Taking a lyric from the band’s popular track “Me & My Dog” and shifting it years later in their debut album with “Letter to An Old Poet,” the bridge between boygenius’ first EP to their breakout year in 2023 strikes as an unexpected but natural transition.
“Tell you friend I’ll be alright / In the morning it won’t matter / I wanna be happy / I’m ready to walk into my room without looking for you.” The 2023 lyric is a callback that guides itself into the present. Members Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus can be seen plastered on pins and buttons that highlight their individualities and relationship to the group — a showcase of boygenius’ growth.
The band seems to be shuffling to some sort of finish line that’s not in sight, and 2023 was nothing short of momentous; boygenius is no longer someone’s secret underground indie band. Despite the ending their U.S. and European tours, interviews and behind-the-scenes photos continue to cascade from the band.
After knowing each other for some years, in 2018 Baker, Bridgers and Dacus booked a joint tour. The musicians wrote “Stay Down,” “Me & My Dog” and “Bite the Hand” to promote the bill, which led to the creation of “Souvenir,” “Salt in the Wound” and “Ketchum, ID” upon recording – these tracks ultimately comprised the acclaimed self-titled EP.
It was unclear if boygenius was going to release another project, but the indie rockers continued joint collaborations on solo projects, assuring they still revolved the same musical orbit. In 2021, they performed together as boygenius at the Bread and Roses Fall Benefit Concert, which certified that the EP still held an important role in their discographies beyond being a side project.
By January 2023, the group announced their album “the record” with photos revealed to be a part of boygenius’ February Rolling Stone cover story.
“$20,” “Emily, I’m Sorry” and “True Blue” were the first singles to be released from the debut LP. boygenius was then announced to headline the Re:SET Summer Tour along with an impending Coachella performance, in addition to their subsequent solo “the tour.” On March 1, “Not Strong Enough” and its accompanying music video were released, kicking off a slew of promotional fan activities, including a live premiere for “The Film,” a short film encompassing music videos for the three original singles. At the end of March, boygenius released the debut album.
The anticipation to hear a full-length boygenius project seemed to pay off as the album received critical and commercial acclaim. “the record” debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, number two on Billboard’s Top Alternative Albums Chart and number one on Billboard’s U.S. Top Rock Albums. Praise for “the record” was included in music publications like NME and Rolling Stone, who gave the album a five out of five-star rating. The release of the self-titled 2018 EP had been met with the intrigue of possibility, but “the record” brought about excitement and discussion for what boygenius is now.
2023 was a steady walk in amplifying the group’s music to a larger audience, as the fanbase grew exponentially and extra tour dates were added. The trio sold out Madison Square Garden and the Hollywood Bowl, played Saturday Night Live and received six Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year – all achieved with a debut album.
Coming from the EP into “the record,” boygenius continues to work together on their biggest songwriting strength: capturing an emotion and developing a story within it. Their songwriting articulates what feels inexplicable. Strong imagery and common tropes are used to illustrate the inner complexities at work in what falsely appears to be simple. boygenius listeners are drawn into a shared moment and are guided through the truth of underlying dynamics.
“the record” has been marketed as an album focused purely on friendship — inspired by the friendship of the boygenius members — but the album goes beyond that. It dives into the dynamics of all interpersonal relationships and their ability to shape who we are.
boygenius wants their listeners to think deeply about their personal relationships whether they be friends, romantic partners, family members or community bonds. “Not Strong Enough” allows us to look at how our inner worlds shape how we can show up for others, and “Anticurse” highlights how the people that choose to stick by us, leave us better than who we could have been alone.
These messages come through in the production on the album, notably the culminating harmonies at the end of “Revolution 0.” Dacus and Baker’s harmonizing uplift Bridgers’s exasperated narration, or with Baker and Bridgers’s harmonies under Dacus as she begins to detail the intimate moments she’ll remember between the three on “We’re in Love.”
The music of boygenius’ members are often categorized as “sad girl music,” but these labels overlook the complexities of emotion presented in their work. “the record” explores joy, redemption, grief, self-love and nostalgia. The array of emotion expressed in the album captures many meanings for their listeners, partly why their music had an expansive reach in 2023. Their songwriting doesn’t seek to be a simple pinpoint, but rather a range of experiences.
This past year was an opportunity for boygenius to take their artistry beyond the indie scene they had inhabited for most of their careers – and they accomplished that. The track “Powers” from their second EP, titled “the rest,” neatly summarizes the memories that defined 2023 for the group. It was a record-breaking, awe-striking year that has shifted boygenius into something bigger. The song’s ending lyrics, “The force of our impact, the fission / The hum of our contact, the sound of our collisions,” is emblematic of the impact 2023 had on the trio.
On New Year’s Eve, boygenius posted a YouTube video of Dacus’s first try at “We’re in Love,” recorded during the original sessions of “the record” – insinuating that there may be more to come from boygenius in 2024.
Suzanne Bagia can be reached at [email protected].
