boygenius infodump

boygenius is an indie-rock supergroup from the usa. the three members are julien baker, lucy dacus, and phoebe bridgers. i must admit i am extremely autistic about them. this is a shame because when i obsess over something, it can be hard to talk to my friends about it, even if they share the interest. the problem is that i care more than anyone else and therefore i can only monologue, i am five steps ahead of everyone else in the boygenius conversation. so here it is for your reading pleasure: my boygenius monologue. 

first, a disclaimer. i am not going to speculate about these three women's personal lives or relationships. some of y'all are fucking gross. the amount of tiktoks i see of you freaks obsessing over who they're dating is insane and nasty behavior and you need to cut that shit out. however when so much of their art is autobiographical the line might get a little muddy.

it is imperative to discuss each of the three members individually before discussing their music as a group. phoebe bridgers is the most popular in the mainstream out of all of the three i believe. it is kind of hard to tell at this point for me, i'm in so deep. she has two excellent albums outside of the group and, among other claims to fame, a feature on the best taylor swift song under ten minutes argue with the wall. i prefer punisher as an album to stranger in the alps just because i enjoy more of the songs in total. my all time favorite song of hers is graceland too. it's about loving someone in pain, loving someone hates themself. "ate a sleeve of saltines on my floor and knew that i would do anything you want me to." phoebe uses painfully simple and honest language in this song to rip your heart out and make you think of that friend. you know that friend. you think of that friend and you would do "whatever she wants". you might be that friend. loving someone who is hurting is a painfully helpless experience a lot of the time. the only thing you can do is love them. this song feels exactly how the experience it's describing feels, and this is the highest compliment. it feels like love and it feels like devotion and it feels like not pity but sadness on behalf of someone else. 

i do in fact have a pasasocial crush on julien baker however comma this will not factor into my extremely objective and correct analysis of her music. her music is bone crushingly sad. i like it a lot. the way she sings it's like she's using her voice as a weapon. she Unhinges Her Jaw like a snake it kicks ass and i'm madly in love with her. appointments is by far my favorite song of hers. this song is for when you are the graceland too friend. "i know that i'm not what you wanted, am i?" this song is for when you feel bad for being a burden on people in your life, and you feel bad because your mental illness is making you feel bad but you want to be okay. "maybe it's all gonna turn out all right, i know that it's not but i have to believe that it is." her voice is powerful, she can Belt. she uses this power for evil (making me sad). i really do like her music but i can only listen to it when i'm by myself because it feels like she's exposing my vulnerabilities to anybody i would be in the room with which is embarrassing so we blast turn out the lights through our headphones in solitude. 

okay let's talk about lucy dacus. last year i was in the top %0.05 of lucy dacus listeners which is pretty impressive for a deaf bitch so i will be referred to as the de facto lucy dacus expert in any room i'm in from now on unless she herself is there. if i'm ever in the same room as lucy dacus we will have higher priorities than who can list every lyric she's ever written. i think historians might be my favorite album ever so we're going to talk about night shift. you know this song. it's her most popular one for a good reason. i'm a little gatekeepy about it, none of you get it like i get it. night shift is the song you scream alone in your room when you're thinking about One Specific Person. the song starts mellow ("you said my music was mellow"). it's about someone in your life you Were close with, and the pain of once having a close relationship Before with them bleeds through the lyrics. "i feel no need to forgive you, but i might as well," "don't hold your breath, forget you ever saw me at my best," ""what was the plan, absolve your guilt and shake hands?" then the second half starts and you dance like you're ripping your own hair out. when she sings the final "you've got a nine to five so i'll take the night shift" you take two bullets to the chest. if there is one thing lucy dacus knows how to do it's make a bangin' tune and this tune is sure does bang. this song rips you in half. 

now we can talk about the group. boygenius had a 2018 self-titled ep that i became obsessed with in summer of 2022. my favorite song on it for a long time was salt in the wound, but now i'm on a me and my dog kick. let's talk about all of them just in case. 

bite the hand is a beautiful song and to me it's about asexuality in a romantic relationship. whatever the intended meaning was, i stick with my interpretation because it hits for me. "i can't love you how you want me to". so true! i can't! "what do you think will change?" do you think i will start wanting to have sex? "bite the hand that feeds me" am i inherently biting the hand by being myself? boy it sure does feel like it sometimes. being asexual and having a relationship that's in any way romantic with someone who isn't asexual can hurt a lot. you feel like you're always letting them down and you can't ever love them how they want you to. 

me and my dog is the sister song to the last song on the record so we will discuss it then. put a pin in it for now. 

souvenir and stay down i like for similar reasons, i don't necessarily pick apart the lyrics for these two, i like the melodies. obviously these songs are two very different experiences, but something about them is hypnotic. i do like stay down a bit more because it's very screamable. if i saw julien baker sing "push me down into the water like a sinner, hold me under and i'll never come up again, i'll just stay down" live i think i would experience organ failure. just typing out these lyrics feels disingenuous because just reading the words does not convey the lyric, you wouldn't know the tempo or the melody or anything but the words themselves. don't get me wrong, the actual words are beautiful, but that's poetry. not lyrics. julien baker's voice is part of the reason i like that part of the song so much, there's no way i would be writing this absolute monster of an essay if this was just a series of poems. 

