‘Kyoto’: How a podcast inspired one of Phoebe Bridgers’ finest lyrics
The range of inspirations behind the work of Phoebe Bridgers is wide. Whether she’s playing off her own emotional distress or simply imagining a safe space for her and her dog to watch the rest of the world, Bridgers knows how to paint a potent indie rock picture. It can be apocalyptic, totally goofy, or heartbreaking – it all falls within Bridgers’ abilities.
For the second single from her sophomore record Punisher, Bridgers took the boredom of life on tour and exploded it to murderous highs. ‘Kyoto’ is jam-packed with so many Bridgers-specific quirks that it could easily be considered her signature song. But despite the reality that is infused within the lyrics, Bridgers actually got the inspiration for ‘Kyoto’ from a third-person source.
“That was weirdly inspired by a This American Life episode where they talk about a payphone in Japan right by where the tsunami happened,” Bridgers explained to American Songwriter in 2020. “People can come and talk to their deceased loved ones. That stuck in my head. But then, I was doing Japanese phone interviews and someone was like ‘You know, we do have payphones! They’re old and gross, but it’s funny that you noticed that.’ I was like ‘Woah, I guess they do still have them.’”
“This song is about impostor syndrome,” Bridgers said in a press release when the single was first released. “About being in Japan for the first time, somewhere I’ve always wanted to go, and playing my music to people who want to hear it, feeling like I’m living someone else’s life. I dissociate when bad things happen to me, but also when good things happen. It can feel like I’m performing what I think I’m supposed to be like.”
‘Kyoto’ became instantly recognisable within Bridgers’ canon, echoing some of the same sentiments and feelings that permeate most of her songs. According to Bridgers, sameness is the key to her songwriting technique.
“The way I crack the code of my own writing is to allow myself to write the same song over and over,” she claimed. “Then, it’s way easier to just go back and change it. If I’m too worried about form or if I’m like ‘Ugh, this is the same exact song that I just wrote,’ it really comes back to: ‘Who cares?’”
“I’m usually pretty revisionist,” Bridgers added. “The first version is often unrecognizable, although there have definitely been examples of the opposite. I love when that happens, when a song just comes right out, but that’s pretty rare for me. I like taking forever to make records because sometimes after making the studio recording, even, I’ll look back and think ‘oh, I can change this, this and this’ and it’s that much better for it. I like changing little lyrics. I like speeding something up or making it slow. That keeps things interesting for me.”
Check out ‘Kyoto’ down below.
