One of the times I have been most insulted in my life1 is when a former hookup/current friend sent me a text, along with a Spotify link, that read “I feel like this is Lana music.”
Unfortunately, it was decidedly not Lana music. I hated the song2 (and I told him I hated the song, and that there is almost nothing worse than someone associating you with music you think is outright bad).
My taste in music was and is a source of confusion and contention between us: Yes, my favorite band is Waxahatchee. Yes, I love Cayetana and Camp Cope and Remember Sports and Japanese Breakfast and Charly Bliss. No, I don’t like Hop Along. No, I really, really do not like Big Thief. No, Broken Social Scene isn’t important to me. Sure, Soccer Mommy is fine. So is Frankie Cosmos. So is Haley Heynderickx. And Julia Jacklin. And Faye Webster. And Angel Olsen. And Molly Burch. And and and and.
There was this assumption made that because I had a proclivity for female singer-songwriters, that meant I liked all of them, that for some reason, these artists were a monolith. That I should be collecting these “Sad Girl Musicians”3 like Pokemon cards. Of course people should seek out musicians similar to what they enjoy, but to assume that all these artists have the same thing to offer because you find their music to be vaguely “sad” is a disservice to their individual artistry. Lucy Dacus has expressed frustration with this label. SZA too.
I say all of this because for the last, I don’t know, six or seven years, the Chief Sad Girl in Residence has been the one, the only Phoebe Fucking Bridgers. And for better or worse, many other female musicians are now based on how well they do or don’t fit her mold.
It feels practically blasphemous to say this, but for a long time, I didn’t really care about Phoebe Bridgers. Other than a few notable exceptions, I mostly found her music to be too whispery, too quiet. What other people saw as some sort of radical transparency in her diaristic lyrics, I saw simplicity. Sometimes saying something plainly is its most powerful form. Other times, it can feel like taking the easy way out. I’m well aware that this plainness is intentional, but this intentionality still doesn’t stoke my interest. Most of the songs on Strangers in the Alps (and a number on Punisher) sort of guide you gently by the hand, letting you decide if you want to follow along, and doesn’t really care whether you do or not. I like music that makes you sit up and pay attention. The songs I do like of hers (Motion Sickness, Kyoto, I Know the End, for example) I love; the ones I don’t like, I’ve heard maybe once and have never felt any desire to listen to again.
What I was (and remain) really interested in is the way Phoebe Bridgers wields her celebrity and fame4; the way people are obsessed with her; how good she is at appealing to both men and women; for being simultaneously relatable and aspirational. You could say she’s just being herself, but how much of herself she reveals is always a choice. You can’t amass the level of fame she has, in the amount of time she did, without being particularly savvy. To attribute it to talent and talent alone would be naive. Quickly her whole deal became not just her lyrics but who they were about — anything to expose a fuller picture of who this person was and from where her art came.
When boygenius initially formed, I didn’t care about them either, really. I think the issue I have with a number of Phoebe Bridgers songs was the issue I had with that first boygenius EP: The songs often wait too long to really kick in, leaving you to hang out to dry until they do. It feels sort of amateurish to not show all of a song’s cards until it’s almost over, like, This One Weird Trick That’ll Drive Audiences Crazy. But it feels more like a crutch than a trick when it’s used all the time.
All of this to say, it’s probably not a surprise then that I found the boygenius album, The Record, far more compelling than the initial EP offering. It’s louder, more brash, sonically interesting. And loving The Record as I do has caused me to reappraise the EP — “Me and My Dog” specifically. The song calls to mind the early days of a relationship, the heady excitement of when you’re so in it, it’s the only thing that matters — even if it’s a relationship with someone who isn’t so good for you. This sort of intensity, these highs and these lows, can easily be mistaken for happiness, because at least you’re feeling something at all.
Is this song about Ryan Adams? Or Conor Oberst? fans speculated. A question that was resuscitated with the release of “Letter to an Old Poet,” a clear part two to “Me and My Dog.” At the live boygenius shows, Phoebe Bridgers asked the audience to meet the intensity the moment required of her and not record her performance (and from what I could tell, most or all of Madison Square Garden actually heeded this request). “If you relate to this song, I’m sorry,” she said.
What was vague on “Me and My Dog” is drawn into sharper relief on “Letter to an Old Poet.” Whatever happened between Bridgers and the subject of these songs…it doesn’t seem good, but it’s also none of my business. What’s compelling to me about these songs is when she says, “You made me feel like an equal/But I’m better than you, and you should know that by now.”
For all of the simplicity of her lyrics I hemmed and hawed about earlier: This is where I find it to be its most effective, most potent, most relatable. The reason why I don’t care about who she wrote this song about is because immediately I could feel it so viscerally in my own life. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone put into words the allure of an age gap relationship so well. Because that’s the trick that gets played: Someone you admire makes you feel as though you’re on equal footing with them, that you’re breathing some sort of rarified air. Or take any kind of age gap out of the equation and think about the men in your life who have made you feel as though you were lucky to have their attention. They lead you to believe they’re the prize, some white whale to be caught, but rarely, if ever, is this true. The sooner you realize this, the better. Whoever the songs about, who cares who that guy is? She’s Phoebe Fucking Bridgers.
I’m hosting another Letters & Sodas show July 24 at Greats of Craft, 7:30 p.m.! Lineup is one that dreams are made of. Tickets here.
Continuing in the spirit of the summer playlist I made with Brady O’Callahan for his great Substack a number of summers ago, I have created yet another summer playlist.
Off the top of my head.
Unfortunately I cannot find the text with the song, but I can find the tweet where I complained about it at the time.
If I can be honest, I find this generalization to be at best, reductive, and at worst, sexist. Can I also say? Every single December, scores of people queue up their Spotify Wrapped with Taylor Swift on top and use it as evidence for how “sad” they are. I do not know if this means you are sad. I think, if anything, this just means you like music made by the most famous woman in the world.
How celebrity is wielded in the music world today may be what my entire novel is about.
Always always always looking forward to the next volume of School's Out. A treat and a half, every time!