The Story Behind The Song: How Boygenius created the cutting ‘Bite The Hand’
2023 has been the year of Boygenius. Their debut album, The Record, seemed to level up their notoriety by a thousand. Rising to the very top to become one of the biggest bands on the planet, the hype doesn’t seem to show any signs of stopping or slowing down.
The supergroup comprised of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker is not new by any means. Forming in 2018, back when they were all indie up-and-comers, the trio all joined up while enjoying the rising notoriety of their first albums. According to Bridgers, their union was “kind of an accident”. The members kept being likened to each other, with Bridgers telling Vogue that she felt “flattered to be considered a contemporary of these artists”.
After an earlier joint tour, Dacus and Baker had been friends for a while. When they eventually brought Bridgers into the fold, an initial plan to tour together quickly became something bigger. Giving an oral history of the band, Bridgers explained: “The tour came first, and then we were like, why not record like a seven inch for tour promotion? It’d be so fun, and it would be fun to sing together. And then like as stuff started happening we were kind of like, ‘Oh shit, it would actually be so fun to be in a real band’”.
The rest was history, really. Becoming one of the most formidable indie outfits, Boygenius would go on to pick up six Grammy nominations, and the trio have also become incredibly close friends. In their interviews, they make no excuses for being utterly enamoured with each other, saying it proudly on the aptly named track ‘We’re In Love’ as Dacus sings: “You could absolutely break my heart, that’s how I know that we’re in love”. While so many of their songs focus on the beautiful friendship and support system of the band, one other topic sticks out: a deep discomfort with fame.
Long before The Record and the significant growth of their crowd sizes, the band had already spoken on the topic on their 2018 Boygenius EP. Talking to GQ, Baker said: “I think the part of it that sucks is what’s taken away from us without our permission”. It’s this greed from fans that they tackle with a sharp, cutting pen on ‘Bite The Hand.’
There is a moment during Boygenius’ live show in which Bridgers asks the crowd to put their phones away. Requesting that everyone actually looks at her rather than their screen while she recounts “the worst shit that’s ever happened to me in my music”. She then sings the new track ‘Letter To An Old Poet’ as she stands in the pit with the crowd. But then, just when she feels connected and starts to let her guard down to maybe hold a fan’s hand or hug them, she’ll have a moment where it’s ruined when she looks down at a fan and “noticed her phone in her boobs, shoved into her shirt, recording me”.
It’s a moment that the band were already all too familiar with when they recorded their 2018 self-titled EP. All three members had begun their solo careers, sharing their first albums and along with it, some deeply personal stories. On her debut, Stranger In The Alps, Bridgers delivers vulnerable lyricism on depression, abuse and complex family relationships. Similarly, Baker and Dacus have pulled back the veil on their own lives, giving their fans not only music but a deeper look into their psyches.
But on ‘Bite The Hand’, they’re hitting back and asking their fans, why isn’t that enough for you? Starting out as a gentle, lyrically dense indie cut, the track derails into heavier chaos as the band screams, “maybe I’m afraid of you”, directed at fans who ask for more than the band are willing to – or should ever have to – give.
Talking about the track, Dacus said it serves as a reminder that it’s OK to bite the hand that feeds you and “say no to the people that are funding your art”.
Dacus continues: “You still have to make art that’s true to yourself. Don’t be a people pleaser. Don’t feel compelled to come out after the show, because people are widely disrespectful. Even with kindness, people ask for more than anybody should give — to go out to dinner, or to kiss you on the cheek, or have a five-minute photo session or a one-on-one therapy session.”
The repeated chorus of “I can’t love you how you want me to” is an attempt to put some distance between the band and their fans. While the verses sing, “I can’t see you, the light is in my face, I can’t touch you, I wouldn’t if I could”, the band are desperately trying to get fans to realise that the space between them in the crowd and the band on the stage means something.
Despite being recorded back in 2018 while the band was only starting to experience fame and become uncomfortable with their position within it, ‘Bite The Hand’ sadly only seems to get more and more relevant each year. Now, they turn their glare directly onto fans as a camera scans the crowd while they play the song live, attempting to make their crowd as uncomfortable with surveillance as they are.
Outside of the song, Bridgers doesn’t mince her words on the topic. At the start of 2023, after the sudden death of her father, Bridgers found photos fans and paparazzi had taken of her in the airport on the way to his funeral. “A lot of people were like, ‘It’s OK to be talking about them because they’re celebrities; they chose it,’” she told GQ. But her message to her fans that overstep the line of respect is clear, “I fucking hate you, and I hope you grow the fuck up”.
Their track ‘Bite The Hand’ is essentially that message, sung more eloquently but still just as savage.
