All five of Kurstin’s tracks are more polished and radio-ready than the rest of the album. His influence is particularly heard on the lead single, “Give A Little;” were the lilting synths sound more like Kurstin’s recent work with Beck than Rogers’ classical-meets-folky vibe. And then there are the lyrics; despite its shiny pop packaging, “Give A Little” was a song Rogers wrote after watching the March for Our Lives as the Parkland survivors fight to make their demands for gun reform heard. While our best and biggest pop stars, from Taylor Swift to Beyoncé, craft songs that put their lives at the center of the narrative and reflect on culture through their experiences, Rogers is masterful at rendering particular experience into a universal one. She does it on “Past Life,” where she laments the feeling of a “change a’coming” (echoing Sam Cooke’s “ A Change Is Gonna Come ”) that could be about the darkness of our current political climate or simply a song about growing up. That broadness of lyric writing is a hallmark of her folk music roots, from the definitive American folk song “This Land Is Your Land” to “The Color Song,” which Rogers modernized on her previous EP.