Phoebe Bridgers
What type of music is Phoebe Bridgers known for?
What are some notable achievements in Phoebe Bridgers’s solo career?
What collaborative projects has Phoebe Bridgers been involved in?
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Phoebe Bridgers (born August 17, 1994, Pasadena, California, U.S.) is an American singer-songwriter whose music combines elements of indie folk and indie rock. Known for her candid lyrics and conversational vocal tone, Bridgers crafts her music with acoustic guitar at its core and weaves in lush string arrangements and layers of electronic sounds.
- Name in full: Phoebe Lucille Bridgers
- Occupation: Singer-songwriter
- Notable albums: Stranger in the Alps (2017), Punisher (2020), Lost Weekend (2026); Better Oblivion Community Center (2019) with Conor Oberst, The Record (2023) with boygenius
Early life and education
Bridgers is the elder of two children born to Jamie (née Gandola) Bridgers, an administrative worker, and Tony Bridgers, a film and television set builder. She was raised in Pasadena and was introduced to the music of such artists as Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Hank Williams, the Pretenders, and Neil Young through her family’s extensive vinyl record collection. In a 2018 interview with Guitar.com, Bridgers recalled, “My mom was a really big music fan, so she forced me to take piano lessons when I was a kid, and I hated it.” As a form of rebellion, Bridgers turned her attention to the guitar, playing a child-sized one that she had owned from an early age. When Bridgers was about 12, a friend of her father’s gave her a full-sized guitar, which inspired her to further develop her skills.
In the sixth grade Bridgers formed a band with classmates to perform at their school’s annual music festival. In 2009 Bridgers was accepted into the music program at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. While in high school she was a member of the indie rock band Einstein’s Dirty Secret as lead singer and guitarist and the punk band Sloppy Jane as bassist. She also performed solo shows throughout the Los Angeles area.
After high school Bridgers was accepted into Boston’s Berklee College of Music but chose to remain in Los Angeles and pursue her music career rather than take on the expense of college.
Solo music career
In 2014 Bridgers was cast in an iPhone commercial after a talent scout saw her perform with Sloppy Jane. With the income from that gig and appearances in other commercials for such brands as Taco Bell, Intuit, and HomeGoods, she recorded her debut EP, Killer (2015), a three-track collection produced by singer-songwriter Ryan Adams.
After completing her debut studio album, Stranger in the Alps, Bridgers signed with the independent label Dead Oceans, which released the record in 2017. It includes the stinging breakup song “Motion Sickness,” which was inspired by her relationship with Adams. Her solo music career was fully underway, but Bridgers turned to collaborative projects for several years before releasing her second solo studio album, Punisher, in 2020. Like Stranger in the Alps, it received critical acclaim. Among Punisher’s standout tracks are “Garden Song,” which features dreamlike lyrics culled from Bridgers’s life experiences and fears, and “Kyoto,” which pairs a buoyant brass arrangement with reflective verses examining family tensions and personal uncertainty. Punisher established Bridgers as a mainstream artist and was included on many year-end best-album lists. In 2021 Bridgers was nominated for a Grammy Award for best new artist, and Punisher and “Kyoto” garnered Grammy nods as well.
In early 2026 Bridgers debuted songs from her third solo album, Lost Weekend, at several pop-up shows in small venues. That summer she released the wistful “Lost Boys,” the new album’s lead single. Lost Weekend was released in August, with a concert tour of North America and Europe kicking off the next month. Bridgers’s latest offering, which explored topics such as the recent death of her father and included touches of psychedelic rock, received high praise from many critics.
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Collaborative projects
In 2018 Bridgers formed the indie rock group boygenius with singer-songwriters Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus. Its name is a satirical critique of unchecked male entitlement. After releasing a self-titled EP that same year, the group followed up with two projects in 2023: the album The Record and the EP The Rest. In 2024 The Record won the Grammy for best alternative music album and scored a nomination for album of the year. Its track “Not Strong Enough” received a nomination for record of the year and won for best rock performance and best rock song. In February 2024 boygenius announced an indefinite hiatus to allow its members to focus on solo projects.
Bridgers also collaborated with Conor Oberst, front man of Bright Eyes, in the short-lived folk rock duo Better Oblivion Community Center, which released a self-titled album in 2019. Better Oblivion Community Center is best known for its darkly humorous single “Dylan Thomas,” named for the self-destructive Welsh poet and described by Rolling Stone magazine as “an earworm with a black heart.”
Among the other artists Bridgers has collaborated with are Taylor Swift, Muna, SZA, Matty Healy of the 1975, Fiona Apple, and Matt Berninger of the National. In addition, Bridgers has served as a producer for various artists, such as folk country singer Christian Lee Hutson.
Personal life and acting debut
From 2020 to 2022 Bridgers dated Irish actor Paul Mescal. Later she began a relationship with American comedian-turned-filmmaker Bo Burnham.
In 2026 Bridgers made her acting debut in the film Primetime, a psychological thriller based on the reality TV series To Catch a Predator. She also contributed the song “On Video” to its soundtrack.