Phoebe Bridgers favourite songs by Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker: “Oh damn”
The coming together of Boygenius was more than just the formation of a supergroup. Back in 2018, when they first united, it was the coming together of three of indie’s shiniest up-and-coming talents: Three artists that felt so perfectly aligned uniting their talent. But when their debut dropped in 2023, after their individual star power had grown and suddenly made the group stand tall on the platform of their collective mass fan bases, it was more than that. Beyond the music and their notoriety, it was the coming together of three friends and three peers who were always each other’s biggest fans.
You can see that on stage, but you can hear it vividly in interviews as all three members can’t say enough nice things about one another. It’s not just about their friendship and how healing being in that band seems to have been for them. But all three truly are so incredibly supportive of one another’s music, as the love for each other’s music came first.
Well, actually, for a good while, Phoebe Bridgers resisted liking Julien Baker’s stuff. “I had been recommended Julien’s record by like every other person that I talked to, and it was kind of pissing me off ’cause I felt like it was, like, a lot of people being like, ‘Queer, white girl music, You’re gonna love it.’ So I like had very much resisted listening to it,” she explained to Teen Vogue. If she’s never dropped her guard, Boygenius never would have come to be. But luckily, she did.
“Then, of course, I heard it and was very flattered by that comparison,” she said as she fell immediately in love with Baker’s incredible, poignant lyricism and folk-laced rock sound. In particular, the first song she heard still stands out as her favourite. “‘Something’ is the first song I heard, so yeah, it was the first one that I was like, ‘Oh damn.’ Julien’s lyrics are insane,” she said, picking a track off Baker’s 2015 debut, Sprained Ankle.
After that, any bitterness at all about the constant comparisons the two artists were getting not only disappeared but morphed instead into a tight friendship that essentially led directly to Boygenius. “Then we ended up doing a whole tour together. I watched the show every night ’cause I was so affected by it. I just fell in love. Julien took me on a leg of the tour for that album and took Lucy on the other half of that tour for that album. We decided to join forces and do a tour at the end of 2018,” she explained, with that 2018 tour being the moment audiences watched Boygenius be born live on stage.
In Lucy Dacus’ catalogue, Bridgers’ favourite song is once again more than just a song she loves. With their friendship now long established by the time Dacus was making her third album, Home Video, collaboration was a key cornerstone of that. Even outside of the Boygenius project, the three members are now routinely found on one another’s work. All three feature on ‘Graceland Too’ on Bridgers’ album Punisher. They all sing on ‘Favor’ on Baker’s most recent album, and the same day they recorded that track, they all worked on this one for Dacus too.
‘Going Going Gone’ was recorded on the same day as ‘Favor’ making it not only stand as a song Bridgers deeply loves, but existing as a memory of a good day with her friends and a beautiful reflection of their relationship. “We recorded on the same day as a song for Julien’s record this song and another song for Lucy on their record. It was just, like, such a special day, and we had connected after months apart,” she said.
As a perfect example of the tenderness the three musicians have for one another, Bridgers’ love for this track also comes down to her deep love for Dacus and her desire to know her on every level, in every phase of her life. She said sweetly, “I imagine Lucy as a little kid, like, thinking about all this stuff, which is hilarious,” seeing the lyrics through the eyes of her best friend, who she didn’t know as a kid, but clearly feels that connected to.
