Phoebe Bridgers is known for slow, sad ballads full of piercing turns of phrase. Her work in that format is so potent that it’s inspired a whole generation of imitators. But Bridgers does have other tricks in her bag. When she rocks out, it’s often transcendent. And now we know just how good it can be when she rocks out joyfully.
“Bobby,” one of many highlights on the singer-songwriter’s long-awaited Lost Weekend, feels both as bright as “Kyoto” and as apocalyptic as “I Know The End,” the two loudest offerings on her 2020 stunner Punisher. But unlike those bitter, doom-laden anthems, this song’s great subject is romance. Buoyed by a soaring, resplendent arrangement as planetarium-ready as any of the album’s slow jams, Bridgers captures the thrill of falling madly in love.
Her lyrics are strewn with little details that feel like private secrets (“I saw you slow dancing alone in your room/ I wanted to buy you a new pair of shoes”) and allusions to an attraction verging on maniacal (“And if you didn’t like either one of my friends/ I’d kill them, I’d kill them”). It all leads to a portrait of domestic bliss, heartwarming and intimate and once again vague enough to avoid oversharing: “Now I sleep in your shirts and you live in my house/ You sing in the shower, I talk to myself/ We’ve got stars on the ceiling and clothes on the floor/ And a thing in a box I don’t touch anymore.”
Bridgers delivers these lines in breathless, spiraling melodies, over urgent strums, spectral synths, and drums so booming they might leave cracks in the fabric of space and time. And maybe this love is on that earth-shaking scale: As “Bobby” reaches its breathtaking finale, her “This could be the end of wanting” refrain is pared down, one more open-ended twist from one of the finest writers in rock. “This could be the end,” Bridgers and her lover sing together against the surging backdrop, obsession and oblivion blurring together into the same fireworks display. —Chris
