As the 2020 Grammy Awards approach, you're probably (like me) listening to as many nominees as you can so you can protest on Twitter if your favorite doesn't win the grand prize. In the midst of all this, you may have wandered down the good old Maggie Rogers rabbit hole. The 25-year-old Easton, Maryland native is nominated for this year's Grammy Award for Best New Artist, alongside our favorites like Rizzo, Billy Eilish, and Lil' Nas X.

Whether she wins or not, her voice is one to listen to and her songs will be on our playlists for years to come.

In 2016, Rogers was enrolled at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts as a student at the Clive Davis Institute of Recording Music. One day, Pharrell Williams, a very famous music producer, stopped by her class to listen to and critique a song she and another student were working on. (It's one thing to hear feedback from a professor, but Pharrell is on a whole other level.)

And when a video of a music legend being utterly and profoundly shocked about how great a song is is posted on the Internet, it obviously has to go viral. This is exactly what happened when Farrell first heard Rogers' "Alaska". [When the song stops playing,] he says." I've never heard anyone like you, and I've never heard anyone sound like you." [Not only because Farrell practically bowed down to Rogers, but also because "Alaska" was a song like no other. (Opens in new tab) In an interview with NPR (opens in new tab), Rogers said of the once-in-a-lifetime moment: a girl is plucked from obscurity and made a star."

During a creative drought, Rogers wanted to be a music journalist for a while. As a student, she interned at Spin and ELLE and worked as an editorial assistant to writer Lizzie Goodman.

While working for Goodman, most of her time was spent transcribing hours of interviews. The project was for Goodman's 2017 book about the New York music scene in the early 00s, Meet Me in the Bathroom (opens in new tab). So when the time came for Rogers to sign with the label after the sensation that was Farrell's one, Rogers was armed with the knowledge he had gained from his gigs with Goodman.

"I showed up with ammunition," she told the New York Times. (For example, where she was on 9/11, or when she tried to sign with the Killers in 2007. And inevitably, during the interview, when I was the only woman in the room and the men started talking over me, I would pull these stories out and people would look at me as if they had seen a ghost."

Eventually, Rogers signed a major deal with Capitol Records in 2016 and three years later released his debut studio album, Heard It in a Past Life, which debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 chart. No big deal.

For the album, she worked with producers (opens in new tab) Greg Kirstein (Adele's "Hello") and Ricky Reed (Halsey's "Bad at Love")

"I need music that is compelling and intelligent, but also just feels good, You also need music that makes you laugh and dance, and I think I'm trying to marry the two in some way," she told The Guardian (opens in new tab) about finding her own voice with regard to her music.

Since the album's release, she has gone on a world tour, performed at Coachella, opened for Kacey Musgraves, made her late-night debut on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, appeared on Saturday Night Live (And I thought I was busy. (And I thought I was busy. )

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