Team Kristen Site: March 2023

Friday, March 31, 2023

Boygenius talk to Vogue and mention working with Kristen on 'The Film'

If you’re a millennial who’s gone through a breakup in the last five years, you likely need no introduction to Boygenius, the supergroup composed of musicians Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus. All three have their own robust careers, but when they come together, it’s like the indie-rock equivalent of putting Nutella and marshmallow fluff on your PB&J; so good that you can’t imagine why you weren’t doing it all along.

Boygenius’s first full-length studio album, appropriately titled The Record, was released at midnight on Friday. Ahead of that momentous occasion, Vogue spoke to Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus about preparing to be perceived by the world yet again, working with Kristen Stewart on the album’s accompanying film, and recognizing the impact they have on young fans (especially those who are queer and/or transgender) without succumbing to the pressure to be role models 24/7. Read the full interview below:

*__Vogue: __*How are you feeling as you prepare for the album to come out?

Phoebe Bridgers: I mean, it’s going to happen in a couple of hours, so how much more preparing can we do?

Julien Baker: We’re letting go and letting God. [Laughs.]

Bridgers: I think we’re all really ready, though. Like, we recorded it over a year ago, and we started writing it a year and a half before that.

What lessons did you take away from the release of your EP in 2018 that you’re trying to apply now?

Lucy Dacus: I mean, mostly that we want to do it. [Laughs.] I’ve been waiting for this moment for our entire friendship, really, because the EP was not supposed to be the highlight of that tour; the tour was supposed to be a triple-bill thing, and then we turned into a band and were like, We should do this for real. And now we are! It’s crazy.

If there were a sibling dynamic between the EP and The Record, what do you think it would be?

Baker: I think it’s an older-younger brother thing, not because our younger selves were less mature, but in terms of having less resources to bring those younger selves to fruition. The band itself was a baby, in that we were only just becoming a band.

Bridgers: The Record also has more muscle; I don’t know, it’s just a little heartier. I think of it as an older brother.

Baker: There’s the same dynamic range, but The Record feels more thoughtful in how it navigates that range. So it also feels like it’s evolving forward.

Do you have any band rituals or ways you take care of yourselves and each other while preparing to launch something so huge?

Dacus: Well, this is cute: We’re going to go to Sound City tonight after our film premiere and listen to the record together with a few people who worked on it. That’s where we made the EP, but we haven’t been back, so I like to listen with the ears of the world. Phoebe was saying that it’s like when you have a crush on somebody, and you look at your own Instagram to see if you’d look cute to them.

What was it like working with Kristen Stewart on the film?

Dacus: It was awesome. She’s a fiery person, which sounds like you’re describing someone’s spitfire grandma or something, but she’s just like, I will burn down whatever.

Baker: That, and the constant animation. Honestly, I felt very seen by her constantly moving and being unable to sit down for five seconds, ever.

Dacus: We had to do a presentation of our video to the label, and Phoebe and Julien left, and Kristen was like, “Please stay.” I watched her get on top of the conference-room table and act out the entire thing, using her body and the wall and things in the room as props. It was completely engrossing to watch her story-tell about what we were going to story-tell; she’s just a very engaged and engaging person.

Baker: It’s also just cool to see someone so committed to their craft get excited about yours.

I know you guys talked about this in your recent Them interview, but what is it like to be a visibly queer band putting out work into a world that’s currently so hostile to the LGBTQ+ community?

Dacus: Can I say that it just feels good? We’re all pretty into the queer joy concept and lifestyle, and just to have shown up and made something that is joyful and realized is a drop in the bucket that I can be proud of.

Baker: I try to tell myself that the willingness to learn publicly is the real work, not knowing everything already.

Bridgers: I’m so proud of our group dynamic, and as a bisexual woman in straight relationships, it feels weird to talk about it so much. That said, I wish there were more types of queer people visible to me when I was growing up, and when it comes to our band and our shared dynamic, I have no shame about stepping forward and being like, “This is what we look like and how we feel and what we believe in.” It’s funny talking about visibility, because you can’t assume that any of us are gay, so we do have to talk about it. It’s like that with gender stuff, too; like, I know a lot of people who present in a way that isn’t accurate to their gender, so all of these things do need to be spoken about a little bit more. Maybe you can catch us all flagging at times. I don’t mind talking about it, especially with these guys, because it’s just another thing we relate on, but we don’t have the responsibility of being anybody’s role model. Like, I think it’s weird to put that on people in media to be role models or fucking politicians, as if we’re all trained lobbyists for collective change. I care, but I’m not a scientist. I read the distilled stuff for dummies, so to speak on really important stuff…we may not be experts in these things, but we are the experts of our own lives. So, I feel better about talking about our experiences and representing queerness in general. Even though I said we don’t need to be role models, I would have been happy to look up to us when I was 12, and that’s something I can be proud of.

