IN MY LIFE
PHOEBE BRIDGERS SUFJAN STEVENS BRIGHT EYES WAXAHATCHEE THIS IS THE KIT ANGEL OLSEN HOW DO YOU MAKE A SONG LIKE AN INTIMATE conversation? Phoebe Bridgers, in this issue of MOJO, remembers discovering the knack as a 13-year-old. Listening to Elliott Smith’s music for the first time forced her to rethink how words could work: “I’d always heard lyrics that were like poetry, things you’d never say out loud,” she tells us. “Elliott would say something like ‘whatever’ or ‘oh well OK’, or talk about uglier, more day-to-day stuff.” Bridgers embodies an emerging breed of singer-songwriters whose artfulness comes dressed casually. Her songs, and those of many other artists on In My Life, have a conversational way with the classic tropes of the genre; a confessional style that was conceived at the dawn of the 1970s and refreshed…
