The tag is simple: Maggie Rogers is the singer who melted Pharrell Williams's heart. It was in 2016, during a masterclass given by the great mogul of contemporary pop. Since then, she has melted the hearts of the rest of the world with her song Alaska, and then with her debut album which came out in 2019. But for the American, who wrote her first song at the age of twelve, there was a musical life before success, documented on this youthful compilation. Heard It in a Past Life, Maggie Rogers' first hit album, boasts a professional production that sits between pop-folk and electro. Her older, self-produced songs have the charm of music created by a student, with smaller means but vast dreams, and a certain talent. In the intro and several times in the album, we hear a kind of self-interview conducted by the singer, where she presents the history and context of her sixteen songs. Like Benjamin Button, they appear in four retrospective chapters, ordered from the most recent to the oldest, written on the piano when Maggie Rogers was 18 years old. At the time she was playing a lot of banjo, and her voice was already taking wing. Her music is very folk, rooted in the American tradition, sometimes evoking the work of Gillian Welch. No one had really heard these compositions before, and discovering them in this way (presented by the singer) is a real moment of shared emotion and intimacy. © Stéphane Deschamps/Qobuz