Indie supergroup boygenius released their debut album, aptly titled “The Record,” on March 31. It was announced in January alongside the surprise release of three singles — “$20,” “Emily I’m Sorry” and “True Blue” — which received a visual counterpart titled “The Film,” directed by Kristen Stewart. Group members Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus are one year removed from over 50 show tours and the three-time Grammy-nominated Phoebe Bridgers will enter the tour a week removed from an opener circuit for Taylor Swift.
Since their self-titled 2018 debut extended play, each of the three members has grown massively in popularity and become recognized as leaders in the indie music scene: generational talents as songwriters and consistent placements in year-end lists. Considering that each is currently at their peak, choosing to step away from their individual endeavors to come back emphasizes the love they have for one another.
“It’s so hard to relate to people. Except for those guys. Being with them makes it so much less dark,” Bridgers said in an interview with Rolling Stone. As a creative who makes her living by baring her heart to strangers, it can be hard to create genuine relationships, as outside perceptions of her vulnerability are inherently misguided. No one understood this lifestyle better than Baker and Dacus, who create similar-minded music from a similar place, leading to a bond so tight that each member refers to the others as “the boys.”
This love that boygenius shares is symbolized by a later track on the album, the heartachingly endearing “We’re In Love.” Over soft piano and gentle triplet strums of an acoustic guitar, Dacus croons about a love so perfect that all she asks of it is to never end.
In the final verse, Dacus demonstrates the extent of her love, “If you rewrite your life, may I still play a part? / In the next one, will you find me? / I’ll be the boy… / Who looks like hell and asks for help / And if you do, I’ll know it’s you/… There is somethin’ about you that I will always recognize.”
Beyond making the listener either want to hug their significant other or hope that a ten ton truck crashes into them, these lyrics display how Dacus cares for her loved one so much that she would want to “still play a part” in their next life — which could be interpreted literally or figuratively. In a literal next life, she believes, because of their heart and intangible “it” factor, that she would always be able to recognize them. In the outro, Dacus sings “I will try to remind you of the hummingbirds” — referred to in a separate Rolling Stone article as a symbol for the band — then “you know the ones,” to which Baker and Bridgers respond “I know the ones.”
Though how this love is represented and who it is shared with changes through the songs, Dacus’ contributions share a theme of love — more specifically, her missing piece that she has since found.
Bridgers’ contributions also deal with love, though she focuses more on its dysfunctional moments. “Letter to an Old Poet,” what seems to be a continuation of both their self-titled extended play’s “Me and My Dog” and her last album, Punisher’s, “Moon Song,” is a song about realizing a loved one isn’t the same person that you created in your head. With harsh, pointed lyrics like “You make me feel like an equal / But I’m better than you,” and “When you fell down the stairs / It looked like it hurt and I wasn’t sorry,” Phoebe makes sense of her emotions and realizes she no longer cares for a lover who doesn’t reciprocate.
In “Me and My Dog,” Bridgers likens former Better Oblivion Community Center bandmate Conor Oberst to a dog, an animal well-known for its unconditional love. Then, in “Moon Song,” Bridgers likens herself to a dog with a bird in her mouth waiting patiently for a lover — an unconditional lover carrying a symbol of her love — though her lover’s, “sick and… married,” actions eventually result in the bird, and her love’s, death. In “Letter to an Old Poet,” Bridgers finally puts this relationship in the past and, though it hasn’t come yet, candidly hopes for a time in her future where she can stop thinking about him.
That said, Bridgers’ contributions to the album are not completely somber. Though “Revolution 0,” “Emily I’m Sorry” and “Not Strong Enough” capture failed relationships, each song expresses different emotions while using different instrumentation, showing how Bridgers is not pigeon-holed into exclusively making the same brand of music. Though she may choose to make sad music and reserves this right, emotionality is a spectrum, on which Bridgers has the ability to tap into every color.
Of the three, Baker’s contributions seem to most reflect the joy they derive from one another. On the songs that Baker seems to take the lead, the subject matter tends to be lighter, the instrumentation more upbeat, and the singing duties shared. However, they manage to touch on more somber — and even existentialist — themes as well.
A standout of Baker’s contributions and the album as a whole is “Cool About It.” The song, a slower indie folk song in the mold of Bright Eyes and Sufjan Stevens, is about coming to terms with only having a friendship with a person from which one wants more. Baker encapsulates this pain with the hook, “I’m trying to be cool about it / Feelin’ like an absolute fool about it / Wishin’ you were kind enough to be cruel about it.” While attempting to come to terms with a friendship from a person from which she wants a relationship, Baker chides her feelings — ones she may perceive as immature or unexpectedly difficult to come to terms with. She then juxtaposes “kind” and “cruel” to show her wish that this friend would be kind enough to cut her free from a relationship in which she will never be satisfied.
When asked by Pitchfork editor-in-chief Puja Patel about the sad girl cliché so associated with the three that makes “feelings get canonized by gender and other things that have nothing to do with the music,” Dacus responded “I don’t write sad songs so I can’t contribute to this.” To this, Baker and Bridgers expressed disbelief, with the latter responding “‘We’re in Love’ [from The Record] is the saddest song I’ve ever heard.”
This reflects their irreverence of what is expected and believed of their music and how they choose to create what feels right rather than worry about whether or not it fits. The album as a whole is a display of the duality, defined by Dacus, of “emotionality” and “sadness,” how a girl showing emotions does not have to be sad. Regardless of any stereotypes listeners may harbor going in, “The Record” is a celebration of boygenius’ love for one another that carries the listener through every emotion — sadness, joy and everything in between.
June Min is an Arts & Entertainment Intern for the spring 2023 quarter. He can be reached at junehm@uci.edu