How the Boygenius tour revived the prominence of the rock show
It’s no exaggeration to say that 2023 has been the year of Boygenius. The supergroup made up of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker have absolutely dominated this year after announcing their debut album in January, releasing the record in March and then embarking on a major world tour from April to October. Wrapping up on Halloween with a triumphant Hollywood Bowl show, Boygenius have become the hottest ticket in town and the foremost band reviving the glory of a rock show.
Despite the melancholy of their music, with tracks like ‘Cool About It’ and ‘Emily I’m Sorry’ being more likely to make you cry than fist pump, the Boygenius tour has always been a proper rock show. In sound, style and spectacle, the three leaders of this new generation of soft songwriting heroes have played with the contradiction of their music and their energy from day one. Crafting a kind of semi-parody of an old-school rock show, the tour is dad rock meets Tumblr girls in an unlikely merger that has proven golden.
Go to any of their performances, and the first thing you’ll be hit with is a booming singalong of Thin Lizzy’s ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’. While the lights flash in a frenzy and the crowd goes wild, for a second, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Irish rock legends themselves were about to come out on stage. Instead, the song stops, the stage fades to black, and the screens cut to a live stream of the three artists backstage. Huddled in a hug around a microphone, their acapella rendition of the album’s opening lullaby ‘Without You Without Them’ stands in stark contrast to the energy of the crowd awaiting them.
It is as though the band themselves are just taking a second, a deep inhale before they run out to play the rockstar. This moment of meditation and connection as the members hold each other could bring the vibes down, but instead, the open showcase of performative vulnerability feels like rock ‘n’ roll refreshed. It is all the riot without the facade that the escapist frenzy on stage is a constant way of life.
Throughout the show, Boygenius are on a mission to prove that expressing feelings is punk rock. Clearly, a type of humour all three members share as Bridgers regularly calls out to her crowd at her solo shows, asking who has a dead dad before throwing up the rock hand horns and diving into ‘Kyoto’. Dacus laughs and jokes as she dedicates her songs to people with religious trauma, while Baker takes to the stage fully tatted-up before playing the softest, saddest songs you’ve ever heard. The band members have always been keenly aware of the type of music they make but refuse to fall into the ‘sad girl’ act. Instead, their standpoint has always been one of defiance as Bridgers sings about complex parental relationships but then smashes her guitar to pieces.
However, Boygenius never linger long in the sadness. As ‘Without You Without Them’ fades out, the band members quite literally sprint for the stage as the camera follows them and the heavy drums kick in for ‘$20’. A song that ends with Bridgers screaming, Baker shredding on guitar, and Dacus baking it all up as all three members sing a different part, their full band going crazy as expectations lay shattered. Before you have even a second to settle in or a moment to worry that the Boygenius tour might be too sad and sombre to rock out, they catch you and laugh in your face.
Throughout their music, it’s this contrast that makes the magic. Their album tracklist moves seamlessly between tender ballads, gut-wrenching lyric-led masterpieces and then almost pop-punk-inspired full-band tracks. They make your feelings swell and get you wound up with sadness or anger before unleashing a track like ‘Satanist’ or ‘Anti-Curse’ to give you a chance to get the frustration out. Bringing this pattern to their stage show, the Boygenius tour has become an unlikely masterclass in how to get a crowd going while keeping them in the palm of your hand. Many more traditional rock acts surely envy the ease of their crowd-working ways.
But few other rock acts have managed to foster the kind of fan obsession that Boygenius have. Walking around their huge Gunnersbury Park show, where Boygenius, MUNA and Ethel Cain shared the same bill, enacting a kind of sad girl Knebworth, the atmosphere was not too dissimilar to a Rolling Stones show at Hyde Park or the kind of electric energy you get at big spectacle classic rock concerts. More people than not wore merch, with fans either donning the band’s own parody metal clothing featuring flaming fonts and monster trucks or making their own custom pieces. Pairing up with friends in matching “always an angel, never a god” T-shirts, the merch would have you believe that the lyric is the epic climax of a rock power ballad rather than the emotionally devastating bridge it is.
This exhibits the kind of dedication and obsession you only really see at major classic rock shows or for bands that have been around for a lifetime – Boygenius have done in only a few years what it takes rock bands a whole career to do as they sold out the 40,000 person capacity park with fans dedicated enough to also buy or make a T-shirt.
Even before you got to the show, the build-up was an event as fans started singalongs on the journey there, got hashtags trending online and even made TikTok accounts about the day after the fact. It seems to have been the same throughout the months-long tour as videos of onstage antics, crowd interactions, and fan costumes dominated social media. In short, the Boygenius tour was an event. Regardless of the softness of the music or the sadness of the lyrics, the band managed to make a spectacle that only seemed to breed more hype, gaining them more popularity and more fans as the dates ran on. Now that the tour is over, we’ll miss seeing weekly content of new on-stage quips or funny moments; what other band can you say that about?
Dave Grohl, who joined the trio on stage at their Hollywood Bowl tour finale, once claimed that when people ask him the question, “Is rock and roll dead?” he uses Bridgers as proof that it’s still alive and kicking. Stepping forward as unlikely saviours of the genre as major pop tours like Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour or Beyonce’s Renaissance Tour dominate the industry, Boygenius’ surprise reclamation and revival of the great rock show is really the only rock tour of the year that feels like it could hold a candle to its pop peers. No doubt the classic rock dad or punk purists will try and argue that Boygenius are, in fact, not a rock band because their songs are too soft. However, rock has always been a genre based on spirit, not on sound, and Boygenius are undeniably on the frontlines fighting for the soul and spirit of rock.
At their June Tennessee date, the three members all came out in drag, introducing themselves as Lucille Balls (Dacus), Shanita Tums (Baker) and Queef Urban (Bridgers). Sending social media in a spiral as the audience cracked up, the simple gag was in protest of the state’s attempt to ban drag performances as part of a continued attack on the LGBTQ+ community. On stage, Baker talked about finding out she has a “lot of anger for people who have made [her] feel small and have made me feel erased”.
Speaking about music as “a really powerful and humiliating tool for making those people fuck off”, the powerful speech feels deserving of a place amongst rock’s great protest moments. Elsewhere on the tour, Bridgers talked passionately about abortion rights during their Irish leg, while Dacus called out President Barack Obama, who shared ‘Not Strong Enough’ as part of his summer playlist, prompting her to respond simply: “War criminal”. The band, as both a trio and as solo artists, carry the torch for the political, liberal and passionate origins of rock, putting it into practice every night of their tour.
Sure, for some of their set, you might be stood still and silenced. In fact, at points, the band use their powers to demand it, with Bridgers arguably pulling the most rock ‘n’ roll move of all by demanding the Hollywood Bowl crowd not clap so as to not scare her pug, Maxine. They’ll tell you to put your phone away just so they don’t have to look at cameras while they sing about their deepest, darkest feelings. They’ll tell you to drink water. They’ll tell you to donate to good causes. They’ll tell you all your feelings are valid and then invite you to scream them out along with thousands of others.
You might not be moshing; you might, in fact, be holding back tears as the band roll through their saddest tracks like ‘Letter To An Old Poet’ or ‘We’re In Love’, but the Boygenius tour is undeniably a rock show. And as the fireworks burst and crack over the stage during the roaring finale of ‘Salt In The Wound’, as the band members throw themselves around, kiss each other, and regularly flash their crowd in one last punk rock move – the spectacle of the Boygenius live show is reclaiming rock as a thing full of feeling and reviving the concept as something awe-inspiring, caring and electric.
