Phoebe Bridgers’ 10 Best Songs
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The post Phoebe Bridgers’ 10 Best Songs appeared first on Consequence.
As dreamy and witty as she is gloomy, Phoebe Bridgers seems to understand the double-edged sword of being alive.
The indie pop singer-songwriter, who was named our 2020 Artist of the Year in the era of her memorable and thorough Punisher album, has both a sensibility and momentum around her career that feels a bit beyond her years. There have, of course, been variations of the “sad singer-songwriter” throughout the years — Bridgers cites Joni Mitchell as one of her influences — but the font Bridgers herself scrawls in feels like her own, with inspirations like Elliott Smith and Leonard Cohen distilled through a sharp, empathetic 21st century lens.
Following a string of attention-generating singles (“Smoke Signals,” “Funeral,” and “Motion Sickness”), Bridgers had started to find her audience, one that only grew through collaborative work with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, who all joined forces under the moniker boygenius.
Bridgers’ music can be so personal that asking multiple people to round up their ten favorite tracks would probably result in multiple completely different lists. For the sake of ours, we focused on Bridgers’ solo work, rather than including her collaborations under the umbrella of boygenius. While this is by no means a complete list of songs we love from Phoebe Bridgers, it’s a pretty good place to start.
Take a read through her greatest hits below, and scroll to the end for a playlist of all 10 tracks.
— Mary Siroky
10. “Smoke Signals”
For anyone looking to ease new listeners into Phoebe Bridgers’ music, “Smoke Signals” might not be a bad place to start. Not only is her use of metaphor in this song interesting and sharp, the detail-oriented nature of lines like, “I want to live at the Holiday Inn/ Where somebody else makes the bed/ We’ll watch TV while the lights on the street,” are indicative of the dichotomy present in so much of her work.
Sometimes, it feels like her music could be about anyone, making it feel intensely relatable; then, there are moments in songs like “Smoke Signals” that remind us that these are written about very real people, making it all feel so personal to Bridgers. The song takes its time, fading out after more than five minutes and easing the listener back into the real world. — M. Siroky
09. “That Funny Feeling”
If you’d never heard the original, it would be understandable to think that “That Funny Feeling” is a Phoebe Bridgers composition. It contains all the lyrical touchstones (wry observations of irony, visions of the end of the world, named celebrities) underpinned by a devilishly light, strummed acoustic guitar progression. So it only makes sense that Bridgers would record her own rendition (after duetting with Burnham live at Largo in August 2021). Hers remains faithful to the original, but she slows it down and adds horns and ambient noise to make it sound more like a Punisher bonus track. “Hey, what can you say/ We were overdue/ But it’ll be over soon/ You wait” remains the best Phoebe Bridgers lyric not actually written by Phoebe Bridgers. — Spencer Dukoff
08. “Waiting Room”
Although it doesn’t appear on either of her two studio albums, deep cut “Waiting Room” has become a Phoebe Bridgers fan favorite at live shows. The song, which Bridgers wrote when she was 16 and released as part of a 2014 Lost Ark Studio compilation, lacks some of the nuance and sophistication of her more recent work. In fact, it’s almost bracingly sincere, perhaps explaining why Bridgers decided not to re-record the track for Stranger in the Alps or Punisher. But it’s that sincerity and open-heartedness — it really feels like a teenager wrote this song — that has made “Waiting Room” beloved by fans, becoming a top encore request screamed by Pharbz on the 2022 “Reunion Tour.” — S.D.
07. “Garden Song”
“Garden Song” is one of Phoebe Bridgers’ signature surreal adventures, and one that takes her often insular songwriting to fascinating heights. The buoyant arpeggiated guitar line that guides the song provides just enough activity for Bridgers to narrative above, and the melody in the chorus is one of her finest. Come for the garden imagery in the first verse, stay for the caustic dream sequence in the second. — Paolo Ragusa
06. “Funeral”
“Funeral” is far from Phoebe Bridgers’ only song about death, but it might be her best one. Specifically, it’s about Bridgers performing at the funeral for “a kid a year older than me,” but it feels more universal due to its bluntness. “Jesus Christ, I’m so blue all the time/ And that’s just how I feel/ I always have and I always will.” It’s tough to write a more concise description of despair, and it’s cathartic how Bridgers doesn’t shy away from the darkness of that feeling. “Funeral” broaches difficult topics — suicide, nightmares, grief — with an unflinching honesty that lends the song gravitas and credibility. As strange as it sounds, sometimes it feels good to feel sad — and “Funeral” is a vehicle for helping you accessing those uncomfortable emotions that live within all of us. — S.D.
