I, a young white female, was able to meet other young white females who had contacts with journalists. “There’s a big conversation about privilege to be had. She adds an important clarification, though. “When a team of amazing fact-checkers and journalists unafraid of actual lawsuits are on your side… I feel really lucky I met so many people who were willing to go to bat for me.” “The shitty thing was before.” She says a former Adams representative told her the exposé had been canned, only for the New York Times journalist to reassure her it’d make the cut. “Once everybody knew, it was great,” Bridgers says today.
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“The Strokes are an industry plant – literally!”Īdams strongly denied all the allegations against him, describing them as “extremely serious and outlandish”, and characterised them as “grousing by disgruntled individuals” who blamed him for “personal or professional disappointments”. I came upstairs and he was completely nude.” She said Adams became emotionally abusive and, after inviting her on tour after their break-up, pushed things too far: “He asked me to bring him something in his hotel room.
But a few weeks later, their “brief, consensual fling”, as Bridgers described it, turned sour. “There was a mythology around him,” Bridgers told the paper, going on to say that he began to flirt with her via text message, and that marriage was mentioned within the first week. In 2019, Bridgers was one of several women – including his ex-wife, the actor and singer Mandy Moore – to speak out against singer-songwriter and producer Ryan Adams in The New York Times, alleging years of emotional and sexual harassment it was later reported that he had exchanged “explicit online communications” with a 14-year-old girl.Īdams released Bridgers’ first EP, ‘Killer’, on his record label Pax-Am in 2015, and the two began a romantic relationship. Who, exactly, is the person “ born under Scorpio skies”? Bridgers is forthright: “I don’t know if this is true, but he told me this himself: Ryan Adams is a triple Scorpio.” On the aforementioned ‘Kyoto’, the album’s second single and perhaps her most upbeat release to date – a battle cry about the guilt of having a bad time in a perfect place – one specific line prompts a question.
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‘Punisher’ is full of vivid and evocative lyrics. “I took MDMA with some friends,” she begins, “and realised that you keep the decisions you make on it for the rest of time. ‘Graceland Too’ is the closest thing to the folk of the first record, a country-flavoured ballad that Bridgers wrote quickly, reflecting her belief in following your gut. Yet the fragile quality of her music is in no way eclipsed by a heavier sound. But then sometimes when I write something I think I’m exaggerating, and realise later I wasn’t.” “I can’t write right when something is happening to me,” Bridgers says. This is the sound of an artist entirely in control of her present and future. Even its title is a joke at the expense of “someone who doesn’t know when to stop talking”. There’s stinging honesty throughout the album, which courses with ferocious instrumentation. At one point, on the energetic ‘Kyoto’, she warns one famous target (more on them later): “ I’m gonna kill you / I don’t forgive you.” The drums crash louder and she screams more than she whispers. Where her debut, 2017’s ‘Stranger In The Alps’, offered wise folk songs and gentle melodies, this album favours earthier, often grungier sounds. Phoebe Bridgers is about to release her second solo album, ‘Punisher’, a record filled with contradictions – violence and tenderness, romance and fear – and with a sound more brazen and forthright than that of her previous work. For it to be as physically present as possible over a virtual interview feels like a pretty literal metaphor for Bridgers’ simultaneously belligerent and heartbreaking work and life over the past few years. This black cat is perhaps a sign of luck (or a lack thereof), a symbol of lethal energy. Superstition is woven throughout Bridgers’ music: dreams, ghosts, the apocalypse and astrology. “Oh no! The kitty is killing something,” she says. She’s talking to NME on a video call from her home in lockdown, and her attention wavers for just a second. A black cat is wandering around Los Angeles, and it’s currently right behind Phoebe Bridgers’ computer screen.