Yesterday, Maggie Rogers announced her third studio album, Don’t Forget Me, and dropped the lead single, which is also the title track. The strummy, emotionally direct folk-pop song now sits inside the Top 10 on the Genius Top Songs chart.
Rogers wrote and produced “Don’t Forget Me” with Ian Fitchuk, her primary collaborator on the album. The partnership came about after Rogers slid into Fitchuk’s DMs and asked about a collaboration. “I’m so grateful he said yes,” Rogers writes in a letter accompanying the album release. “These songs and session days are a record of our first time meeting in person, and it’s so exciting to feel that we’ve only just scratched the surface.”
Some of the songs on the album are autobiographical, Rogers says, and “Don’t Forget Me” is one of them. “The song is a rough journal entry about going to a bunch of friends' weddings and feeling so happy for them, but also realizing that I’m very simply in a different place in my life,” she writes. “I’ve joked with my friends that it’s a song about having low expectations, but really I think it’s about craving simple baselines—a good lover or someone that’s nice to me.”
In the first verse, Rogers admits that she’s not ready to settle down. In fact, the idea terrifies her.
My friend Sally’s getting married
And to me that sounds so scary
I’m still tryin’ to clean up my side of the street
With the chorus, Rogers yearns for “a good lover or someone that’s nice to me.” Maybe this person’s a churchgoer or a football fan—who knows what he’s got planned for Sundays. All Rogers asks is that when their relationship ends—and she seems convinced it will—he keeps a part of her with him.
Take my money, wreck my Sundays
Love me ’til your next somebody
Oh, but promise me that when it’s time to leave
Don’t forget me
In the second verse, Maggie sings about another friend, Molly, who’s got herself a green-eyed dude she wants to marry. But Maggie isn’t exactly jealous of their situation.
But it’s crazy all the the days she spends
Just following him to parties
She seems happy, oh, but that’s not love to me
Rogers walks back some of her pragmatism in the bridge and grants herself a bit more optimism.
Maybe I was bitter from the winter all along
Maybe there’s a stranger standing, holding out for love
Just waiting on the next street
Just for me
Oh, just for me
“When it comes down to it, our memories and relationships are all we have,” Rogers writes in her letter. “I don’t have a lot of asks, but I want my time spent on this earth to add up to something. For it all to be worth it in the end. 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.”
“Don’t Forget Me” arrives with a music video featuring home movie footage of Rogers enjoying Maine’s natural splendor.
You can read all the lyrics to “Don’t Forget Me on Genius now.
