Last night a Mixtape saved my life

With their debut EP, boygenius joined forces and showed the world they were truly among the most promising songwriters in American music. Six songs that revealed an enviable chemistry and a shared musical and lyrical vision. That was 2018, and since then Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers have each released several singles and at least one album, with Baker and Bridgers' latest, monumental records managing to surpass everything they'd done before.

On the occasion of their recent live reunion – and while we wait for a new official studio collaboration under the supergroup's name – we retrace the solo careers of the three songwriters in chronological order, with a few concessions, from their debuts through to their latest full-lengths, released right in the thick of the pandemic. These are three distinct, independent artistic and musical paths, yet ones that reveal numerous points of contact. And the idea behind this new playlist for our "Last night a Mixtape saved my life" column is precisely to highlight the differences and convergences in the songwriting of these three friends, and above all their musical evolution over the years.

So we find Julien's intense, deeply spiritual ballads and the pain-soaked songs of the Phoebe Bridgers heard on "Stranger In The Alps", the more adrenaline-fuelled guitars of Dacus's debut, and the stinging crescendos that define her subsequent masterpieces, "Night Shift" and "Nonbeliever". But we don't just revisit the classics of their catalogues — we also dig into some lesser-known singles. Case in point: "Tokyo", which foreshadowed the grand sound of "Little Oblivions", as well as Dacus's playful, thorough reworking of "La Vie En Rose".

We then briefly wade into the mare magnum of collaborations Phoebe has taken part in. I've picked a track written with another major voice of American indie-rock songwriting, Matt Berninger, along with the inevitable "Dylan Thomas," redolent of Wilco's Tweedy-Bennett era and taken from the album Bridgers recorded together with Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes. Then there's Phoebe's presence on practically half of "Solar Power" providing vocal harmonies, which seems to finally cement the musician's success, now in dialogue with one of the most influential pop stars of the last decade. And of course we couldn't leave out her finest reworking of a traditional Christmas tune, that "If We Make It Through December" lifted from the songbook of Merle Haggard.

The discographies of the three boygenius members are already dotted with memorable songs. But to echo the words with which I closed the review of "Home Video" a few months ago, the feeling is that, perhaps, the best is yet to come. At least that's what the three towering, powerful closing tracks from their latest releases seem to suggest. And while we wait to find out what Julien, Lucy and Phoebe have in store for us next, these are certainly twenty-two songs to lose yourself in, to rejoice or ache with, and to fall madly in love with. Happy listening!

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02/12/2025