Phoebe Bridgers

In 2017, John Mayer posted a song on the social platform X, formerly Twitter. “It’s time you heard her. Listen to this,” he said. “This is the arrival of a giant.” The song was the devastating stunner “Funeral.” The giant in question? A 23-year-old songwriter named Phoebe Bridgers.

Hailing from Pasadena, California, Bridgers began playing guitar at age 13. She graduated from Los Angeles County High School for the Arts and was accepted into Boston’s Berklee College of Music, but dropped out after orientation. Around that time, she was playing in the punk band Sloppy Jane (fronted by her friend Haley Dahl) when a talent scout saw her perform. She began appearing in commercials, including two for Apple — covering the Pixies’ “Gigantic” in one, kissing a dude while getting notifications on her Apple watch in another. 

These roles earned Bridgers enough money to record her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps, which led to a contract with the Indiana-based indie label Dead Oceans. “My rent was paid, and I would go to the studio every day like it was my fucking job until it was my job,” she told Rolling Stone in 2020. “There’s no advice you could give anybody to have that same experience. I was so fucking lucky.”

In addition to “Funeral,” Stranger in the Alps contains highlights like the opening track “Smoke Signals,” “Scott Street,” and “Motion Sickness.” The latter details her brief relationship with the singer-songwriter Ryan Adams (he produced Bridgers’ Killer EP, released through his Pax-Am label in 2015). It’s a biting breakup anthem, filled with incisive lines like “I hate you for what you did/And I miss you like a little kid” that earned Bridgers a devoted fanbase. 

Bridgers teamed up next with fellow rising songwriters Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus for a joint solo tour, heading into the studio to record a single so they could promote the shows. They ended up cutting six songs and forming the supergroup boygenius. “It was not like falling in love,” Bridgers said. “It was falling in love.” A year later, she formed a second group: Better Oblivion Community Center with Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst. They released a self-titled debut that same year. 

Bridgers was already regarded as one of the leading songwriters of her generation, but she broke through to the mainstream in 2020, when she released her second solo album, Punisher. It was the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, when many artists were postponing their releases. But Bridgers forged ahead. “I’m not pushing the record until things go back to ‘normal’ because I don’t think they should,” she wrote.

Punisher became our soundtrack to those turbulent, isolated times, a tractor beam that helped us escape — away to Japan (“Kyoto”), to the Los Angeles bars her hero, Elliott Smith, used to frequent (the title track), or to the nautical-themed birthday parties of her subconscious (“Moon Song”). The album earned her four Grammy nominations and a slot performing on Saturday Night Live. Bridgers went on to collaborate with Taylor Swift (whom she’d open for on her Eras tour), SZA, Lorde, the Killers, Kid Cudi, and others. 

In 2023, Bridgers reunited with boygenius for the supergroup’s full-length debut, The Record. They landed on the cover of Rolling Stone, performed on Saturday Night Live (marking Bridgers’ second time), played to sold-out arenas, and earned six Grammy nominations, winning three (Bridgers’ collaboration with SZA, on the R&B star’s “Ghost in the Machine,” earned her a fourth). 

“We’re obsessed with each other,” Bridgers said of boygenius. “I like myself better around them.” —Angie Martoccio