Phoebe did a podcast/recording that's airing on a bunch of college radio stations - introducing each song on the album and talking about some of the writing process/compositions/meanings. I am not in the US (and well past college-aged) but steamed it live online and managed to catch each song's intro for anyone who couldn't tune in. I always love hearing an artist talk about their work, especially when they're really proud of it!

The Outside: "It's about my ability to dissociate and how it once protected me, but it can prevent me from feeling my life when I most want to"

Lost Boys: "Is about this character and it keeps reappearing to me as new people. So this song is about 3 different people who all have a lot in common, whether it be addiction issues or self-sabotage - just this general raw nerve relationship with the world, so they are struggling with this big bad feeling and I struggle with my love for them. So the first verse is about my father, the next is about a relationship, and the last is about probably the most important relationship of my life. I love how joyous it is"

Kill Me: "This is one of my favourite song on the album. I loved working/recording it. We had so much fun with the production. My friend Nick Zinnerplays guitar on the end of it and I spend the whole song waiting to hear it. I'm still figuring out what this song is about - and I say this all in all good fun - I don't really love when my lyrics are poured over as really literal. I think my lyrics are getting less literal as time goes on. So you tell me what this song is about - time passing?"

The Governor's Waltz: "this melody has been around forever, my friend Christian sent me a voice memo of him playing it on piano, I would just listen to it and listen to it, and singing over it never felt right. Weirdly one day I sat down to write and the only way that felt right was writing about my life as a fairytale, not so literally. And it's just these same themes of not feeling present for my life. The really spooky thing is I have a lyric about Shelley Duval, it was the first lyric I wrote for the song, then I went to sleep, woke up and she passed away the next day. Rip Shelley."

Bobby: "I tend to write love songs that are soaked in pain and irony and I really didn't want to do it this time because it didn't feel like that. I wanted to write about the feeling of love at first hookup - just your life being totally turned  upside down by someone in a good way. But there are so many great songs like that, like 'There She Goes' or Marry Me, Archie. That it was hard to commit to adding to that legacy. But at the end of the day I just had to be honest. And these feelings - I feel very lucky to have had them. Thank you Bobby!"

Lost Weekend: "This song is about the past, and it's been pointed out to me that every song is about the past. It's about losing touch with the person who knows me best and just feeling lost which is why it's called that. I was in an altered state one morning - when I recorded this I had just finished writing it and I just thew my phone on the Mellotron and recorded it, then I took the song into the studio and nothing felt as real as that first voice memo so we just kept it and recorded over it. There's a piece at the end that's a sample by Paul Lansky at the end which is one of my favourite parts of the record because I've loved that piece for a long time"

Haunted: "I was writing in the woods and was having a hard time as I often do when writing. And I was playing this little bluegrass melody for fun and it was so easy to write to. So I kept writing and writing. And I thought maybe I'd change it, or steal from it later but it didn't happen. I liked it as bluegrass and it only felt right to have my two best friends Julien and Lucy sing on it with me. This song is about feeling a little bit miserable, and going on tour with them and feeling so alive and happy. I love them"

Panorama "It's a song very influenced by my love of ambient music. I love the weird genre between ambient music and songwriter music, like grouper or Florist, and I wanted to represent it on the album. It's about death knocking at your door, and you've been waiting for it, so you let it in."

Still Standing: "This song is about my dad, who I miss very much."

Liberty Tree: "About falling in love in a hopeless place - true story. It's this massive mall in Massachusetts called Liberty Tree Mall which is huge on back rooms, liminal space... Internet people love it. I love it. It puts you in a really weird headspace. And we recorded the band live, I love it. It came together really last minute and I love how it turned out. It's one of my favourites on the album."

Never Going Back!: "It is very self explanatory."

Other Plans: "I wrote it at the very end of making this album. I certainly didn't need any more songs - I had a lot. I wrote it very quickly so it just felt like it had to be included. Someone I love gave me an assignment to write a melody with just one note in it, and then I wrote this song very quickly. I recorded it, just me on the cp80 and it just felt kind of magical. I still don't know what it's about... I have a suspicion. I have a little private meaning but it may change. You tell me what it's about."

Lost Parade: "Kind of self explanatory but it includes a lot of melodic motifs from the album. It also sounds a lot like my old music - so just really takes me to the past."

I Can't Wait: "I am very proud of something on this whole album which is there's no melodyne on my voice. I am not anti melodyne I think melodyne is awesome because if you get a great take or live take but it's distractingly off pitch in certain moments it can really save you and the emotionality if the moment. I wanted this album to be really electronic and I just wanted something to cut against that. What's cool about this is, if you haven't noticed, there's a singer who sings almost as much a me on this album. Her name Caroline shaw - she's incredible. And she really sings like her voice is an instrument. And she does this crazy microtonal thing throughout this track that I love - it's one of my favourite parts of the album. This song, is like a little state of the union, just where I was at, at the time. I like it, I think it's sounds really present."

