Go Down A Phoebe Bridgers Rabbit Hole. It’s Good For You.

If you don’t know who this is, you’re missing a lot.

Phoebe Bridgers is the musical guest on Saturday Night Live this week. It always makes me uncomfortable when SNL announces their host and musical guest, and I’m not familiar with them. Seeing the names post, and not knowing who they are is the pop-culture equivalent of losing your fastball. 

But I do know Phoebe Bridgers, and you should too. 

I’m not sure where exactly I first stumbled upon Miss Bridgers. Perhaps I was wishful thinking during this pandemic-fueled live music ice age, as I read a Rolling Stone article about the most anticipated new albums for 2021. Or maybe it was a headline about Bridgers receiving four Grammy nominations for her most recent album, Punisher.  

If you’re doing a cursory exploration of Phoebe Bridgers, initial research will reveal precisely two things:  

1)    Phoebe Bridgers is Taylor Swift’s alter ego. 

The Internet is filled with sentences like “Phoebe Bridgers is Taylor Swift for girls who have crumbs in their beds,” or “’Graceland Too’ (a Bridgers song) is ‘Betty’ (a Swift song) for people who hate themselves.” Or, changing things up, “Taylor Swift is Phoebe Bridgers for people whose parents still love each other.” You get the idea.  

If Taylor Swift is bubble gum, letter jackets, and homecoming queens—Phoebe Bridgers is bitten fingernails, Dr. Martens, and weighted blankets. If Swift is Molly Ringwald in Breakfast Club, Bridgers would be Ally Sheedy scratching her dandruff onto the desk. 

Taylor and Phoebe—different sides of the same coin.

2)    Phoebe Bridgers is good at social media.

Dig a little further into Phoebe Bridgers online, and you’ll find a website called phoebefuckingbridgers.com, and Instagram handle @_fake_nudes_. On Twitter, you may find her posing as Traitor Joe, only with that familiar blue checkmark. Bridgers herself has even been known to retweet the best Taylor Swift comparisons crowdsourced from her avid fanbase. 

But when it comes to Phoebe Bridgers, these two things are merely scratching the surface. And if there’s anything you owe it to yourself not to do with Phoebe Bridgers—it’s merely scratch the surface. 

Instead let’s climb deep into a Phoebe Bridgers rabbit hole. Why? Because it’s good for you, no matter who you are. 

Looking for the Alice in Wonderland style entrance to the Phoebe Bridgers rabbit hole? Start by listening to Bridgers’ second album, Punisher. But it’s not quite that simple. I need you to listen to it alone. Maybe you’re in your bedroom, or you’re driving around alone in your car. When you listen, you can’t be in a group, and shouldn’t be distracted. And don’t listen on one of those tall Stairmaster machines only the fittest people at the health club use. Phoebe would hate that. 

Yes, start your journey by properly listening to the Punisher album in its entirety. I’m not going to be a stickler about listening to every song in the order of the track listing, but I do need you to find a quiet place and listen to the glorious 40 minutes and 42 seconds that is Punisher. When you do, here is what is going to jump out at you about Phoebe Bridgers: 

The Punisher album—your journey starts here.

WORDS. WORDS. WORDS. 

As Hamlet once said when asked what he reads, “Word. Words. Words.” Am I comparing Bridgers to Shakespeare? Let’s not get carried away. That said, the music world may not have seen this talented a lyricist since Jason Isbell. And he’s been in our lives for quite a while. 

Most casual listeners of music will tell you they don’t pay much attention to the lyrics. Some seemingly take pride in letting you know, the words “aren’t really their deal.” 

To those people we say, “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!” with all the indignation of the most standoffish record store clerk in America. Hell, make it a London record store clerk.  

Phoebe Bridgers is good at words. But let’s say you are one of those people who doesn’t really hear the lyrics. No problem, we’re going to write some of them down for you. We will show our work—and more importantly show the 26-year-old wunderkind’s master work. 

Sometimes on Punisher, Bridgers uses her words to tell a story like on “Garden Song”:   

I’m gonna live in your house up on the hill. When your skinhead neighbor goes missing I’ll plant a garden in the yard. 

I grew up here until it all went up in flames, except the matches in the doorframe.

Or on “Halloween”:

You’ve been drinking wearing a mask. Baby, it’s Halloween. We can be anything.

But it isn’t often on Punisher, that a few minutes will pass by without a lyric jumping out at you that makes you want to carve it into the cover of your notebook, or perhaps more Bridgers-like, write it on your hand in ink. Even though your parents are always telling you not to write on your hands.

Yes, the entire Punisher album is chalk full of haunting lyrics. Bridgers is so good at words and word combinations, the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn wouldn’t play her in Scrabble. A small sampling:  

When I grow up, I’m gonna look up from my phone and see my life.

Doctor put a hand over my liver, she told me my resentment was getting smaller.

I’m gonna kill you, if you don’t beat me to it.

I’ve been running around in circles pretending to be myself.

You couldn’t have stuck your tongue down the throat of somebody who loves you more. 

Whether Bridgers is rhyming “Tears in Heaven” with John Lennon on “Moon Song,” or bouncing from the temple to the 7-11 on “Kyoto,” Punisher is a songwriting masterclass. 

In fact, I’m so impressed by her writing that I hesitated to share the sentences above, in fear that I had misplaced a word. Yes, Phoebe Bridges lyrics are a thing of beauty and should be treasured exactly as they are.  

A MOVIE FOR YOUR EARS. 

One of the common knocks on placing too high a regard on lyrics, is people will say they would prefer to “feel the music.” As if a great lyric, and a killer guitar riff were somehow mutually exclusive. 

Time and time again, Punisher proves this not to be the case. One of the likely reasons the Taylor Swift comparisons are so commonplace with Bridgers, is the craft of her songwriting is just as detailed. Bridgers uses everything from horns to strings and screams to create a layered tapestry throughout Punisher. The result delivers an emotional resonance usually reserved for young adult novels about vampires.  

Go ahead and give Punisher a few listens alone, and enjoy the music videos that will pop into your head. Bridgers knows precisely how to construct a song to make you feel something, and you will. And while the movie between your ears will be decidedly more Tim Burton compared to Taylor Swift’s Wes Anderson—you might just realize you like your popcorn with melancholy butter drizzled on top, and in the middle. 

SHE BANGS LIKE LESTER 

Rock critic Lester Bangs famously said, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.” 

Phoebe Bridgers is the federal reserve of the uncool. Look for Bridgers online, you’ll most likely find her pajamas—including when she’s appearing live on The Late Show with James Corden. Bridgers even showed up, not to be interviewed, but to play a game on NPR’s quirky Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me podcast. 

Bridgers’ music videos look like something your high school cinema arts class meets the production value of John Mayer’s Current Mood. Yet somehow the result is cooler than anything that’s trying four hundred times as hard. 

In closing, do yourself a favor and dive ass-over-kettle into a Phoebe Bridgers rabbit hole. There’s plenty to work with including a whopping four Tiny Desk concerts, and a brilliant making of a rock song video for “Kyoto” from the New York Times. I’ll even get you started with a few of these gems linked below. 

But whatever you do, do not miss Phoebe Bridgers. She’s a beautiful reminder that music can make us feel, and make us think. And that sometimes the coolest thing you can wear to the party is your pajamas.