salt in the wound is a song that kills you. salt in the wound is for when you go into a room with no windows, turn out the lights (ha) and blast this song because you're exhausted and you're mad and need catharsis. salt in the wound is Cathartic. "i'm gnashing my teeth, like a child of cain, if this is a prison i'm willing to burn my own chain" the words in this song are so carefully chosen and clever. "you butter me up and sit down to eat" HELLO?????? i don't know what to say that this song hasn't already said. this song turns my brain off and makes me into an animal. 

ketchum, id is a song about home. it's soft and lonely. it's when you're home from college for the summer and you're exhausted and you miss your friends. unfortunately it's very me-coded recently. "giving the sorrow some company, nothing to say, stay on the phone" it's the song you listen to when you're shut down exhausted and it's 7pm and you're laying down on your bed waiting to have enough energy to do anything except stare at the wall. "i am never anywhere i go, when i'm home i'm never there long enough to know"

that ep had me in a chokehold, absolutely destroyed. there was carnage. then, in march of this year, the record dropped. twelve fantastic songs long and a short film directed by kristen stewart (??????). i am not exaggerating when i tell you this album was the only thing i listened to for months. it has not freed me from it's grasp still. i measure time based on how many playthroughs of the record i can listen to. usually i'm not a listen to the whole album in order type of person (with the exception of melodrama by lorde) but something about this album demands to be listened to in order. so of course it will be discussed in order.

without you without them is an a cappella song that could not do a better job of opening the album. short and sweet, this song is about friendship and wanting to be close to someone and "hear your story and be a part of it". the harmonies match the words and solidify the theme of interconnectedness, and the lyric "i want to hear your story and be a part of it" is foreshadowing for we're in love.

$20 is one of those songs where you like all of it, but you're waiting for That Part. the part at the end. you know what i'm talking about. i'm convinced which part you chose to sing along to is a personality test. each member sings a different overlapping part until phoebe bridgers is just screaming at you to borrow twenty dollars and you think, "i would do anything she wants me to". it's a song about the experience described in souvenir, but now you're angry about it. 

emily i'm sorry is a song for lesbians. thank you for your service, lesbians. it's very much a phoebe bridgers vocals Moment. it's full of references to her other music. the music video is phoebe bridgers in front of some monster trucks going to fucking town behind her. maybe it's my latent 8 year old boy instincts but this is my favorite music video. this song is a narrative, more so than most of the others. i don't know who emily is, but i connect with the song anyways. this song also introduces the car crash motif, which i fucking love. nothing gets me frothing at the mouth like a motif. car crashes especially as a metaphor for a mental health crisis is very effective and has some  very great visuals. amazing imagery well done everyone. once again thanks lesbians without you we wouldn't have this banger.

true blue is the song you play when you want to think about how much you love your best friend. "and it feels good to be known so well, i can't hide from you like i hide from myself" it feels reductive to try to explain these lyrics. if you've ever had a friend you would like this song. "i remember who i am when i'm with you" in the music video, lucy dacus paints a wall blue and makes out with her friends which by the way if you are not making out with your friends take a minute to reevaluate. 

cool about it absolutely eviscerated me upon release. none of you get it like i get it. i don't care about the intended meaning, i refuse to read the genius annotations, this song is about how i personally fell in semi-requited love with one of my best friends who is dating someone else. "i'm trying to be cool about it, feeling like an absolute fool about it, wishing you were kind enough to be cruel about it." this song is so important in my life and came out at such a perfect time for me that there's nothing i can say about it that isn't humiliating. 

not strong enough is The song of the summer. it's for when your life is kind of shitty and a little bit falling apart but you want to not feel like shit and it's sunny out. you can get away with playing this song around other people. "always an angel never a god" this song also brings back the famous car crash motif, asking "do they see us getting scraped up off the pavement". lucy dacus gets to steal the show at the end of the song and sing the best bit. this song is for jump-dancing around your room or speeding down the highway. it's a High Energy Event. 

and then immediately after that the energy comes right down with revolution 0. this song lulls you to sleep in a good way. the second half is a lullaby to my little sleepy guy soul.the way it fades in and out it just so soothing. 

lightning round: leonard cohen is for friendship in a happy way, satanist is for friendship in an angry way, and we're in love is for friendship in a sad way. we're in love is the song i listen to when i want to be consumed by and drown in my love for my friends. this song contains the taylor swift reference "i could go on and on and on, and i will" and also brings back the reincarnation motif from without you without them. anti-curse is what you listen to when all the love you had for your friends has slowly started to change you into a person you like. and then you listen to letter to an old poet. 

me and my dog is the precursor to letter to an old poet. it's a song about having a panic attack, and you just want to get out.t "i never said i'd be all right, just thought i could hold myself together". when you listen to letter to an old poet, you realize that they sound very similar. the lyrics match up, almost but not quite. the song itself is about being out of an abusive relationship and reflecting on it. it's cathartic. when someone has had so much power over you, there's nothing you want to scream more than "you're not special, you're evil. you don't get to tell me to calm down. you made me feel like an equal, but i'm better than you and you should know that by now". the melody resolves at the end, showing the end of the album and closure. 

honestly really and truly i could go on and on and on (and i will) but i am absolutely exhausted and i've written over two and a half thousand words that no one but me will read so you know what it's time to call it.