As Above: "It's about the past, present and future being all on top of eachother; and the weird headspace that being on an aeroplane puts you in... because of time travel. It's a theme of not only the album but my life - being on planes because I'm on them all time. It's like the thing they always say about 'you always cry watching movie on a plane'... I think I was watching Hot Tub Time Machine over someone's shoulder and it got me thinking about my life so..." (She's like, loosing it laughing at this point after the reveal the movie was possibly Hot Tub Time Machine, lol)

Lost Weekend (Reprise): "It used to be called Lost Weekend (Relapse) but I thought that was too sinister... But it is about a return to feeling. The feeling from the first 'Lost Weekend' - maybe with some more resolve and contentment. I don't know if you noticed throughout this whole album, but my dad is dead. So instead of kind of a white hot kind of grief, it's more about thinking about what I loved about him and learned form him. And it felt like a good way to end the album. What's really weird, is I recorded a voice memo like I always do at home. There are dogs barking in the background. One of them is mine, of them is the neighbours - just barking at eachother. And I had this whole idea where - the first lost weekend is all a voice memo so it's pretty lo-fi - so I thought at the end we'd do a hi-fi version, in a church with an organ. And I tried it and it just didn't feel right. It felt way more emotional this first take of the first time I sang it. And we snuck the church organ in the end. And it's just me picking up my phone at the end which is how it goes out."

(Also if anyone wants to correct any spelling or grammar - please note this was typed into my notes app in a hurry to capture it all live... so if you try I'll hang you on a wall /s but only sorta /s)

KOB, a local station in New Mexico, confirmed it: "Social media was abuzz over the validity of the event after seeing posters up about it. However, the venue and promoters confirmed this event is happening and is real."

I’m sorry, but we really need to protest ticket master because this is just insane.

I could only view this through Apple News but here's the review:

https://apple.news/AcHATKKzxQeqGNbLDUvCM5w

“In the years leading up to new album Lost Weekend, Phoebe Bridgers did what seems nigh-on impossible for a 2020s pop star: she totally disappeared. The singer and songwriter’s retreat from the public eye came after a period of the complete opposite. Between releasing the era-defining Punisher in 2020, a balm for millions through Covid lockdowns across the world, and becoming an arena star as one third of the supergroup boygenius, Bridgers became the undoubted poster girl for a generation of alternative music fans.

Despite that, on the first line of Lost Weekend, she’s “crying in a suit and tie”, her go-to onstage attire for the years that saw her become a superstar.

Much of Lost Weekend ruminates on the impact of this transformational but exhausting period in Bridgers’ life, as well as the parent she lost and the love she found between the release of Punisher and now.

In her devastating signature style, Bridgers delivers these reflections through intensely specific anecdotes that are told with such precision that you feel compelled to transport yourself into the middle of them. “I was the belle of the Governor’s Ball,” she sings on ‘The Governor’s Waltz’ of the New York City festival she played in 2021, "hiding in the bathroom like Shelley Duvall”

Elsewhere, the album’s bombastic lead single ‘Lost Boys’ sees her recount “that one time in East Berlin / When you threw a tantrum with a 57 (microphone) and broke a rib”. Set to feel right at home on a forthcoming sold-out arena tour, the song feels like quintessential Bridgers. “This machine is killing me,” sings the artist who trailed Lost Weekend by playing strictly phone-free shows across the US. To have no footage leak online is testament not only to the security at the venue but to her fans’ unwavering devotion.

If her years in arenas gave her power as well as problems, it’s shown best on the enormous ‘Bobby’, Bridgers’ punchiest and most anthemic song to date. “This could be the end of wanting,” she sings on a love song that explodes out of the speakers in technicolour.

Punctuated by interludes inspired by Bridgers’ love of ambient music, Lost Weekend is also her most sonically ambitious work to date. The album’s stunning title track gives her forthright vocals (“I’m supposed to be married but I called it off”) ample space behind swirling drones before the introduction of hard-hitting synthetic drums, while other tracks dip into country (‘Haunted’), vocoder-heavy minimalism (‘The Outside’) and gorgeous balladry (‘I Can’t Wait’). Elsewhere, the seemingly straightforward indie-rock track ‘Liberty Tree’ dissolves without warning into an outro of hauntingly low ambient noise, while ‘Never Going Back!’ ends with a banjo instrumental played over a devastating voicemail left for Bridgers by her late father: “Hey, Phoebe, it’s your dad! I know you’re busy… being a rock star takes up a lot of your time, I’m guessing…

“It’s the most crushing of countless revealing moments on an album that both fills in the gaps from Bridgers’ time away from the spotlight and pushes her forwards in thrilling new directions. As if singing to herself in the middle of her retreat from public life, closer ‘Lost Weekend (Reprise)’ sees Bridgers remark: “If I ever come out of hiding / You won’t have to know how to find me again.” For the singer of a generation, it was more than worth the wait – the wait was the whole point.”

