the broken love song that feeds your misery
who am I to ask for more?
At the Eras Tour in Metlife Stadium, the merch line I decided to enter took over an hour to move through. Having arrived right when doors opened, this wouldn’t normally have been an issue. I’d anticipated a long wait, given stories I’d heard from friends that had gone to shows before I did. But when I heard Phoebe Bridgers beginning her opening act set, while I was still waiting to buy my t-shirts and cds, I felt a sharp pang of disappointment that I wasn’t in my seat by now. I could only barely hear her playing, and the tvs stationed around the concourse remained unhelpfully blank.
I was late to listen to Phoebe, and I joke with friends that it was probably a good thing. Her debut album, Stranger In The Alps, was released in 2017, the year where my whole life went to hell. (If you’ve read The Surrender Theory, that’s the year in question.) I was doing enough wallowing by listening to Melodrama and Harry Styles’ self-titled album without adding Phoebe Bridgers to the mix, with lyrics like “I buried a hatchet, it’s coming up lavender. The future’s unwritten, the past is a corridor. I’m at the exit, looking back through the hall. You are anonymous, I’m a concrete wall.”
It wasn’t until the release of her sophomore album, Punisher, in 2020 that Phoebe entered my daily rotation. Since then, she hasn’t left.
Over the summer I went to a friend’s wedding where I knew nobody other than the bride and groom, and was, thankfully, seated next to a couple that was exceedingly kind and made me feel welcome. (It didn’t hurt to be at the ‘Poets Table.’) We got to talking about music, and Phoebe naturally came up. One half of the couple loved Phoebe like I did, and the other half commented how she’d come home from work and find him lying on the couch with Phoebe on blast. Like I’ve heard from others, she wondered how anyone could really listen to Phoebe for so long given the sadness of her work and how she fails to enunciate (which, though I love Phoebe, did make me laugh—when I didn’t know her lyrics by heart, I’d had to look them up to be sure of what she was saying).
There’s a point to be made there—Phoebe Bridgers isn’t making music for exceedingly happy people. In the TV show Shrinking, Jason Segel’s character is trying to cope with grief by spending ten minutes a day listening to music and crying really hard, getting his emotions out in that allotted time in order to go about the rest of his day normally. Imagine my delight when I watched I Know The End, Punisher’s closing track, begin to play on screen.
If you’re not a person that makes a habit of listening to exceedingly sad music, I can understand why the thought of doing so daily may seem so strange and possibly even emotionally detrimental. But when sadness is a condition of your existence, something that is so often an undertone to your joy or lurking behind your accomplishments, it’s less of a downer than it is a breath of fresh air. When I listen to Garden Song before 10am, singing “The doctor put her hands over my liver, she told me my resentment’s getting smaller,” I don’t feel compelled to crawl into a ball and think about everything that’s wrong with the life I’ve created for myself. Rather, it feels like getting something off my chest with an old friend. An exchange of information so I can go about the rest of my day feeling whole.
Shirts and cd in hand, I sat down in my nosebleed seat in Metlife Stadium right before Phoebe’s final song of the night and felt relief that her whole performance hadn’t been lost to me. This was my first time ever seeing Phoebe live, and it was strange to be seeing her in a place where not everybody around me knew the words. Singing along to her voice, I briefly looked around and could find only a few others who, like me, knew all the words. It wasn’t the same kind of shared energy that I would have with the people around me once Taylor Swift entered the stage—it was more scarce. A community you had to close your eyes and really focus on hearing.
*
I’ve always gravitated towards music with lyrics that unfold like poetry. Of course, this is not an absolute—I like having fun with music too—but if I’m ever sitting in the car, unsure what to queue up, my instinct is to play something with a little sentimental meat on its bones. Lately I’ve been revisiting Hozier’s debut album, which I think is a no-skip beautifully constructed piece of art. I also like how it brings me back to my senior year of high school, walking the hallways in the morning before first period. I don’t particularly like being back in high school, but I like the feeling of a song being able to transport me somewhere I once was. Somewhere I thought I’d never be able to go again.
Because Phoebe hasn’t been in my life very long, I don’t have those sorts of memories yet. When I listen to her relatively small discography I feel very rooted in the present. Phoebe is less of an escape than she is a testament to what I’ve endured in the last three years. A connection between myself and the friends I’ve made in the time I’ve been listening to her. All of us, sad and joyous and frustrated and in love together.
