Phoebe Bridgers turned the “craziest thing” she had ever heard into a lyric
You always get the impression with Phoebe Bridgers that she is writing from a place of artistic confidence. While she would tell you differently and express her vulnerability, on record, her honesty emboldens her efforts with a sense of naked assurance.
That honesty comes from her keen way of collecting snippets of her life for re-use in the semi-fiction of her art. This imbues her songs with the heart that lets them flow out in a confident natural way. It also adds ensures the quirks of the surreal modern age aren’t airbrushed out of existence. That sense of the absurdity of life being allowed to rear its head comes to the fore on ‘Garden Song’.
The track from her revered 2020 effort, Punisher, is about anything and everything in these curious times. Thus, it made sense for her to include the strangest line she has ever been on the receiving end of in the song. “The doctor at the end of ‘Garden Song’ with her hands over my liver is a true story,” Bridgers told American Songwriter.
The lyric in question is the peculiar new-age line to come from a medical professional about the supposed links between liver health and emotional health touted in Chinese medicine:
“The doctor put her hands over my liver
She told me my resentment’s getting smaller”
As Bridgers explains: “I went to a nutritionist lady and she told me that and I thought that it was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. So, I had to write it into a song. A lot of lyrics just save in my brain naturally like that. Then, when I pick up a guitar I’m like ‘Wow, that happened.’ I’ll have ‘emo tweets,’ essentially, that I keep for myself as notes on my phone with the sole intention of using them for lyrics later. Sometimes you write that initial lyric out and that’s all you needed to start the process of writing the song.”
This smorgasbord of little ideas all collated together is something that makes ‘Garden Song’ such an encapsulating patchwork. As she told Apple Music: “This song is about growing up and falling in love and murder and a sex dream and witches and zombies and anxiety and depression and energy work and therapy and wanting to garden.”
While that might make it seem thematically sloppy, in the frantic 21st century, it actually makes for a more fitting approach to songwriting than staying a single lane.
