Phoebe Bridgers
In a recent interview on the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast with Brian Hiatt, indie rock star Phoebe Bridgers of Pasadena spoke about her songwriting methods, the making of her latest album “Punisher,” and briefly touched on her feelings about the influences that fellow Pasadenan Eddie Van, who died two weeks ago at the age of 65, and the legendary Jackson Browne, who grew up in neighboring Highland Park, have had on her musically.
For one thing, the 26-year-old Bridgers, a graduate of the Los Angeles County School for the Arts, “whisper-sings all of her song sketches into her phone’s voice memos app,” Hiatt writes.
“I’ll write a song and then it’ll be in a completely different key than something I can sing because I whispered the entire time when I was writing it,” says Bridgers.
For another, she handwrites all of her lyrics, mainly because, “I have a hard time typing them on a computer. Maybe it just doesn’t make me feel cool,” Bridgers tells Hiatt. “But also, one of my friends told me my cursive is like I’m writing letters home from the war in, like, the 1800s. And I write faster in cursive. When I print, it looks like an 8-year-old.”
But perhaps most important, “She believes there’s a timelessness to writing songs on guitar,” Hiatt writes.
“There’s just some sort of longevity with making guitar-based music. Especially if you don’t stick to a specific genre, and you always write good songs. You have the chance to be, like, a John Prine character, where his last record was one of his best-selling records,” Bridgers tells Hiatt.
“I think there will always be a place for it. Someone like Jackson Browne, a lot of his music sounds dated. You can say the exact year that something came out because of a drum sound. But because he’s a great songwriter, he transcends that.”
As for Van Halen, “… I definitely learned a lot of Van Halen on guitar. Van Halen is super, super-seminal,” says Bridgers, who recalled once busking at the Pasadena Farmers’ Market.
“But also, they were one the ones who invented the rider trick of [no brown] M&Ms, right? Absolutely love that” she said of the famous contract clause.
“There’s nothing better than when you forget to change your rider from the United States to Europe, and you have guacamole on your rider in the States. And then you get to Germany, and it’s in a can and it’s called avocado sauce,” she said.
To read the whole interview, visit: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/phoebe-bridgers-rollingstone-interview-1084205/
