Phoebe Bridgers’ favourite Guided By Voices song “by far”
Phoebe Bridgers is one of the most dominant names in modern indie. Through her moonlight melancholic solo work and her collaborations with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker as part of the sad girl supergroup Boygenius, the singer-songwriter has garnered a hugely devoted audience. Young girls, in particular, have flocked to her vulnerable sonic storytelling and soft, folky strums, reflecting their own experiences in her lyricism.
True to her own commitment to indie folk, Bridgers’ musical influences and interests rarely seem to stray far from the realm of guitars. During a conversation with The Line of Best Fit, she divulged nine of her favourite songs. Amidst the likes of sad girl peer Soccer Mommy, heartland pioneer Bruce Springsteen, and Bridgers’ biggest influence Elliott Smith, Bridgers named her all-time favourite song by fellow indie staples and prolific releasers, Guided By Voices.
“I think Guided By Voices can get a little too lo-fi for their own good on a lot of their records,” she prefaces, “But they really are like a pop band, truly, so many of their songs are so catchy and amazing and short.”
Bridgers’ choice is no exception. “‘The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory’ is my favourite song of theirs by far,” she states – a song that comes in at just one minute and 45 seconds.
‘The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory’ featured on the band’s 1994 record, Bee Thousand. It certainly shows their commitment to lo-fi, with quiet guitars and muffled vocals that declare, “She runs through the night as if nobody cares, she scream and she cries and ignores all the stares.”
It’s a beautiful song, but Bridgers is still trying to understand why she’s so drawn to it despite its brief duration. “It’s short and sometimes with Guided By Voices songs I feel like ‘You could have fucking written an actual song, give me four minutes of this! Why is this a minute and thirty seconds?’ Especially ‘Game of Pricks’, that’s a great song, it should be four minutes long,” she notes.
Comparing it to her Smith pick – the short but sweet ‘Whatever (Folk Song in C)’ – Bridgers concludes that it achieves a masterful balance of the band’s tendencies towards lo-fi and concise “avant-garde” writing. It’s Guided By Voices at their best. “I don’t desire anything more from this, which I often do with that band, but this feels so good to listen to every time I hear it,” she declares.
Listen to Phoebe Bridgers’ favourite Guided By Voices song, ‘The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory’, below.