I mean, Lucy, when I saw you perform in San Antonio, it was such an emotional experience because there were all these queer kids there with their moms, being like, Vacation Bible School—yeah! So to your point about not having to be role models, Phoebe, I think your work can do that without any of you having to assume the burden.

Dacus: I mean, we’ve been pretty terse with what we put on social media, but because I’m a flaming softy, I did have this urge to be like, You know we made this ’cause we love you, right?

Is there anyone or any group you really hope this album reaches?

Bridgers: I just hope that, like with all my favorite bands, it will eventually be taken away by some parents.

Baker: When you were talking about the kids being at Lucy’s show with their moms, I’m like…I want the dad to go too, and see how happy the kid is, and not understand it or connect to it but still be like, This is important. Obviously, I want this to be for the queer and trans babies that I want to hold in my arms and tell that it’s going to be all right, but for the people that don’t fuck with our music, I want them to see that someone does, and that that’s so important and can’t be devalued.

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Boygenius talk about working with Kristen on 'The Film' with Variety

A short film that actor-turned-director Kristen Stewart made with the group Boygenius got an official Hollywood sendoff Thursday night at the El Rey Theatre, with a film premiere that also doubled as a launch party for the indie-rock trio’s new album, “The Record.” In keeping with Boygenius’ matter-of-fact naming tendencies, the short is titled simply “The Film.”

Stewart did not participate in the Q&A that Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus did with members of the press and public after the screening, but she stepped out to introduce the short film, which is essentially an interlocking combination of music videos for three songs from the new album: “$20,” “Emily I’m Sorry” and “True Blue.”

The imagery is sometimes sentimental, sometimes bracing and vivid. Bridgers sings “Emily I’m Sorry” in front of a monster truck rally. Palms are cut for a blood oath. And there is some lip-locking through copious blue paint. The framing device is sweet, though, beginning with one band member sleeping fitfully in bed and waking up at the end embraced in a group cuddle.

“It was a knockout, fall-down honor to be asked” to direct the short, Stewart said, and capture “the incredible fireworks show that pops off when these three come together. I am such an enormous fan. I wish I had them to look up to when I was a kid. I’m sure there’s kids here — you’re lucky, it’s a different world. And it’s something to behold. … It felt like a fever dream making this thing. And I imagine if you got to step into what feels like their shared consciousness, that you might feel pretty on-fucking-fire, too.”

Stewart also did a product plug. “The new merch is sick,” the director said, endorsing a new T-shirt she’d picked up in a booth at the back.

The members of Boygenius conceived the idea that an old-school film premiere would make for a more novel launch for the new album than a release gig, pulling up in a limo and posing on a red carpet before sitting down to answer about a half-hour’s worth of questions. (The live shows will come soon enough; earlier in the week the trio announced some additional concerts in addition to the festival shows already on the books, starting with a pre-Coachella tour launch in Pomona April 12.)

“We all contributed a lot, obviously,” to the creative process of the short, said Dacus, “but there’s a lot of Kristen in what you just saw. So we’re all proud of her, and happy to have had an excuse to share space with her and create something.”

Added Bridgers, “It’s very visual and hard to describe conceptually. So somehow, with hand gestures” from Stewart, “it was explained. It was maybe the most chaotic group text I’ve ever been in. ‘You’re gonna spit blue.’ … It was a blast, definitely the most fun I’ve ever had on a music video shoot.”

The colorful spit Bridgers was referring to occurs in the concluding segment of the film, which is soundtracked by a song mostly written and sung by Dacus, “True Blue.” It has all three members using rollers to rather messily paint a large living room — and themselves — blue. (Also, unremarked upon at the Q&A, it has Dacus looking on as Bridgers and Baker indulge in some blue-tinted making out.)

