walking upstream…
Phoebe Bridgers
photo: raph_ph · cc by 2.0 ↗Phoebe Bridgers
Phoebe Bridgers grew up in Pasadena on her parents' vinyl — Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, the Carter Family — and got an acoustic guitar at eleven from a family friend. At thirteen a friend played her Elliott Smith; four years later Ryan Adams put out her debut EP, and by 2016 Conor Oberst had pulled her onto his tour bus after a secret LA showcase. Stranger in the Alps (2017) and Punisher (2020) turned that education into a catalog of hushed, specific grief, doubled vocals standing in for a choir she doesn't quite believe in. She writes like she's confessing something she already knows won't fix anything, and lets the song get loud anyway.
the sound in question
2017
Motion SicknessPhoebe Bridgers
walk the tributaries ↓
Elliott Smith1990s–2000s · Indie folk / Lo-fi / Singer-songwriter
A friend played her Smith's 'Kiwi Mad Dog 20/20' in eighth grade; she's called the debt total ever since. "It's like the Beatles to me," she told NPR in 2020, "and I mean that in every way... it informs everything I like." Pressed on what exactly she took, she named the trick plainly: "the double-tracking, always... instead of singing it in a whiny accent, he's sort of just laying out the facts in a monotone whisper. I've always gravitated towards that type of performance."
listen: upstream & heresource: NPR — Phoebe Bridgers On Learning From Elliott Smith (Elliott Smith influence) ↗
1994
Whatever (Folk Song in C)Elliott Smith
2017
Motion SicknessPhoebe Bridgers
listen forBridgers has told the story of playing a club show and following Smith's "Whatever (Folk Song in C)" straight into her own "Motion Sickness" — Conor Oberst, watching, couldn't tell where the cover ended and her song began. Cue them back to back and listen for why: the same unhurried fingerpicked guitar, the same flat, murmured vocal that refuses to sell the hurt in the lyric, so the plainness itself becomes the ache.
Conor Oberst2000s · Indie folk / Alternative country / Indie rock
Before she met him, Bridgers found Bright Eyes' 'Poison Oak' and learned it was allowed to say the unsayable in a folk song: "it's about his cousin who killed himself when they were teenagers, and it says a lot of stuff that up until that point you're not really supposed to say in a song." The two met at a secret Bootleg Theater showcase in 2016; Oberst and Bright Eyes bandmate Mike Mogis went on to produce and sing on her debut, and the mentorship became a duo album, Better Oblivion Community Center, three years later.
listen: upstream & here
2005
First Day of My LifeConor Oberst
2020
Graceland TooPhoebe Bridgers
listen forBridgers has said the bluegrass she grew up on, filtered through Bright Eyes' 'I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning,' shaped Punisher's banjo-driven 'Graceland Too.' Play its opener against 'First Day of My Life' and listen for the shared instinct: a single quietly picked string of notes that lets other voices arrive one at a time, so a hopeful song builds by addition instead of volume.
John Prine1970s · Folk / Country / Americana
"I learned a lot of Carter Family songs and lots of John Prine," Bridgers told Billboard of her childhood years at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival — the plainspoken country-folk schooling underneath everything she'd later write. When Prine died of COVID-19 complications in April 2020, she'd already named his final record, The Tree of Forgiveness, and its track 'Summer's End,' as a direct influence on the album she was finishing.
listen: upstream & heresource: Billboard — Phoebe Bridgers Geeked Out on Bluegrass ("Graceland Too" and John Prine influences) ↗
2018
Summer's EndJohn Prine
2021
Summer's EndPhoebe Bridgers
listen forThe following March, Bridgers recorded 'Summer's End' herself for Spotify Singles, with backing vocals from Alabama singer-songwriter Maria Taylor. Set Prine's original — sparse acoustic guitar, a voice worn soft with age — against her version and listen for what she chose to keep: the same unhurried waltz tempo, the same conversational register even as the lyric turns elegiac, never pushing past a murmur to sell the grief.