A Night to Remember With Maggie Rogers & The Japanese House
By Eva McNally ‘25
Going to a Maggie Rogers show always feels like a homecoming, as if you are catching up with an old friend over coffee, picking up right where you left off. Going to a Maggie Rogers show is an experience where you leave feeling healed after singing, dancing, laughing, and crying. Going to a Maggie Rogers concert is a gift to your younger self, where your fears of love, loss, and getting older don’t seem quite as weighty. She visited Milwaukee earlier this month, giving an unforgettable performance at the BMO Pavilion for the Don’t Forget Me Tour Part I–a summer stint across the United States at amphitheaters. Milwaukee was just over the halfway point–the tour will conclude on the 22nd of June in Miami.
Her latest album, Don’t Forget Me, was written and recorded in an astonishing five days. The week that Don’t Forget Me dropped, Rogers played a handful of release shows at tiny venues, most with maximum capacities under one thousand, and played the entire album as well as fan requests. In order to get tickets, fans had to physically go to the box office the day of the show. Many lined up early in the morning with the hopes to procure a prized ticket. Rogers has been a massive advocate for preventing tickets from being bought by scalpers and bots; one way she combats this is by having designated box office days for fans to get tickets, and as affordably as possible.
As the sun sank below the horizon, Rogers opened up her set with “It Was Coming All Along,” a song about the inevitability of change and getting older. Rogers is incredibly candid in describing how hard it is when faced with change as she sings: “I’m crying, wish I wasn’t hanging on / But I knew it was coming all along.” Rogers captures the essence of being a twenty-something when everything seems to be coming to an end. Rogers offers solace to her listeners by making peace with change herself. Relationships are bound to change, people come and go. Such is life.
“So Sick Of Dreaming,” the third song on the set, features a spoken word section that resembles a phone call conversation. Rogers said: “So he calls me up fifteen minutes before the reservation / And says he’s got [Bucks] tickets instead.” In every city, she changes the name of the team, and Milwaukee was no different. In the studio version, the team is the Knicks. She continued: “I mean, I was at the restaurant / So I took the steaks to go, I had two martinis at the bar / And went to meet my friends down the street” She then exclaimed: “What a loser!” Before singing the chorus, she said: “And by the way…” Then, putting her hand to her ear with a smirk, she pointed the microphone at the audience to which they replied: “The Bucks lost!” Her wry humor and witty lyricism was infectious.
Much of the set featured Don't Forget Me but she also included a deep cut, “Dog Years” from Now That the Light is Fading. The title of the song alludes to the 7:1 ratio, which purports that one dog year is equivalent to seven human years, and throughout the song, Rogers emphasizes that though the time is short, the time we spend living and loving with others is what life's all about. The song begins with the unmistakable sound of metal clinking on glass, offering a rich, multilayered soundscape. Again, following themes of grappling with change, Rogers disclosed in this Facebook post: “Dog Years is about change, about loving and leaving and still loving, about trusting yourself, about trusting the universe, about being a good friend and never having enough time.” Rogers encourages us to love deeply and to feel fully, which is ultimately, what makes us all human.
As Rogers began “Love You For A Long Time,” fans in the GA pit held up paper signs that said: “We’re Gonna Love You For A Long Time”,earning misty eyes from the singer. “You’re gonna make me cry!” She exclaimed. As the title of the song suggests, it is a love song. However, this song is not exclusive to any one type of love, it details love in all its forms; whether it be romantic, platonic, or something else entirely. During the song, the band took an instrumental break and a Kiss Cam appeared on the screen behind Rogers. The cameras scanned the crowd for participants–there was something so magical and so human about seeing people's faces light up when they appeared on the big screen. Nobody shied away from sharing a smooch with their lovers and friends.
During “Retrograde” fireworks began to explode behind Rogers–with PrideFest happening next door, there was much to celebrate that evening. At the conclusion of the song, the band left the stage, and Rogers took a seat at the piano for a solo performance of “I Still Do.” She expressed how funny the timing was for fireworks to be going off during one of her slowest and saddest songs, which also happened at her show in Cincinnati the night before. She said: “[the fireworks] turned the saddest moment in the set into something so joyful, so powerful, and I started thinking about when a relationship ends, inevitably, what you’re doing is letting go.” How beautifully put and perfectly on theme. It was a cathartic moment for Rogers and the audience alike as the firework finale was timed to coincide with the climax of the song.
“Alaska,” “Fallingwater,” and “Light On” also appeared on the setlist, in that order. For “Alaska,” Rogers’ breakout song, she slowed it down, letting the audience bask in her impressive vocals. For the first rendition of the chorus, she pitched it down, swaying back and forth as she strummed her acoustic guitar. As the song progressed, the cymbals swelled, and Rogers sang the final chorus pitched up, as it sounds in the recorded version. “Fallingwater” was another song that was particularly illustrative of Rogers’ mellifluous and powerful vocals. The song is vulnerable, detailing Rogers’ feelings as her career blew up, following Pharell Williams’ reaction to “Alaska” when he visited a production class Rogers was in at NYU. During “Light On,” Rogers encouraged fans to put their phone lights up. Soon enough, the entire venue lit up, from the floor all the way to the back. Just like the crowd, lights danced overhead, swaying back and forth to the beat.
For the encore, she returned for two final songs: “Don’t Forget Me” and an acoustic cover of Damien Rice's “Cannonball.” “Don’t Forget Me,” the album’s title track, captures how it feels watching everyone around you living their lives at a different pace. She also expresses her desire for vulnerability, tenderness, and love. As Rogers divulged in this interview with Rolling Stone: “When it comes down to it, our memories and relationships are all we have. I don’t have a lot of asks, but I want my time spent on this earth to add up to something. For it to all be worth it in the end.” She continues: “I think remembering someone can be the greatest form of loving because when we remember, the love lives on. When I’m standing at the end of my life, I hope a lifetime of accumulated love is what I’m left with.” Rogers has a beautiful mind and is incredibly well spoken, as expected from a Harvard Graduate with a masters degree in religion and public life. Her thesis, which “examined cultural consciousness, the spirituality of public gathering, and the ethics of pop power,” is an incredibly important part of her, as a person, artist, and musician.
Rogers is off to Europe to support Coldplay in August and September. Then, she will embark on a stadium tour, entitled The Don’t Forget Me Tour Part II across the United States in the fall, performing at iconic venues such as Madison Square Garden in New York and the Kia Forum in Inglewood. Ryan Beatty will support Rogers on her 12-stop tour, traveling coast to coast in a little under a month.
Before Rogers took to the stage, opener The Japanese House played a solid, forty-five-minute set, which featured several songs from their latest album: In The End It Always Does, including “Sad to Breathe,” “Boyhood,” and “Sunshine Baby.” Lead singer, Amber Bain, kept it casual, sporting a brown hoodie with “cowgirl” embroidered across the front and sunglasses, which were much needed as the sun set, casting a golden glow on the band.
Songs from the 2019 release, Good At Falling, were included in the set, such as “Worms”' and “You Seemed So Happy.” The band also performed an unreleased song that was listed on the setlist as “Smiley Face;” which means new music is on the way. The Japanese House is playing headlining shows throughout the summer across the United States, including a Lollapalooza pre-show at Metro in Chicago on July 31st. The following day, they will take to Tito’s Handmade Vodka Stage from 5:45 to 6:45 PM, their set is one you won’t want to miss!
