After a long six-year hiatus, indie icon Phoebe Bridgers has returned with her third solo album, Lost Weekend. During her break from the music industry, Bridgers publicly went through a few life-altering events. She opened for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, gained a huge new fanbase, was engaged and subsequently unengaged to actor Paul Mescal, and lost her father. Bridgers has been very public about the complicated relationship she had with her father, and even sings about it in her hit song “Kyoto.” This loss and the mixed feelings that it brought serve as a throughline in many of the songs on her newest album.
“The Outside”
This song immediately stands out in both lyrics and production. Bridgers uses a vocoder on her vocals, creating a unique robotic sound. The lyrics immediately place the listener into her headspace on the day of her father’s funeral. The first lyrics, “Crying in a suit and tie / But you should see the other guy,” come out detached due to the vocal effects, and illustrate her feelings of dissociation. As the song progresses, Bridgers details other events in her life, like seeing her father punch a hole in the wall in her childhood, and more recent events like crowd surfing at her concerts, depicting how she’s always felt disconnected from her life. The only time she breaks the mechanical effect is during the short chorus “When I am on the outside, watching,” further placing emphasis on how she is far away from her life, not processing major events such as her father’s death.
“Still Standing”
When Bridgers was interviewed by Lost Signal about this song, she said, “This song is about my dad who I miss very much.” The lyrics are extremely vulnerable, and much of the song is spent detailing the situations of abuse she grew up in, with lines like “I wasn’t too young to understand / I just didn’t think it was so bad.” She ends the song acknowledging that despite the complications of their relationship during her upbringing, she still mourns her father, confessing, “I can’t imagine you dead / But you are everyday / Thank you for everything.”
“Never Going Back!”
This song is a short interlude that repeats “Never going back again / The way it used to be is not the way it is.” It’s to the point, and conveys Bridgers’ acceptance that her life will never be the same again. She ends the song with a voicemail from her father, something she’s done before on songs like “Summers End.” In the voicemail, her father askes her to call him when she’s free from “being a rockstar.” This voicemail really emphasizes the contrasting feelings of grief that Bridgers is facing. With only one song between “Still Standing” and “Never Going Back,” the devastating lyrics of the former are contrasted with the bittersweet voicemail ending the latter.
“Lost Weekend (Reprise)”
The final song in the album serves as a kind of closure. Instrumentally, the song features a church-sounding organ, making the song feel like a hymn. She starts the song by bluntly stating “He never made it a day in a shirt / He’s not coming back as a bird / He’s not coming back,” showing that she understands no matter what she does, her father is still dead. She reflects on their relationship, singing “I still live by the things he taught me / Like how to forgive when they’re not sorry”; a lyric that has a double meaning, as forgiveness is a generic life skill one’s parents would teach them, but in her specific case, she had to learn to forgive her father for the abuse she faced growing up.
The song, as well as the album, ends on a hopeful note as Bridgers says, “But we’re gonna be alright / Me and you / You know me and I won’t ever let you forget,” concluding the emotional journey of the album. Bridgers performs this as one of the last songs on her current tour, and her wardrobe change for it really illustrates the song’s purpose for me. She changes from the funeral black gown she wears for the majority of the show into an all white outfit that glows in the darkness of the arena, along with her platinum blonde hair and white glitter teardrop makeup. The white further signifies the state of acceptance and healing she is in, in in this song and in her life.
Final Thoughts
This album really solidifies Bridgers’ place as one of the most profound lyricists alive right now. The healing journey she portrays throughout the album is so visceral, and the storytelling shows that grieving isn’t always a cookie-cutter experience, and the relationships you keep throughout your life will constantly evolve. Bridgers is currently on a world tour, where she is performing this album and restricting all use of phones, allowing her to connect with the audience in a more personal manner. Before performing “Still Standing,” Bridgers speaks a bit about her father before dedicating the song to anyone who is dealing with complicated parental relationships. That song and the album as a whole tell a story of love and loss, and do so beautifully. As a fan, this album was totally worth the wait, and this album is one I will continue to return to.