on the ballad “Horses,” which uses the titular animals as a symbol for the freedom she so badly desires.
The album itself reflects Rogers’ newfound autonomy: She’s trimmed back on her debut’s stable of producers, co-producing Surrender herself alongside Kid Harpoon (Harry Styles, Shawn Mendes). One of the best moments, the escapist fantasy “Anywhere With You,” was co-written with an old friend, Holden Jaffe, who makes music under the name Del Water Gap (Rogers performed in an earlier version of the project while in college). On the song, Rogers lifts a companion out of their existential malaise before the pair hit the road in search of something bigger than themselves. Like so many road songs, it’s also a declaration of devotion, a commitment to journeying forward together even as their thoughts on forever differ: “You tell me you want everything you want it fast,” Rogers bellows atop a cathartic crescendo that would not sound out of place on an early Arcade Fire record. “But all I’ve ever wanted is to make something/Fucking last.”
Rogers’ hunger is matched by her physical voice. Her once breathy tone has deepened into a register that sounds right at home alongside a singer like Florence Welch, who contributes backing vocals to “Shatter.” And on the opener “Overdrive,” Rogers sounds absolutely gigantic as she laments a crumbling relationship atop a wistful piano melody. When she lives in this range, her guttural voice grounds the idiosyncratic production flourishes—wiggly synth squiggles, playful beats, whimsical samples—that have occasionally overcrowded her songwriting. She’s still inclined to make unexpected choices, like on the state of the union “That’s Where I Am,” a sleek and confident pop anthem built atop waves of distortion and wobbly effects. The flourishes are more subtle on the sprawling “Begging for Rain,” even with the barely-contained jazz extrovert Jon Batiste on melodica, lending a softness to Rogers’ reflections on futility: “You work all day to find religion/And end up standing in your kitchen/Wondering ’bout the way its always been.”
While Rogers has certainly grown as a songwriter, there’s still the odd moment in need of some fine tuning. On “I’ve Got a Friend,” Rogers pays tribute to a pal with a cornucopia of complexities—she’s “been there through it all/Masturbates to Rob Pattinson staring at the wall.” It’s the type of feel-good acoustic number meant to inspire appreciation for one’s own chosen family (and their weird sexual proclivities) but the simplicity of lyrical structure alongside the overflowing earnestness comes off as juvenile in the context of Rogers’ more ambitious or poetic swings. “Shatter”’s fervor is fueled by a relentless onslaught of heavy-handed ’80s new wave, and that’s before a clunky line like, “I know there’s people everywhere with injustice on their lips/And there’s this open wound bleeding between my hips.”
But then there’s a song like “Symphony,” which underlines that Rogers is at her best when she’s given a challenge. Co-written with Gabe Goodman, the five-minute pseudo-lullaby gradually builds into a constellation of swirling electric guitars and huffy breathwork until there’s a natural exhale. “Can you live like nothing’s left,” she murmurs. “Forget your emptiness/Take a breath.” When Surrender follows this advice, it suggests that Rogers has grasped something like transcendence, a release worth chasing.
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