The segment for “Emily I’m Sorry,” meanwhile, features Bridgers singing in front of a monster truck rally. The opening part of the film, highlighting song “$20,” paints a portrait of young girls escaping a stern mother to cavort in suburbia, intermingling with the band members. “Getting to hang out with little kids all day was the dopest,” said Bridgers.

“I was challenged by being not an actor,” added Baker, “and Kristen modeled it movement-by-movement. For me, I was getting more instruction than the children. And one of them is taller than me,” laughed the most diminutive of the three band members.

The group members talked about participating in the Re:SET concert series, which will have different lineups of artists hitting several regions of the country in June to trade off days at different outdoor venues. “The festival was really cool and let us have input in their thing” — meaning, a curatorial interest on the dates Boygenius is headlining, which will feature Clairo, Dijon and Bartees Strange as hand-picked opening acts. “I wish we could go through the other days — we’re all LCD fans.” (LCD Soundsystem and Steve Lacy will be headlining their own days in the traveling circus. “But, yeah — Warped Tour, but good.” After some laughter, she tried to walk the comment back. “Not that Warped Tour wasn’t good…”

“Let’s not revise history,” quipped Baker.

Asked about the many outside references in the lyrics to “The Record,” Dacus said, “There’s a John Didion reference — and there’s some Bible references, of course.” (The audience tittered, either knowing or not knowing two of the members grew up evangelical Southerners. “What else? We reference ourselves.”

Bridgers concurred that there are callbacks to lyrics from her solo albums that she wrote into this group effort, deliberately or otherwise. “It’s not redundant,” she insisted. “It’s a motif. I’m always accidentally stealing from myself, and that’s what I say. It’s a motif over my entire career, not plagiarism.”

Baker was celebrating a coincidental but important anniversary. “I’ve been putting out records for 10 years today,” she said, referring to the March 30, 2013 release of an album by her first band, the Star Killers. “I was listening back to that record today. I was like, ‘Holy moly, this kid had a lot of feelings and needed to communicate them.’ I was like, ‘Man, I liked the word fail.’ It comes up six times on ‘American Blues’ and I’m just like, ‘I have big feelings. I don’t know where to put them. … I stuck with it because of the avenue that it provides me to feel understood by other people.” Baker said she “back-to-backed” a listen to that debut and the new Boygenius album, “and when I listen back to the lyrics that I was writing for this record, it’s like an entirely different person, capable of a self-love.”

Talking about the experience of working with Bridgers and Dacus, Baker admitted, “I almost said magic, and then I made myself say something less genuine. So I want to edit it” to reinsert the word. Interjected Dacus: ” I would say that, inherently, ‘magic’ is super queer.”

Some of the new songs were more collabortive band efforts than others, but nearly all of them have some kind of lyric input from the others, even if it’s just a couple of words that changed in a group edit.

Said Dacus, “I wrote a song, ‘We’re in Love,’ for them, but there are like one-word changes that Phoebe made that like opened up the whole meaning of the song. Like the color of a flower. There’s a carnation line, and it was white, which I just picked, and then she was like, ‘Make it pink,’ because it’s a reference.”

Bridgers elaborated. “You can, there’s a mark. “My mother is here. Where’s my mom? Throw a hand up in the air. There’s a Marty Robbins song that my grandmother used to love, and it’s like, ‘A white sport coat and a pink carnation. I’m all alone at the dance…’ And Lucy’s song is about trying to connect with somebody in another life — and how would you find that person? ‘I’ll be the boy with a pink carnation.'” Another reason for the line edit: “Elliott Smith tried to wear a pink carnation with his white suit at the Oscars. And the Oscars were like, ‘It looks corny.'” Vindication for Smith’s couture instincts, in a Boygenius song, at last.

The questions from the audience weren’t all on the heady side. One attendee asked the band to name her new Chihuahua. Coming up with names simultaneously on the count of three, Bridgers picked “Greg,” Baker picked “Peanut” and Dacus said “Four” (“because four comes after three”).

The short film might be the first exposure most music fans have had to Stewart as a director, but she previously wrote and directed a short, “Come Swim,” that screened at both the Cannes and Sundance festivals. She’s due to make a bigger splash in the filmmaking world with a feature debut, “The Chronology of Water,” for Ridley Scott’s production company, Scott Free.

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