Phoebe Bridgers on sad music — and why her next challenge is to write happy songs that don't make her cringe
‘People just think you’re smarter if you’re sad,’ the singer-songwriter said in a Q interview
Phoebe Bridgers has found massive success — including four Grammy nominations for her 2020 album, Punisher — thanks to her talent for writing sad-girl anthems that are both extremely specific and deeply relatable.
In an interview with Q's Tom Power, Bridgers said she's been writing sad songs from the time she was 10 years old. "I'm, a white girl from Pasadena, which is, like, a pretty nice suburb. So, I don't know. I was diving into some past life pain or something," she said with a laugh.
As a musician who's achieved fame by penning devastatingly personal songs, it might come as a surprise that songwriting isn't a particularly emotional experience for Bridgers. She said she has "dissociative tendencies" when she writes that help her produce her most melancholic music.
"When I'm a little bit more removed and, like, not feeling it 100 per cent when I'm writing it — just kind of writing whatever comes — those tend to be kind of the heaviest songs," she said.
Bridgers told Power she thinks "it's easier to be sincere when you're sad," but finds it boring to only write about the darkness in life. Her next challenge is to write about her joyful moments with the same level of sincerity and vulnerability that's present in her sad songs.
"People just think you're smarter if you're sad," she said. "I think that peppy love songs get kind of a bad rap as being dumb. And I think my next challenge in my life is to have a way to write about happiness that doesn't make me cringe."
Bridgers said she's also conscious of the fact that her music might lose its mystery the more known she becomes.
"The only thing that I have a hang up about is sounding dumb," she said. "Like, I don't want to say a bunch of exact details of something that's happening [in my life] that everybody knows happened…. Then there's nothing to find [in the music] — and I hate that."
The full interview with Phoebe Bridgers is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Written by Vivian Rashotte. Interview produced by Vanessa Nigro.