The other night I was driving home from a holiday shopping run, listening to my Spotify generated “Top Songs of 2023” playlist which is mostly 100 songs of Taylor Swift, boygenius, and every member of boygenius’ solo work (including Phoebe). I Know The End started playing ten minutes from my apartment and I felt the familiar prick behind my eyes, tears bubbling at the edges and threatening to spill over. I wouldn’t call I Know The End my absolute favorite song in Phoebe’s discography, but it’s in my top 5. When I listen to her sing “but I’m not gonna go down with my hometown in a tornado. I’m gonna chase it—I know, I know, I know” I think about the hometown I’ve left behind. All the memories I had to get away from 5 years ago in order to become the person I am now.
The person I am now, who “went looking for a creation myth. Ended up with a pair of cracked lips.” The person I am now, who shouts in the quiet of her car “I’ll find a new place to be from. A haunted house with a picket fence, to float around and ghost my friends. No, I’m not afraid to disappear. The billboard said ‘The end is near.’ I turned around, there was nothing there. Yeah, I guess, the end is here.”
It’s a strange sensation, to feel yourself making “music associations” (for lack of a better phrase) in real time. I know unequivocally that five years from now I’ll listen to Stranger In The Alps and think of being 25, 26. Feeling like an adult for the first time and more confused than ever about what I want from the world around me. I can feel these words beginning to soundtrack this era of my life, and wonder if I’ll ever know this sensation again. In these essays I’ve been gravitating towards writing about things I’ve read and heard in the past, knowing already what the greater outcome of those words have had on my life. To acknowledge my life in real-time is to hold a magnifying glass against the reasons I’m not happy. To shudder at what it would take to change it.
In Waiting Room, a song of Phoebe’s currently unplaced on an album, a fan favorite, she sings “If you were a waiting room I would never see a doctor. I would sit there with my first-aid kit and bleed.” Sometimes it feels like my current life is a waiting room and I’m procrastinating moving into the hallway. It’s easier to sit and flip through worn magazines and write your name on entry forms than it is to stand up and walk into a place unfamiliar. When Phoebe sings, “I know whatever happens to me, I know it’s for the better” I echo her words as if they came from my own heart. Is it better, to sit in the waiting room forever, or to walk into the doctor’s office? Does it matter? Is whatever choice you make really for the better? I don’t know the answer, and I don’t think Phoebe does either. For over a minute of the song Phoebe repeats “know it’s for the better” over and over as if to convince herself it’s true. As if to convince me it’s true, too.
*
Thankfully, I went to more than one show of the Eras Tour and my experience with the second show was vastly different from the first. We arrived at the stadium and went right to our seats—merch acquired and safely in our hotel room two trains away. We sat and watched the pre-show videos, clapped for the first opener, and then stood when Phoebe walked on stage in her skeleton jumpsuit and guitar in hand. I glanced around at the crowd and found others like me, standing and swaying with hands over their chests, singing with tears clouding their eyes. She sang a mix of new and old songs, and those of us in the know gave her rapturous attention.
By the time she began her final song, I Know The End, I was emotionally spent and ready to cap off her set with a guttural scream—one Phoebe does right into the mic and encourages everyone else to do with her. I scream for every person I’ve been since 2020, and every person I will be with her music as a guiding hand. I look around at the standing few and note that this is not a group of sad people, laying morosely on the couch, incapable of joy. This is a group of sad people finding each other in the crowd. Making eye contact as if to say, I hear you, now. I can hear you now.
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Thank you, as always, for reading this week’s edition of Dancing With The Marginalia. If you know someone that may enjoy my work, please consider sharing this newsletter in order to help me reach as many readers as possible.
I was moved recently by this essay, from Shira Erlichman.
I rewatched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World last night, which I haven’t seen since illegally streaming it on my laptop in high school, and was struck by just how moving it is now that I know a little more about love and letting people in. RE: my Frankenstein essay, maybe I need to do more rewatching/rereading?
I’m having trouble getting in the holiday cheer this year, busy with work of all kinds, but I’m finally going to be decorating my small tree with my partner this week and I’m really looking forward to it.
I just finished reading “A Little Life” and am already missing being enmeshed in its world. You can read my Goodreads review here, but I’m sure I’ll write a little more about it at some point in this space.
I hope you’re all dealing with your emotions regarding this holiday season in whatever way is best for you.
I’ll be back next week with an end-of-year wrap-up with all of my favorite reads from this year. Make sure you’re subscribed, so you don’t miss it.
Until then,
Caitlin
I don't know much of Phoebe's music. Yet now I feel like I do. A picture has been painted...
Adore this as a fellow Phoebe lover, love you and this incredible reflection ♥️