“Don’t Play Phoebe Bridgers Right Now” and Why I Still Will: Analyzing Modern Melancholy

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Photo Courtesy of Twitter

Author: Kate Goode

My dear friend Maeve, with her sage wisdom, likes to check me before I queue a song. “Kate, I love you but you cannot read a vibe,” she told me once. Why do this? Simply put, because she is correct: I have a reputation. Much to the chagrin of all listening, I have no qualms about interrupting a pattern of robust tones in Maeve’s classic rock for the solemn potence in the lyrics to “Crash into Me” by the Dave Matthews Band. Even though I’m not allowed on aux at social functions now, I passionately defend the value of categorically sad songs.

I feel an urge to explain this stance from an anthropological lens. I imagine my ancestors immigrating from Ireland, listening to their generational equivalent of Frank Ocean, embracing the euphonious harmonies of the fiddle, a tear in their eye. Responsibility could be placed on the notoriously beautiful and sad musical culture of Irish-Americans, most songs tinged with themes of homesickness, famine, loss, grief, fleeting youth, or whiskey. 

Despite personal explanations I have offered, the importance of art thematically concerning pain stands. Shakespeare’s arguably most famous works are tragedies; Hamlet confronts grief, Macbeth mentions guilt, and Romeo and Juliet examines heartbreak. The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh is known to be the view from a window in the Saint Paul asylum Van Gogh stayed, the dark cypress symbolizing his severe depression. Indisputably, some of society’s most monumental literary and visual art concerns itself with sadness and pain – why wouldn’t music follow this trend? 

While melancholic music and art maintain similar themes, experiences and expression have changed with the progression of the world. I can’t recall the last time I heard a modern song where an artist was inspired by the injustices of monarchy, feudal revolution, or a lover not writing letters back during World Wars. Often, sad music now concerns itself with facets of modern life. “deja vu” by Olivia Rodrigo describes the heartbreak of watching an ex-lover on social media take their new romantic interest to the places the two of them went first. 

The most significant emergence in the modern emotional music genre is the rise of Phoebe Bridgers. The debatable highlight of her discography lies in her song “Funeral”, which exemplifies Bridgers’ multi-level approach to emotional music. She introduces the song with the main conflict, “I’m singing at a funeral tomorrow / for a kid a year older than me.” Shortly after this admission, Bridgers describes a dream where she is drowning, screaming for help, and disregarded by her friends on the shore. She uses distorted vocals at the start of the stanza, a humming that almost sounds like “screaming underwater.” The climax of the song is her lowest, singing, “Last night I blacked out in my car, and I woke up in my childhood bed / wishing I was someone else, feeling sorry for myself…” The next line changes the course of the song. “…Then I remembered, someone’s kid is dead.” This line is a confrontation: Bridgers’ sadness and hatred of her world where no one seems to care and her depression is relentless could not hold a candle to the pain of losing a child. 

The chorus is direct: “Jesus Christ, I’m so blue all the time…and that’s just how I feel / I always have and I always will.” Many could brush this off as lazy lyricism, but those well-versed in Phoebe’s discography know there is more than what meets the eye in her diction. Each line uses the pronoun ‘I’. Bridgers does not talk about a son or a father, or a crowd waving as she drowns. The focus is her. There is disappointment. Her sadness is chronic; it is irrevocable. It is hers. She is not validating herself – this song is a look in the mirror and a subsequent sigh. She closes out this song saying that, “It’s 4 A.M. / and I’m doing nothing / again.” To her, this song is licking her wounds. 

At this point, one might wonder if a four minute song was worth this painstaking analysis. Yet, in the context of modern music and pain, I argue it is. This song is an incredibly thorough and clever artistic translation of feelings into sound, exemplified through not only the lyrics but the production as well. This is not just a song about a rough time in a musician’s life. It is not just about grief, or self-destruction. This is a piece about irreparable sadness – the hopelessness that comes with pain that feels almost intrinsic, or terminal. 

I wish I could clearly recall my first listen; sometimes I even hope I get hit on the head in the right spot so I could forget and experience it all over again. What I do recall is listening to it in my quarantined, hibernation-like state in late 2020, where my day consisted of getting out of bed for the occasional cup of tea or bowl of Extra Toasty Cheez-its and evading the real world as often and as easily as possible. I studied “Funeral” dutifully, journaled about it, sent it to every friend with even tangentially similar taste to me. My fixation was enigmatic at times, but this song articulated my sadness and feelings of stagnation adroitly. Of course, I have grown from the point of my life when I related to being “so blue all the time” now that life has resumed. Yet, when I hear the song’s sweet, acoustic guitar, I am immersed in a comfort and understanding only really connecting to music can bring. 

I can understand apprehension towards and avoidance of sad songs. Conversely, I even believe that some songs can articulate joy, love and happiness better than words alone, like the feeling of giddiness I get hearing “Hey Ya!” by Outkast or the indestructibility I feel when “Bonfire” by Childish Gambino comes on. But the experience of pain is a common denominator of humanity. It is unjustifiable through evolutionary logic, sociological patterns, or economic ventures – why would someone produce something sad when happiness is far more marketable? Is it possible that an early sapiens who drew cave art of a neanderthal with a broken heart was more likely to reproduce and pass this somber trait to its offspring? Does society favor the emotional? 

Perhaps the answer is a blend: the nature of sadness, albeit generationally dynamic, is constant. A particularly harsh aspect of depression is convincing the individual sufferer they are alone, their feelings are abnormal, and that no one else can understand. With melancholic art, the onlooker is overtaken with ambivalence – the source of their sadness grips them, tightens their throat, and reminds them of their overwhelming hurt. Then, suddenly, they’re no longer alone. They are understood. It’s as if the art burst from the limitations of its physical form, touched their back, gave them a hug, or just said “it’s okay, I know.” Sadness and pain in art embraces the viewer. 

Sadness in the 21st century has manifested itself into an incomprehensible shadow of a beast; the long term effects of the internet, growing income disparity, and political polarization continue to build overwhelming unrest and anxiety. People are feeling more alone and out of touch than ever. That said, so long as humans are still marching into the great unknown, the great spectrum of emotion will be translated to art. And if I can’t convince you in this analysis that you are not alone, I’m sure Phoebe’s cooking up an album. That’ll do the trick. 

 

Kate Goode | KXSU Volunteer Reporter

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