Cream, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Audioslave, The Highwaymen — the music business is stuffed with storied supergroups comprised, principally, of males.
But it is 2024, and boygenius has entered the chat.
The indie rockers are up for six Grammys at Sunday’s ceremony in Los Angeles, and member Phoebe Bridgers has a seventh nod for her collaboration with high nominee SZA.
Like many a supergroup earlier than them, boygenius not too long ago introduced they are going on hiatus and returning to solo work — however that is after an distinctive 12 months on the street collectively.
And on Sunday, they’re going to get to have a good time.
Boygenius members Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus met as up-and-comers within the indie music scene and, uninterested in fixed comparisons to one another as “women in rock,” determined to affix forces whereas persevering with to supply solo work.
The inventive enterprise become a successful wager: the trio amassed a loyal fan base with their 2018 eponymous EP, a debut — hits included the arresting “Salt In The Wound” and the wrenching gradual burn “Me & My Dog” — that fused their distinct songwriting and kinds to create, in a phrase, magic.
Calling the work “astonishing,” music outlet NME gave the prolonged play an ideal vital rating, writing it “serves as a reminder of each musician’s particular powers — Bridgers’ ability to spin haunting, poetic folk-pop out of beautiful simplicity; Dacus’ sage and, often, wry indie-rock; and Baker’s dramatic, emo-tinged exorcisms of emotion.”
The artists performed a handful of tour dates earlier than peeling off to concentrate on solo albums.
They every discovered particular person success, specifically the 29-year-old Bridgers, who discovered rising mainstream fame with the 2020 album “Punisher,” which featured the hit single “Kyoto,” and a smash tour.
But followers and music journalists weren’t having it: wanting extra of the group’s transcendent harmonies, they requested always for a reunion and a full studio album.
The band ultimately obtained again collectively and gave in to the hype, saying “the record” could be launched in March 2023.
It was an on the spot hit and propelled boygenius on an in-demand tour that featured a number of competition appearances together with at Coachella, which marked their first performances for the reason that album’s launch.
The group additionally appeared on the Eras Tour of none apart from Taylor Swift, who referred to as boygenius’ album “genuinely a masterpiece.”
The group’s work captures the ravages of heartache with eerie, melancholic tones that ascend into anthemic choruses with cathartic peaks.
But their personas each onstage and off are winky and playful — three artists who write songs, crack jokes, and easily get alongside.
“We’re obsessed with each other. I like myself better around them,” Bridgers has stated.
They opened every set on their rollicking tour with “The Boys Are Back in Town” — the mid-Seventies Thin Lizzy observe — and a nod to their identify, which is a commentary on their unfavorable experiences in an business, and a world, that has traditionally prioritized the work of males.
“Men are taught to be entitled to space and that their ideas should be heard because they’re great ideas and women are taught the opposite,” Bridgers advised Vogue.
“A ‘boygenius’ is someone who their whole life has been told that their ideas are genius.”
And one of many group’s nice annoyances is the suggestion that they’re outstanding by advantage of being ladies, or as a result of all of them establish as queer.
“Something that’s been really important to us is to be able to exist like any other band: to make a sick song and have that not be weighted because of all these extraneous identifiers that we work within,” the 28-year-old Baker advised Rolling Stone final 12 months.
In the identical cowl story, Dacus — additionally 28 — stated working as a trio allowed the artists to be “able to commiserate about the less enjoyable aspects of this job… we have a shared experience that is not shared by a lot of other people in our lives.”
Unlike many stars who put their careers and fan bases over rocking the boat, the members of boygenius put on their politics on their sleeves, routinely talking out on transgender and abortion rights.
In 2023, when Barack Obama added their tune “Not Strong Enough” to his annual music suggestions, Dacus’ response was lower than thrilled: “war criminal,” she tweeted, probably referring to criticism the previous president confronted for authorizing lethal drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times final 12 months, boygenius members had stated they’d stroll Grammy pink carpets in the event that they obtained nominations, with Dacus saying she’s “kind of a bitch for spectacle.”
They’ve obtained six probabilities locked in: let’s hear it for the boys.
© 2024 AFP