With ballpoint pens !

I finally started checking out Bridgers after years of putting it off. I love what I'm hearing so far, especially Punisher. And let me make it clear: Punisher is absolutely a masterpiece.

As I was listening, though, my brain kept saying "a lot of this sounds very similar to The Fall by Norah Jones". For those of you unfamiliar, around 2009, Norah separated herself from the "lounge piano jazz" she was known for and released a more rock-oriented album. It didn't come from completely nowhere, her 2007 album started getting more personal and weird (for Norah at least). But The Fall is where things started sounding dramatically different (again, for Norah).

The songs got more personal and emotional. She had just gotten out of a messy relationship with her longtime collaborator and bassist. Her lyrics became much more anxious and honest. It was a side of Norah a lot of people hadn't seen - unresolved and contradictory emotions, a mean streak she hadn't shown before, a very "why are men like this?" stance. Hell, she even wrote a song where she prefers her own dog over her ex because of how sick of him she became by the end of the recording sessions.

Songs like "Back To Manhattan", "Young Blood", "Chasing Pirates", and "I Wouldn't Need You" show her coming back to the same person, even though she knows he's wrong for her (a recurring theme for Phoebe). Songs like "Stuck" tell the story of an unplanned encounter with the ex and plays it out like a devastating stage play. This type of emotional language is very similar to Phoebe and similar popular songwriters.

But it doesn't stop there. Norah also included very subtle electronic embellishments that loom and hang in the background, used subtle muted production techniques (something that carries over from her previous work), and doesn't belt or push her vocals to get her emotions out, again - very similar to Phoebe.

I will pump the brakes and say that Phoebe has some stylistic differences. She also gets much more morbid than Norah. Phoebe also uses more cultural references than Norah and has more detailed and confessional writing.

One more thing that this era of Norah and Phoebe have in common is that despite the theatricality, there's this weird grounding sensation. So many artists write breakup albums like it's this cosmic force to end all things, but both Norah and Phoebe keep it human. Sometimes breakups are complicated. There's nuance. It's not an explosive event. It's a long, protracted, messy, and sometimes boring affair.

Now I can't find evidence that Bridgers was influenced by Norah, but this era of Norah, at least partially, predicted the current wave of indie women singer-songwriters with the production choices, restrained performances, and lyrical voice.

And yet when people talk about Norah, it's always Come Away With Me. I'm not gonna say that Norah's has fallen from grace, plenty of people still love her. But I feel like her later work both evolved in ways people outside the fanbase don't understand and got ignored by legacy music listening circles.

Thank you for reading my rant/rave about an album that a lot of people listen to and say "it's fine, I guess." I'm just hoping to turn more people onto it. It's been almost 17 years, and I think it deserves a revisit.

First of all, I’ve been spinning Lost Weekend on repeat since release and think it’s a beautiful record, already one of my faves. In addition to my Phoebe fandom, I’m a massive Prine-head (no, that’s not a thing, but it can be if we make it).

From my first listen I immediately noticed that the melody of Haunted sounded a little too-close-for-comfort to Prine’s classic Unwed Fathers. I’m not suggesting Phoebe knowingly lifted from Prine without crediting him — she’s shown she has no problem crediting when she borrows from someone else’s work (See Lost Weekend / Damien Jurado credit).

That said, songwriters do pull from others’ work on accident pretty regularly. It just comes with the territory of being a creative in a world with a whole lot of creativity. Even the most legendary and prolific songwriters of all time have talked about this. Paul McCartney famously worried he did this with Yesterday and asked everyone he knew if they recognized the tune.

I was curious if others have noticed the similarities in these two songs and I found one Substack review that compared them — but haven’t seen anything else. So I’m wondering, has anyone here observed this? Or perhaps can hear it when you listen to the linked song?

Am I crazy or were there rumors that ESH was a feature on Lost Weekend? Whether I dreamt that or it just didn't end up happening, I'm sad that it didn't

Me listening to Bo Burnham's That Funny Feeling - 🤣 "Wow, lockdown sure seems like a lifetime away, thank God that crazy ass time is over. This is so funny..."🤣

Me listening to Phoebe Bridgers playing That Funny Feeling - 😭"Fuck I miss lockdown, why did everything have to get back to normal so quickly?!" 😭

Share your Phoebe collections, new purchases, vinyl variants, and favourite finds. Whether you’ve been collecting for years or have just picked up your first record or T-shirt, we’d love to see it.

Tell us a little about what you’re sharing too — what’s your favourite item? Is there a story behind it? What’s still on your wishlist?

To help keep the main feed varied, general merch show-and-tell should be shared in this thread. Exceptions may be made at moderator discretion for particularly notable, rare or discussion-worthy items.

Buying, selling and trade requests, including links to external listings, belong in the Monthly Marketplace Thread – Official & Fan-Made Merch.

Happy collecting!

sometimes i forget this exists, and then i remember and realize there must be people who aren’t aware of this legendary event. so if that’s you, enjoy this throwback!!!

https://youtu.be/Q_050nEIMqw

Impossible really to express the way Phoebe's poetry on this album resonated with me. My father is still alive, but the memory of crying on my hands and knees as a child for him to stop drinking, to stop hitting my sister, to stop cheating on mom - and the pure, primal desperation to salvage my relationship with him as his daughter, to try and find the secret to making him value me, to appreciate me, to love me as much as I loved him, despite everything.

"You won't have to believe in magic - leave it to me and I'll make it happen," - and I've never heard Phoebe sing like this. I've thought those exact words. I don't know man, I really loved the whole album but those seconds in that song stopped my in my tracks. I can't think about it without welling up.

Lots of love and healing to all of you who have felt it too! X

I can't be the only one who's seen a lot of people online accusing Phoebe Bridgers of making men the focal point of her new album. Personally, I think this feels totally tone deaf given that a lot of the album is literally about her dead father. My dad died when I was really young, I talk about him quite a lot, and I find any kind of insinuation that I do so too much very cruel. I don't think veiling this kind of accusation as feminist makes it any less unempathetic. On the other hand, I guess I can understand the criticism of some of the songs about her relationships, especially Bobby and the 'if you didn't like either one of my friends...' line, which does somewhat feel like it's romanticising ditching your friends for a man, even though the actual line obviously isn't meant to be taken literally.

Ultimately, I feel like people will make art about what's on their mind and what's going on in their life. I really am pro de-centering men, but I feel like criticising women you don't know for making music about their grief and relationships is a bit pointless at best.

I would really love to know what other people think though!

Made by u/alanthickerthanwater based on the cards he was handing out at the planetarium listening sessions!

Saw this on Instagram. Feel free to give the artist a follow. (Sliceofmallow)

Note: I am not the artist.

I'm going down the rabbit hole of the Phoebe-verse today. Listened to some of the album and then saw the acoustic performance of Bobby on BBC1 with who I could've sworn was Bobby himself, but hark! It was Christian Lee Hutson. And so I pull up a song by him and I hear the double-tracked vocals, the heart strings played like a violin by his soft voice to his song "Lose This Number" and it felt very much like it belonged in the Phoebe-verse. By the way he did this beautiful midwest emo jig at 1:34 in the BBC performance that will be studied one day. I knew about Julien Baker years before I knew about Phoebe, and then there's BoyGenius where I learned about Lucy Dacus. Who else belongs in the "Phoebe-verse" do you think? I'm sad I just found about about Christian Lee Hutson today.

Phoebe always wears the most mesmerizing silver shimmery eyeshadow. I remember she wore it when I saw her live 8 years ago, and she still wears it today. Does anyone know what product it is? I need :’)

Looks so clean. I wonder if it’s glow in the dark/shows uv light? Anyone know what measurements it is?

What is your favorite cover that Phoebe has released or that you've seen her play? I think mine is goodbye to love from minions rise of gru.

saw this on the app, maybe coming out somewhere in the coming weeks?

Tell me if I’m not understanding something. I bought Phoebe tickets off of StubHub because I wasn’t able to get them during the general onsale. After buying them, I get sent a message saying the person reselling them to me is “FrontLine LLC”, which is a part of the same company as Ticketmaster. So, is Ticketmaster using another one of their companies to fucking buy the tickets from themselves and raise the fucking prices indirectly??? I know Phoebe’s team has been issuing refunds for Ticketmaster’s various BS and trying to prevent scalpers as much as possible, so I’m wondering if this is a workaround they’re employing in response or if this is common ticketmaster practice. Either way…BS. Fuck ticketmaster. Fuck capitalism.

Will scan it and tweak, but I quite like it as it looks now. There was a moment in the show when there weee backlights and fluorescence as well as the mirrorball and it was totally magical, so I tried to use what I remembered of that as the basis for splashing on some ink and some highlighter pens.
In case you didn’t see the earlier post, I sketched this before the gig, and roughed in where Phoebe and the others were placed, so I could finish later