A collection of Adrianne Lenker’s favourite emotional songs
Many artists claim that their entire life has revolved around music, but few can compare to Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker. Her first record was released when she was just 13 years old—an album written almost entirely by her. Her prodigious talent was nurtured by her musician father and the family friends who let her use their recording equipment to take her first musical steps.
As you can imagine, this gives her a very different relationship with music than most. Throughout much of her interview with Double J’s Zan Rowe, Lenker describes music and its creation as an experience that feels more internal than external. Lenker tells Rowe that making music is “like breathing; it comes from somewhere beyond the flesh, but I do have to feel it in my body.” With that duality in mind, Rowe asked her to share five songs that truly get under her skin.
The first song she talks about is ‘Driving’ by Sibylle Baier, a German singer-songwriter with a fascinating story of her own. Born in 1946, Baier had made a name for herself as an actor and musician by the 1970s, recording her album Colour Green and finishing it in 1973. Shortly afterwards, though, Baier decided to forgo a career in the arts in favour of raising a family, and the album wasn’t released until 2006.
The fact that the album was released at all feels like a genuine miracle, with Lenker describing the entire record as “timeless”. The track had a profound impact on her—a song about spending hours on the road with the person you love. She highlights the lyric, “Let’s make a sign in your car / it’s the place where I feel happy,” noting that it almost sounds like “Make a son in your car.” Whether or not that’s the actual lyric, the imagery resonated deeply with her, reflecting her perpetually nomadic, constantly touring lifestyle.
Next up, she nominates Bill Callahan’s ‘What Comes After Certainty’. Lenker speaks of the opening song’s opening lyric alone, “True love is not magic / It’s certainty / And what comes after certainty? / A world of mystery”, sparking hours of conversation with her bandmates. This is exactly what Lenker feels the song is trying to do: “I don’t think he’s actually declaring what true love is; I think he’s putting forth a question to stir your imagination.”
Then everything goes a bit mental. From two cuts of delicate, introspective folk music, we get the crushing hardcore banger ‘Impulse Crush’ by Ithaca. It speaks to the length and breadth of Lenker’s taste that she got so into their 2022 album They Fear Us that the record began to soothe her. Speaking of the song’s effect on her, she says, “Sometimes intensity feels good when it’s expressed in different mediums and outlets. Listening to loud crushing guitars and drums and the alchemy of a band like that… it feels good, and it’s quite cathartic when I listen to it.”
Continuing the rock ‘n’ roll theme, Lenker picks Sheer Mag’s ‘Point Breeze’. A slightly less intense cut than both the previous song and Sheer Mag’s normal sound, Lenker says that the band had a profound emotional reaction to the band from the very beginning. “My first experience hearing them live was in New York. They were opening up for somebody I was going to see, and I didn’t expect them.”
Adding, “I could just hear them from when I was getting my ticket. I stood there, unable to move and was weeping immediately.” She speaks of their chemistry as a band but also about their dynamics. “With rock ‘n’ roll, often it’s just the sheer power that feels good. This has this extra dimension of melody that’s deceptive.”
The final song on Lenker’s list is ‘Sorrow’ by Life Without Buildings. A piece that Lenker, from the off, describes as “one of {her} favourite on Earth.” She says the first time she heard the band she got so excited she set off running around the house. We’ve all been there. Speaking of ‘Sorrow’, she calls it “the most melancholy song off the record, but also it feels like a big sigh. It encompasses the bittersweetness of so many things.” The possibilities in the song are beautiful to her: “I can’t really tell if she’s speaking to herself… or a lover. I think it’s both.”
In the end, she says the song “gives her permission to feel,” which is something that all these amazing songs do in one way or another.
