Listening to boygenius on Repeat, Among Other Things
A huge pop culture week for gays who wear Doc Martens and/or fun earrings.
Listening to boygenius on Repeat
I can’t stop listening to boygenius. More specifically, I can’t stop listening to their track “Letter To An Old Poet” off their debut album the record, which was released a week ago today, as of writing.
Like many other gay twentysomethings with a chemical imbalance and a pair of Doc Martens, the record is not my first encounter with the indie rock supergroup and its members. Consisting of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus — each a modern paragon of queer music in their own right — boygenius (yes, boygenius, in all lowercase) has been a part of my personal life for a few years now.
Although their self-titled EP was released in 2018, I never listened to boygenius until early 2021, probably after I had been a regular listener to Bridgers’ music for some time. The track “Me & My Dog” off of that record was my gateway drug, and back then, I found myself in a similar spell in which I find myself now.
I spent the last two months of the second semester of my junior year of college in a literal haze, to the point where I honestly don’t remember much of it outside of “Me & My Dog” stringing it all together. I was smoking entirely too much weed, binge drinking unsupervised every weekend, struggling with my sexuality (surprise! I don’t like men!), and so desperate for any kind of human connection in a post/ongoing pandemic college environment that I was creating fake relationships in my head with people that didn’t match who they were or how I felt about them in reality.
I was consumed by anxiety and insecurity. And yet, I listened to that song over and over and over, lying in my bed on a warm spring evening and staring up at the dull ceiling of my college apartment feeling oddly comforted by Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus crooning in perfect harmony. I felt like every word of the song’s chorus resonated, like boygenius wrote the song for me and only me: “I wanna be emaciated / I wanna hear one song without thinking of you / I wish I was on a spaceship / Just me and my dog and an impossible view”.
I wanna be emaciated.
Such a specific, powerful descriptor. And yet, so accurate to how I felt at the time.
The good news is that I think I have grown since then. Or rather, instead of experiencing the growing pains of a 21-year-old who doesn’t know anything about herself, I am now experiencing the growing pains of a 23-year-old who now knows slightly more about herself.
Imagine my delight upon hearing “Letter To An Old Poet” for the first time and realizing that boygenius has grown as well.
“Letter To An Old Poet” is a pseudo-sequel to “Me & My Dog”, both sonically and lyrically. It has a similar melody to “Me & My Dog”, underscored by softer, more hopeful piano notes.
Most notably, when it sounds like boygenius is about to reprise the chorus of “Me & My Dog”, the lyrics have changed: “I wanna be happy, I’m ready / To walk into my room without looking for you / I’ll go up to the top of our building / And remember my dog when I see the full moon”.
Boygenius no longer wants to be emaciated. They are on Earth instead of on a spaceship. Bittersweetly, there is no dog anymore. The band has grown up and healed with time. Just like I have. Just like a lot of boygenius’s audience has as well. And how meaningful is that to hear it reflected in song, which can so often be a better marker of time in our lives than actual time itself?
I love how even when poorly mixed together (by yours truly) the choruses of “Letter To An Old Poet” and “Me & My Dog” somewhat align when Phoebe Bridgers sings “without looking for you” and “without thinking of you”, respectively. It happens again with the word “dog”. Additionally, there’s a bit of a pause within the phrase “I wanna be happy, I’m ready,” to where you might think Bridgers is going to sing “emaciated” instead of “happy”. It’s subtle, but the subversion of expectations in that moment floored me. And I have to agree: I wanna be happy, I’m ready.
As an aside, I think any and all artists’ work should be able to speak for itself without any prior knowledge of their previous work. If all art was only meant to be consumed by those who understand the choices behind every single technique, every single detail of the artist’s personal life, every single inspiration or reference… well, that’s just alienating, isn’t it?
Prior knowledge of an artist’s previous works should enhance the experience one has when consuming the newer one, never define it. And wow, the record understands this undeniably well. It is truly a treat for former boygenius listeners as well as fans of the members’ own work as individuals. And isn’t that just what a supergroup should be?
The boys really are geniuses.
Among Other Things
In other huge news for an entirely different demographic of gay people, the trailer for Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated Barbie movie was released this week! Femme lesbians who wear fun dangly earrings (me) and gay twinks (the majority of my friend group) fell to the ground and wept tears of joy.
I actually never liked playing with Barbie dolls as a kid. It was because of internalized misogyny and that’s a whole other side of my personal lore that we don’t need to get into today. I can assure you that I will have a long essay about my personal experience with gender coming to the blog at some point. I did (and still do) love My Little Pony though and there has to be some insane internalized explanation for the fact that I was more comfortable expressing traditional feminity through pastel, magical horses than normal-looking humans.
Regardless of my limited experience with the toy line itself, I am so excited about this movie. How could you not be?! Margot Robbie is always a knockout and I couldn’t be more pleased with the supporting cast which includes some favorite personalities of mine including Simu Liu and Kate McKinnon.
It looks fun. It looks camp. It looks COLORFUL! And if the rumors about the plot being a Truman Show, Life-Size-esque venture into the “real world” for Barbie are true, then I already know I’ll love it even more. With Gerwig’s previous track record of Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), I have complete faith in her to deliver nothing less than a 4/5 star movie.
Good old-fashioned FUN at the movies is back, and me and my girls will be arriving on July 21st, opening day, dressed in our best heels, girly pink sundresses, and quirky earrings from Etsy handmade by some lesbian in Bushwick.
And then we will be changing into black tie formal immediately after because Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer releases the same day.
Are you listening to boygenius’ the record? What is your favorite song from it? What are you wearing to Barbie? Is Ryan Gosling a good Ken? Let me know in the comments!
