Sam Brigger
speaker
1,127 appearances
24 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 6 Jun
Sam Brigger’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 8 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Today we continue listening to some of our favorite interviews of 2024. First, we'll hear from singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers. In 2021, Rogers felt burnt out and took a break from music to go to Harvard Divinity School.
Also punk pioneer Kathleen Hanna. With her band Bikini Kill, she helped form a movement challenging the misogyny and punk in the 90s.
That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger in for Terry Gross. While in college at NYU, getting a degree in music production, singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers met Pharrell Williams. During his visit to her class, Pharrell heard an early version of Maggie's song Alaska and was stunned by it. The interaction was captured in a video that went viral and propelled her to fame.
In 2021, Burnout from the Road, Maggie Rogers took a break and got a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School, where she explored public gatherings and the ethics of power in pop culture. She's been trying to find a way to make the life of a touring musician more sustainable. Let's hear a track from Maggie Rogers' latest album, Don't Forget Me. This is So Sick of Dreaming.
That's So Sick of Dreaming from Maggie Rogers' new album Don't Forget Me. Maggie Rogers, welcome to Fresh Air.
So you said that in this album, this is the first time where some of the material doesn't come from your own life, that you're playing with a persona. And I was wondering if that's freeing, because I imagine if you're writing songs about your own life, there'd be this self-imposed pressure to get it right, to be precise with the details, to be authentic to the experience. Yeah.
So without revealing, like, is it that there are certain songs that are more autobiographical than others or that this persona and your own life are sort of woven through each of the songs?
You've said that you write songs as a way of processing your life. Does that mean that like once you've written about something that It helps you come to a resolution, like you don't have to think about that part of your life as much.
Well, you mentioned nostalgia, and I wanted to ask you about that. When I first listened to the album, I was like, oh, this is really nostalgic. This is interesting. But then I listened to so much over the last two weeks, and you've been writing nostalgic songs since you were like 16 or 17 years old.
So I was wondering, do you think that that's just you're inherently a nostalgic person, or do you think it's this process that you have of making sense of your life is inevitably going to have like a nostalgic aspect to it.
Well, you write about that in, is it Kids Like Us?
So Maggie, you know, you're just one of a handful of pop stars who've gotten their master's degree from Harvard Divinity School. What was it that you were hoping to get from this program? I mean, it's not a theology school at this point.
But clearly it has to do with some sort of element of spirituality, and that seems tethered to your understanding of what music is like and performance. So what were you hoping to sort of figure out when you were writing your thesis?
If you're just joining us, our guest is Maggie Rogers. Her new album is Don't Forget Me. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. I'm Sam Brigger, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.
This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Sam Brigger. Let's get back to my interview with singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers. This interview was recorded in May, soon after the release of her album Don't Forget Me. Rogers took a break from the touring life of a musician in 2021 to attend Harvard Divinity School, where she graduated with a master's in religion and public life.
She was interested in examining the spirituality of public gatherings and the ethics of power in pop culture. So Maggie, you know, the moment of your discovery was filmed and went viral. You were a student at NYU majoring in music production. Your class was visited by Pharrell Williams. He came to sort of listen and give you some notes about what you guys were doing.
You played him an early version of your song, Alaska. And he was blown away by it. It's sweet because you both look kind of nervous and shy and like you're not sure whether you should like be seeing what he's thinking about your music. Right. Like obviously that's such an important moment in your career and partly fomented your success.
But like is there a part of you that sometimes wishes that that video hadn't gone viral, that that was a moment that was more yours than everyone else's?
Right, because you've been performing for a long time. You've been writing music for a long time.
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