Maggie Rogers has returned with her sophomore studio album Surrender, the highly-anticipated follow up to her critically acclaimed 2019 debut Heard It In a Past Life. The record arrives via Capitol Records with the previously released singles “That’s Where I Am,” “Want Want,” and “Horses.”
“Surrender is about giving into feeling,” Rogers told Teen Vogue in a recent interview. “That word can have such negative connotations, but to me it is such a positive thing.”
Rogers wrote and co-produced the record in its entirety with Harry Styles and Florence and the Machine collaborator Kid Harpoon. Describing the sonic essence of the record, she shared: “I also really made [the album] to be shared and played live. It was a way for me to create a sense of hope: that live music would come back, that there would be a space for us all to gather again, that music could be a tool for that. I was just dreaming about music festivals the whole time I was writing it. So making something that felt really physical and embodied also felt like a part of Surrender to me.”
When she first announced Surrender, Rogers revealed that she thought she had created an angry record, but it actually turned out to be rooted in what she described as “feral joy,” at least in its sound.
“I wrote the album in a time when I was feeling incredibly numb,” she told Teen Vogue. “I would have these huge waves of emotion, whether they were anger or joy. And to me, those are two emotions that sort of take over. It’s terrifying to let go in that way, but it can be one of the fullest [experiences] of just living, in general. So letting go is really what Surrender is about, and trying to feel all the things.”