As someone late to the Maggie Rogers phenomenon—missing her 2017 NPR Tiny Desk concert and much of her meteoric rise—my first impression was an awakening. How could a voice so raw, so bound to the natural world through its tones and rhythms, escape my radar? By 2021, the algorithms of YouTube had corrected the oversight, but Rogers herself had been steadily evolving in ways I would soon come to appreciate.
Episode 7 Season 2-entitled Forks, The Richie Hero’s Journey episode utilized David Byrnes’s song, Glass, Concrete, and Stone, with great effect. This listener was sonically smitten with the orchestrally rhythmic, vocally nuanced pop masterpiece, “Everything Possible When You’re an Animal”, Glass, Concrete, and Stone song, to the precipice edge of obsession.
WICB Ithaca College was playing “Labour” when we first heard Paris Paloma. The guitar caught us, but her voice made us turn up the volume. Here was something different – a 25-year-old from Derbyshire who writes like she’s lived several lifetimes.
The song builds carefully—acoustic guitar, layered vocals, then that bridge that hits you like a revelation. By the time it was over, we knew we’d just discovered our next favorite artist.