05. “Kyoto”
Despite the semi-uncharacteristically joyful energy of “Kyoto,” the lyrics of the song are true to what so many people love about Bridgers — there’s a melancholic honesty to the story she’s telling, particularly in the way she touches on feelings of imposter syndrome. In a 2020 interview with The New Yorker, she revealed that she disassociates when bad things happen to her, but also when good things happen; she felt inspired to write “Kyoto,” one of her most popular songs to date, after feeling like she was living someone else’s life on tour in Japan. While we can’t all relate to an international tour in the budding stages of a music career, many of us can relate to the sentiment unpacked in this song. — M. Siroky
04. “Moon Song”
“I will wait for the next time you want me like a dog with a bird at your door” is a supreme gut punch of a lyric, and it’s not the only place on this list such a line appears. “Moon Song,” off Bridgers’ spectacular Punisher, revolves around trying to do the impossible for a lover, even if they don’t deserve it. It’s not every day an artist gets into the nitty gritty the way Bridgers does with this song, in which she reveals that she’d put up with horrible treatment if it meant the subject of the song was paying her attention at all. It speaks to Bridgers’ artistry and the way she puts the feelings most people keep locked away on full display. Most people don’t forget the first time they heard the bridge of this song. — M. Siroky
03. “Scott Street”
One line at a time, Phoebe Bridgers slowly paints a beautiful portrait with “Scott Street.” After poetically summing up some very real feelings of isolation and exhaustion in the first verse, she recounts a loaded catch-up talk with an ex that concludes with, “Anyways, don’t be a stranger.” It’s one of those poignant closing lines that seems to encapsulate so much in such a pedestrian phrase, and it’s deservingly one of Phoebe’s most beloved tracks from Stranger in the Alps. — P.R.
02. “I Know the End”
It’s a Phoebe Bridgers rite of passage. “I Know the End” is the closing track off Punisher, and typically serves as the closer of her live shows, too. It’s almost six minutes long — “I Know the End” takes its time to build before crashing into a massive, cathartic crescendo. “The end is here,” she proclaims, letting it all out at full volume. It almost feels like multiple songs in one; what begins as another acoustic track in Bridgers’ familiar lower register picks up tempo a third of the way through, and by the end, the guitars are wailing — and so is Phoebe. “I Know the End” captures chaos and the existential anxiety that accompanies being alive today. — M. Siroky
01. “Motion Sickness”
If you were to isolate all the separate ways Phoebe Bridgers excels as a songwriter and as a performer, you’d be able to pick out each of those elements while listening to “Motion Sickness.” It’s a song about heartbreak, but it’s not punishingly morose. In fact, it’s actually pretty funny. “Why do you sing with an English accent?” she asks an ex-lover. “I guess it’s too late to change it now.” When it comes to balancing dead-serious sincerity with cutting gallows humor, there is no one writing songs today who can touch Bridgers, and “Motion Sickness” acts as a dissertation of sorts for her lyrical talents.
Marshall Vore’s spirited drumming propels the whole enterprise, with muted alt-country electric guitar carrying that momentum toward the breakdown-to-build-up bridge that tees up a euphoric chorus. It’s equally suitable for windows-down singalongs and solitary cry sessions depending on your frame of mind, which is another way to explain the appeal of Bridgers’ catalog at-large. You hopefully will never be presented with a scenario where you can only listen to one Phoebe Bridgers song, but if you had to choose a track that encapsulates the artist’s brilliance, it would be “Motion Sickness.” — S.D.
Phoebe Bridgers’ 10 Best Songs Playlist:
Phoebe Bridgers’ 10 Best Songs
Consequence Staff
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