Phoebe Bridgers

Phoebe Bridgers
General information
Birth name	Phoebe Lucille Bridgers
Born	August 17, 1994 (age 30)
Origin	Pasadena, California, United States
Genre(s)	Indie-rock, indie-folk
Occupation(s)	Singer, songwriter, guitarist
Years active	2014-present
Label(s)	PAX AM Dead Oceans Saddest Factory
Website	https://phoebefuckingbridgers.com/

Phoebe Bridgers (born August 17, 1994) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist from Los Angeles. She's known for her June 17, 2020, album Punisher. She is also part of the supergroup entitled boygenius alongside indie artists Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus and Better Oblivion Community Center with Connor Oberst.

Her first album was Stranger in the Alps on September 2, 2017, with a plethora of EPs beforehand. It peaked at number 13 on March 17, 2018, on the Heatseekers albums published through Billboard. It would take almost three years until she released another this time with Punisher, which peaked at number 14 on Heatseekers, however, also got her a number one on Emerging Artists.

The first time she ever worked with Taylor Swift was with the re-recorded version of Swift's 2012 album Red following her dispute with Scooter Braun, where she would feature on a previously unreleased track. The track was entitled "Nothing New", expressing heavy themes of feeling like Swift was going to fade out of the limelight, peaked at number 43 on Billboard Hot 100 following its' release.

Career

Although she is a frequent collaborator with many people, she has released a few albums under her name. She released an EP on March 31st, 2014 under Ryan Adams, known for his band Whiskeytown and his 1989 cover. Very little is known about the EP, being released to relative obscurity and not much fanfare, besides the songs on the EP itself. It featured the song Chelsea, - a reference to the Chelsea Hotel - Georgia, the title track Killer, Turned Around, and Whatever.

Following that she released a string of EPs including the 2015 duplicate named Killer, Daytrotter Session, a compilation of her songs on tour with other bands called 2016 Tour CD, and the 2017 singles for her upcoming album Stranger in the Alps entitled Smoke Signals and the demo for Motion Sickness.

Her debut album was Stranger in the Alps. She released it on September 22, 2017 via Dead Oceans. It was supported by vinyl, which only had limited copies produced including the demo Lavender version which has been highly sought after. It included a reprise of her previous EPs Killer with Killer, Georgia, Chelsea, Would You Rather, but also new tracks like Motion Sickness, Funeral, Demi Moore, Scott Street, You Missed My Heart, and the two versions of the single Smoke Signals. It received generally mediocre reviews from Metacritic reviews with the lowest being Pete Wild of The Skinny who described it as truthful and authentic but also lacking the arrangements of the hard-hitting Killer and Georgia from the EP Killer.

From there she would re-release two songs from Stranger in the Alps, recording them for Spotify at their studio in New York City in 2018. She also released an EP as a precursor to her next album entitled "Inner Demos" which showed demos of some of the songs off the album. This would lead to her most acclaimed release, Punisher. She stated in a Billboard article that some of the songs on the album were written even before her debut album came out.

The very first - and lead single - of the album was entitled Garden Song released on February 26, 2020, the first song she had put out in nearly three years since Stranger in the Alps. The Punisher album was released on June 17, 2020, under her label Dead Oceans. The tracklist included 11 new songs. It received good reviews on Metacritic, with over 61 positive reviews, with the lowest being two 70s from a critic at Sputnik music and No RipCord.

The album became immediately her most successful out of the two, spawning hits like Kyoto and Moon Song. She would then release two EPs 3 days apart with the first being on November 30, 2020, entitled Copycat Killer and had 4 songs. If We Make It Through December, the other also showcased 4 songs with the title track being the most famous.

Discography

• Stranger in the Alps (2017)
• Punisher (2020)

Personal life

In a 2020 interview with Michelle Kim from Them she revealed she was bisexual stating this about it:

“

When she did eventually come out to her mom as bisexual, it caused a rift in their relationship. “She was like, ‘No, you're fucking not,’” Bridgers recalls. “But I wasn't really allowed to have boys over ever, and I was deeply allowed to have girls over."

”

Although she has been extremely private with her relationships, some have come out while others have been rumors. The first confirmed relationship she had was with Ryan Adams, in 2014 when he was 40 and she was 20, turning romantic after promising to "jump-start her career". Bridgers later accused, along with seven other women, of being abusive. She then started a relationship with Emily Bannon, who was also with reportedly consensual Chris Nelson. Nelson later sued Bridgers after Bannon and Bridgers continued their relationship after Nelson and Bannon broke up and claimed Phoebe, "maliciously and intentionally posted the false and defamatory statements about [Nelson] as part of a vendetta to destroy [Nelson's] reputation."

In the following years, she would date only two other people, although both were rumors. The first was Conner Oberst who formed a duo with her called Better Oblivion Community Center and stated he loved her in an August 2020 Pitchfork interview - although it can't be confirmed if it was romantic or platonic. The other was Paul Mescal of Normal People, with rumors circulating because of an NME interview in which she stated he was a "cute boy, that gave me a pitter-patter in my heart." He also appeared in the music video for the Punisher song Savior Complex.

Relation with Taylor Swift

Their first interaction so far was through the Red (Taylor's Version) vault track "Nothing New". It was previously known that some of the lyrics were revealed in the deluxe edition journals for her 2019 album Lover. The song featured Bridgers with a verse, the first time ever that a female artist had an entire verse to themselves on one of Swift's tracks, with most doing backing vocals.

Bridgers also stated this about working with Swift for the song:

“

It's just been a dream. I just am so excited to have people take it at face value the day that it comes out because I got teary recording it. I just couldn't be more excited. […] I think that she is an incredible business person and an incredible writer. What she's been able to build just from writing adeptly from a young age is insane.

”

She opened for Swift during select dates of The Eras Tour, and during those nights, Bridgers joined her on stage to perform "Nothing New" on acoustic guitar.

Gallery

Official accounts

• for merchandise
• Phoebe Bridgers on Instagram
• Phoebe Bridgers on TikTok
• Phoebe Bridgers on X (formerly Twitter)