Don't Forget Me

A 36-minute story, Don’t Forget Me is Rogers’ shortest project thus far. It is also her most sonically and lyrically cohesive, featuring some of her most captivating, folkloric songcraft yet. Allowing the listeners to create a world around her words and sounds, Rogers is at her best when she keeps it simple and sweet.

The record is more acoustic than any of Rogers’ previous work in a way that feels welcome and refreshing rather than an erasure of her first two albums as inauthentic. Rogers’ vocal and performance abilities may recall musicians of decades past, but she is still very much a product of her time.

It’s always charming, but in its best moments, Don’t Forget Me is often phenomenally well-written, a solid show from an artist who’s likely to linger in your memory for a while.

Across its 10 songs, Don't Forget Me is as concise as it is exciting. Not a note is wasted, not a second under-utilized. What truly sets it apart is how comfortable Rogers seems embodying her full potential.

Maggie Rogers embraces her creative and emotional independence on her third album, 2024's nervy and candid Don't Forget Me.

While Surrender was an album that immediately hit you, Don’t Forget Me takes a bit longer to work its magic. That does, though, bode well to her longevity as an artist. These songs have a timeless feel to them, and seem like ones we’ll be listening to for quite some time to come.

Each note feels necessary, each word feels heartfelt – in chipping away at the excess to reveal these personal snapshots, Maggie Rogers has unlocked something very special indeed.

‘Don’t Forget Me’ shines in its simplicity, with Ian Fitchuk (Kacey Musgraves, Stephen Sanchez) as the sole collaborator. Here, through a whole-hearted embrace of the folk, country and Western that underscored her upbringing, Rogers’ seems more at home than ever. Yet, ‘Don’t Forget Me’ exists as a meticulously crafted homage to the road trip.

[Don’t Forget Me reveals] a rustic, more organic-feeling pop-rock sound. Upbeat tracks like “On and On and On” and “Never Going Home” are perfectly made for big-voiced sing-alongs in a way that brings to mind Michelle Branch’s early work. Meanwhile, the meditative high-note “All the Same” is raw and elemental. .... The sense of unguarded affection perfectly sums up Don’t Forget Me.

On Don’t Forget Me, she’s found a beguilingly relaxed momentum.

It's a sage document precisely because it embraces that which can’t be figured out: what life has next in store.

‘Don’t Forget Me’ is the sound of an artist finally beginning to sink cosily into her own skin, and enjoying herself enormously in the process.

The album’s 10 brisk, lightly rocking songs evoke the radio-friendly pop-rock of early-2000s Sheryl Crow or Jewel while sometimes, as on the title track, looking further back to ’70s soft rock a la Carole King.