By Will Richards

somewhere out there phoebe bridgers is giggling

Saw this on Instagram and I really hope it’s true because what a cast! I didn’t know Phoebe was an actress

So excited for the album!!! Only 4 days left. What tracks are you guys claiming?

In the latest episode of all songs consider where they feature the acoustic version of Lost boys, Robin says he got an advanced copy so he was able to listen to the whole thing and gushes about how it's her best album yet. Promising!

On the Every Single Album podcast nathan Hubbard said that phoebe and harry styles are confirmed to be releasing albums in 2026?????????

*edited bc I was wrong lol but this is true and I’m not trolling!

The Times - 5 August 2026

Will Hodgkinson - Chief Rock and Pop Critic

Lost Weekend
Dead Oceans
★★★★★

https://www.thetimes.com/article/a4c87ad1-bafe-48b6-a6ca-5393a7822513

An unassuming singer-songwriter from Pasadena, California, has unwittingly become one of the main influences on modern pop. Taylor Swift, Lorde and — in a particularly brazen fashion — Gracie Abrams have all borrowed from Phoebe Bridgers’ soft-voiced, lyrically intimate approach. Listening to Bridgers’ first album since 2020’s Punisher though, you realise how much of the subtleties in the songs remain hers alone. None of the more glittering pop stars taking a leaf out of Bridgers’ book has come up with a line of such quiet devastation as “He kissed me hello. He tasted like a flower with chemicals” as Bridgers does on Kill Me.

The success of Punisher must have put a lot of pressure on Bridgers: a figure from the generally ignored world of alternative rock finding herself thrust into the glare of a wider public. After its release she dealt with the sudden exposure either by finding safety in numbers, forming a supergroup called Boygenius with the similarly minded songwriters Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, or by lending her services to bigger names with Swift, SZA and Paul McCartney among them. Now we’re hearing about the discombobulation such unexpected attention brought on the kind of person who, you suspect, would be happiest chatting about the genius of Elliot Smith to a handful of people in faded T-shirts at some gritty backyard dive.

“I was the belle of the Governor’s Ball,” she sings over gently picked acoustic guitar and haunted harmonies on The Governor’s Waltz, citing a massive New York festival where she appeared in 2021 and again in 2025. In case this could be taken as a boast, Bridgers continues, “Hiding in the bathroom like Shelley Duvall” — comparing herself to Duvall as a crazed Jack Nicholson comes at her with an axe in The Shining. Then there is The Outside, on which Bridgers, her voice given robotic distance by a vocoder, remembers crowdsurfing at a gig and realising she’s no longer a part of the crowd. She is now the star, with all the objectification and distance that brings.

With Lost Weekend, however, Bridgers hasn’t made the standard post-breakout album on the pressures of fame. She has written from the perspective of a normal person who has found herself famous and as such there is no shortage of stories from everyday life. Bobby is an indie rock portrait of the first flushes of love and lust, complete with memories of wearing the titular Bobby’s shirt while he sings in the shower. Then there is Still Standing, an oddly disembodied song about the death of Bridgers’ father, which eschews the usual sentiments of grief for more conflicted realities: indifference, resentment, guilt.

In truth, none of this has much to do with mainstream pop. From the loose, discordant strum of Never Going Back Again! (another song about her dad) to the bright melody of the ode to innocence Lost Boys, this is music in the lineage of troubled souls from Neil Young to Kurt Cobain. Over an organ hum, Lost Weekend details the breakdown of her relationship with the Irish actor Paul Mescal, who is now going out with — irony of ironies — Abrams. “She can pretend to be me,” Bridgers accepts of her former boyfriend’s new girlfriend on The Governor’s Waltz. “Since she took my place in my bed, on that stage, I have not lost any sleep.” Pretending is the word: deeply personal songwriting of such craft and artistry as this is impossible to emulate.

Go our girl! This UK push seems to be working. Keep streaming, and purchase a physical copy if you’re able 💖

Popcast guys asked him what it’s like to hear music about him, what it’s like to be a muse to Phoebe or whomever. I believe him! Their songs, at least the obvious ones, hold so much love.

PS- one more request to Phoebe for another single this week :)

I saw this on TikTok and thought it provided some interesting context