The Boygenius song Phoebe Bridgers says is about a “God complex”
The first Boygenius album, The Record, has plenty of varied material across its 12 tracks. From nostalgic looks back at T-bird graveyards to vicious swipes at Leonard Cohen and the boring people who try to channel him, The Record finds three of the best songwriters in the world trading ideas back and forth at an endless clip. For her part, Phoebe Bridgers is emo as hell throughout the album, apologising to an old flame in ‘Emily I’m Sorry’ and celebrating her bandmates in typically sardonic fashion on ‘We’re In Love’.
If one song illustrates the push and pull between the trio’s bravado and uncertainty, it’s ‘Not Strong Enough’. While referencing Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Sheryl Crow’s 1993 single ‘Strong Enough’, the song tries to find the balance between self-doubt and self-aggrandization while discovering that sometimes they can fuel each other, plainly laid out in the song’s repeated sentiment of “Always an angel / Never a god.”
“Self-hatred is a god complex sometimes, where you think you’re the most fucked-up person who’s ever lived,” Bridgers explained about ‘Not Strong Enough’ to Rolling Stone around the release of The Record. “Straight up, you’re not. And it can make people behave really selfishly, and I love each of our interpretations of that concept.”
“We’re like how fun would it be to write like The Cure, Slash, The Killers pop song about feeling both self-hatred and God complex,” Bridgers told BBC Radio 1’s Claro Amfo. The Cure wind up getting their own direct reference within the song’s lyrics, with their early single ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ being mentioned by name.
“That’s another example of Phoebe taking a wordplay and then extrapolating it to a really nuanced concept,” Julien Baker added in the same interview. Baker also confirmed that ‘Not Strong Enough’ had more or less equal songwriting contributions from all three of the members.
“That song was written more in the room together,” Baker explained. “Some of the other songs were like, ‘Hey, I wrote this complete song’. And it would be cool if we added these little parts and then we like polished it in the studio, but this song felt very much like a group project.”
‘Not Strong Enough’ would become one of the first songs from The Record to be debuted when Boygenius reunited at the Tibet House Benefit concert on March 1st, 2023. That same day, ‘Not Strong Enough’ was released as a single in what would be the final preview of The Record before its release at the end of March.
