“I could do it”: the artist that made Lucy Dacus want to write songs
Lucy Dacus was already considered a gifted songwriter long before she rose to megastar status as one-third of the indie rock supergroup boygenius alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker. Granted, her contributions to the trio have been remarkable, but it was on songs ‘Night Shift’ and ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore’ that she first shone as a talent on the international stage.
As a tremendous lyricist and vocalist, it’s often overlooked just how good a guitarist she is as well, often packing both equal amounts of tenderness and cathartic blasts of noise into her songs. There’s a real confidence in the way she treads between these two playing styles, which is, of course, aided by the strength of the songs that underpin it.
However, all great guitarists have to start somewhere, and that’s usually by writing rudimentary songs alone in their bedroom without telling a soul they even have aspirations of writing music.
At the age of 17, Dacus released her debut EP, Girls Back Home, via Bandcamp while she was still in high school, which, of course, is an impressive feat for someone of such a young age, but it wasn’t a record that she was particularly proud of. Only bootlegged copies of the record still exist, as she removed all traces of it from Bandcamp prior to the release of her 2016 debut album No Burden. So, where did the change in confidence come from?
In a rundown of her favourite albums for Louder Sound, Dacus revealed that the first album she heard that gave her that extra boost was Laura Stevenson’s A Record. “This was the first record that made me feel like I could make music,” she explained, going on to praise the songwriter for the way she seems to write in the moment and not focus too much on external circumstances. There are many parallels that can be drawn between Stevenson’s work and No Burden in particular, with both having sparse folk songs interspersed with lo-fi bursts of garage rock.
“I could understand how they got all of those sounds, but yet it transcends the lo-fi quality,” Dacus continued. Since there’s nothing particularly complicated about the way A Record sounds, it’s easy to see how someone can get drawn into the simplistic yet intuitive songwriting that Stevenson showcases across her debut. Both artists would later go on to shed their lo-fi sound in favour of more vibrant productions, but neither would opt to convolute their songwriting process and continue to keep things straightforward, which has worked for both of them as they’ve gone on to improve as their careers have moved forward.
Concluding her thoughts on the album, Dacus says that “it just made me feel like I could do it too someday,” which couldn’t be truer with hindsight. The teenager that was once ashamed of the songs she’d written and shared with the world couldn’t ask for more in terms of accomplishment, as boygenius continue to grow as a phenomenon while each member’s individual pursuits keep gaining traction. Without Laura Stevenson and A Record, think about how many other records we’d be without…
