Bridgers jumps up to act out the time a barbecue grill nearly blew up in Baker’s face. Baker launches into diatribes on capitalism and the ownership of art. In the afternoon, they taped a performance for that night’s Jimmy Kimmel Live the audience included Bridgers’s mom, wearing a boygenius T-shirt.ĭespite a packed schedule, the band is in high spirits when they regroup in Los Angeles a few days after the festival. At 8 a.m., they were getting camera-ready for a Zane Lowe interview. On the eve of returning to Coachella for the festival’s second weekend, the boys had wrapped up another busy day. “What’s remarkable about us," says Baker, “is how f-ing good we play our instruments and the music that we make." Regardless of how each member defines herself, this group knows how it wants to be recognized. For one thing, all three members identify as queer women-a fact the band avoids dwelling on whenever possible. “I don’t think we have the same problems as the rock bands of yore," says Bridgers. Boygenius seems to have learned that, as demonstrated by the Traveling Wilburys, one of the most legendary supergroups, humor and mutual respect go a long way in a room full of big personalities. It’s not just sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll."īut the CSN reference is telling, a reminder that rock’s history with “supergroups"-bands in which the members come to the table with successful careers of their own-is fraught with ego clashes and inevitable disappointments. “I like that people are being forced to think differently about what’s interesting about us. “It’s a mission to avoid toxicity," says Dacus. These choices are a cheeky nod to rock’s history of machismo, even as they set out to embody the exact opposite. On the cover of their self-titled 2018 EP, they pose on a couch in the style of the shot on the front of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s debut album. For the February 2023 issue of Rolling Stone, they re-created Nirvana’s 1994 cover stance. To promote their work, the bandmates have taken visual inspiration from some of rock’s most iconic threesomes. The name serves as motivation for the group-and if there are rules for rock music, boygenius has achieved success by challenging them all. For anyone who is not a cisgender male, to be a “boygenius" is to demonstrate confidence in your ideas when the world has conditioned you to be afraid of them. When they first assembled five years ago, Baker, Bridgers and Dacus conceptualized the band’s name as a comment on the idea that many men receive constant affirmation from the day they are born. Joining forces, though, brought them to a new level of success-and a different kind of ambition. The most recent solo projects from Baker and Dacus were both Top 10 hits on the alternative charts. Bridgers is the best-known-her Grammy-nominated 2020 record, Punisher, earned her a spot on Saturday Night Live (a performance that became notorious for her vigorous, only partly successful attempt to smash her guitar onstage) and collaborations with the likes of Taylor Swift, SZA and Paul McCartney. Baker, 27, Bridgers, 28, and Dacus, 28, were already established as three of the most acclaimed singer-songwriters of their generation. But interest in this trio preceded the release of the album.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |