On 'the record,' boygenius honors how friendship shapes our very sense of self
falling in love," she says, "It
was
falling in love." You can hear a reverence for friendship when Dacus sings, "It feels good to be known so well" on the standout single "True Blue." Or in the video for "Not Strong Enough," composed of footage they shot of a day spent together at an amusement park making each other laugh, posing for goofy photos, falling asleep on each other's shoulders. Or in the touching last line of "Leonard Cohen," another Dacus-led song dedicated to her bandmates: "I never thought you'd happen to me."
Many songs on the record were written directly about experiences the three have shared. The opening verse of "Leonard Cohen," for example, narrates a long drive they took during which Bridgers urged them all to listen closely to a song she adored and then, having gotten so absorbed in her listening, missed their exit. The lyrics frame the mistake, and the extra hour it added to their drive, as an opportunity: "It gave us more time to embarrass ourselves / telling stories we wouldn't tell anyone else." Baker started writing "Anti-Curse" after going swimming in a too-high tide during a boygenius writing trip in Malibu, she told
Rolling Stone
, and the near-drowning brought her a strange kind of calm. In "Anti-Curse," she sings of "making peace with my inevitable death" and in the very next line, the first thing she thinks of is her loved ones: "I guess I did alright, considering / Tried to be a halfway decent friend."
It's not just the lyrics of these songs that are a testament to these relationships, but the structures themselves. In the climax of "Not Strong Enough," each member sings the same lyric "always an angel, never a god" in her own emotional cadence over mounting tension, until the thundering instrumentation drops out and one single voice takes the lead, immediately surrounded by the others' harmonies. Something similar happens in "$20," where each voice sings distinct lyrics in the bridge, complementing each other's rage and resignation. In writing songs this way, each singer is given space to inhabit her own perspective and personality without contradicting the others, their voices frequently overlapping like an urgent and spirited conversation with your best friend. "Satanist" sounds lighthearted, but it's essentially a song about whether someone would stand by us if we changed. Each verse pictures a slightly different path, but that question
would you still love me if...?
hovers over them all; there's something sweet about hearing each bandmate name that fear in her own way, then join in singing on her friends' verses as if quietly answering in the affirmative.
These are some of the album's most profound moments: not just celebrations of friendship but considerations of the more complicated, difficult corners of this type of intimacy. "We're In Love," a swooning, Dacus-led ballad, is a tribute to Bridgers and Baker. It's an intense song, one that acknowledges the risks of such vulnerability from its very first line: "You could absolutely break my heart / That's how I know that we're in love." It doesn't take the long-term certainty of this connection for granted: "If you rewrite your life," Dacus sings later, "may I still play a part? / In the next one, will you find me?" Baker initially rejected the song, arguing to keep it off
the record
later, after coming around to it, she admitted that the song is a reminder that "it's still a learning process" for her "to know the difference between being scrutinized and being seen." In light of Baker's admission, the song sounds like the acknowledgement of a simple truth: that our friends might truly know us our flaws and our mistakes included and keep choosing to love us anyway.
The album's final track, "Letter To An Old Poet," starts with heartbreak, too. When Bridgers softly sings, "I love you / I don't know why / I just do," she isn't marveling at the wonder of being close to someone but exhausted by the mess of it, surveying the fallout from a toxic entanglement. But as the song progresses and Baker and Dacus join her on harmonies, she gains her nerve. She doesn't sing alone for the rest of the song. "You don't know me," they all sing, defiant, and then the song is suddenly familiar, interpolating the cathartic end of "Me and My Dog" from the
boygenius
EP. The melody and imagery Bridgers, her dog, the moon are the same as that earlier song, but here, one lyric inverts the former version's heartache: "I want to be happy."
When the three members sing a similar line together at the end of "Me and My Dog," it seems to validate the narrator's pain, to amplify it and make it legible. At the end of "Letter To An Old Poet," meanwhile, after hearing Bridgers admit both her exhaustion and growing self-regard, the lyric sounds like the lifting of a burden. "I can't feel it yet," they sing in the album's final line, "but I am waiting." When our friends share our truth, these songs imply, it can help us see ourselves in a new light: as someone whose pain is meaningful but temporary; as someone capable of patience and deserving of happiness. And if we can't see these things in ourselves,
the record
demonstrates what it means to see them in each other, to sing backup on someone else's verse until we're ready to write our own. We need these essential effects of friendship, these songs seem to say: Where would we be without them?
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Friday, March 31, 2023 at 9:01 am