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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bridgers.jpeg]]
2[[caption-width-right:350:''She wanted to see the world before she flew over the ocean.'']]
3
4->''"I want to be the power ballad\
5that lifts you up and holds you down.\
6I want to be the broken love song \
7that feeds your misery."''
8-->-- '''"Waiting Room"'''
9
10Phoebe Lucille Bridgers (born August 17, 1994) is an American singer-songwriter from Los Angeles, California.
11
12Known for making both indie folk and indie rock music, she has to date released two solo albums, ''Stranger in the Alps'' and ''Punisher''. In addition to her solo work, she has released records as part of two side-projects: [[AllLowercaseLetters boygenius]] with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, and Better Oblivion Community Center with Music/ConorOberst.
13
14Not to be confused with Creator/PhoebeWallerBridge -- who, to confuse matters further, directed one of Bridgers' music videos.
15
16----
17!!Discography:
18
19* ''Stranger in the Alps'' (2017)
20* ''boygenius'' (2018) (EP, with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, as boygenius)
21** ''Better Oblivion Community Center'' (2019) (with Music/ConorOberst)
22* ''Punisher'' (2020)
23* ''the record'' (2023) (with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, as boygenius)
24* ''the rest'' (2023) (EP, with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, as boygenius)
25
26----
27
28!!As actress
29* ''Film/ISawTheTVGlow'' AsHerself
30---
31
32!! Stranger in the Tropes:
33
34* AlasPoorVillain: Her cover song "You Missed My Heart" deals with a double murderer painted in a sympathetic light.
35* AlbumClosure: ''Punisher'' concludes with "I Know {{the End}}." It's the longest song on the album by over a minute and shifts into pseudo-HeavyMetal for the outro, which is about the apocalypse.
36* AteHerGun: The line "You're the gun in my lips that will blow my brains out" from the emotionally-raw "Waiting Room" which she wrote in high school.
37* TheBigDamnKiss: The boygenius ConceptVideo ''the film'' leads up to one between all three members.
38* BookEnds: On ''Punisher'', the melody for the outro of the final track "I Know the End" is reminiscent of the melody of the first track on it, "DVD Menu", bringing the album full circle. In addition, on ''Stranger in the Alps'', the opening track is "Smoke Signals", and the closing track is "Smoke Signals (Reprise)" which is a short ~30 second track of Phoebe humming over the melody to "Smoke Signals."
39* CallBack:
40** The opening lyrics to "Halloween" reference Phoebe's verse in "Souvenir" from the ''boygenius'' EP:
41---> ''Always manage to move in\
42Right next to cemeteries,\
43And never far from a hospital\
44I don't know what that tells you about me''
45----> '''Souvenir'''
46---> ''I hate living by the hospital''
47----> '''Halloween'''
48** A few years later, "Emily, I'm Sorry" on boygenius' ''the record'' nods back to "ICU" from ''Punisher''. To which Lucy Dacus gives an AnswerSong in the very next song on the same album.
49---->''I don't know what I want\
50Until I fuck it up''
51----->'''ICU'''
52---->''I'm 27 and I don't know who I am\
53But I know what I want''
54----->'''Emily, I'm Sorry'''
55---->''When you don't know who you are\
56You fuck around and find out''
57----->'''True Blue'''
58* CarefulWithThatAxe:
59** "I Know the End" end with Phoebe and a [[AllStarCast choir of voices]] including herself, Music/ConorOberst and Julien Baker yelling during the final minute of the song.
60** The screech of "May I please have twenty dollars?" off the boygenius track "$20".
61* CelebritySong:
62** While never mentioned in the actual lyrics, she has stated that she wrote the song "Punisher" as a tribute to Music/ElliottSmith, someone she has cited as a major inspiration.
63** Similarly, "Chelsea" is written from the point-of-view of Nancy Spungen, reflecting on her toxic relationship (and possible murder) with Music/SidVicious; the title of the song coming from the Chelsea Hotel where she died.
64* ChromaKey: Used in the video for "Kyoto".
65* CompleteTheQuoteTitle: Her first album ''Stranger in the Alps'' is named after a line from ''Film/TheBigLebowski'' ("Son, this is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!") which was {{bowdlerised}} for TV as "...find a stranger in the alps!". The movie takes place almost entirely in Pasadena, CA, where Phoebe grew up.
66* DisposingOfABody: Implied in "Garden Song", where she suspiciously plants a garden after her skinhead neighbor goes missing, implying she killed him.
67* TheDissTrack:
68** "Motion Sickness" serves as one to Music/RyanAdams, who she alleged abused her while they were in a relationship.
69** She also includes a dig at Music/EricClapton in "Moon Song" (mainly due to her belief that he is [[https://www.nme.com/en_au/news/music/phoebe-bridgers-says-eric-clapton-makes-extremely-mediocre-music-2727490 "a famous racist"]]):
70---> ''We hate "Tears in Heaven"\
71But it's sad that his baby died.''
72* EroticDream: "Garden Song" describes a weird dream that turns sexy at the end, though the speaker wakes up before the sex completes.
73* GriefSong: "Funeral".
74* IconicOutfit: Most of the promotional material for the ''Punisher'' era has Phoebe in a skeleton costume.
75* InactionVideo: The video for the boygenius track "Emily, I'm Sorry" is almost entirely made up of Phoebe standing still and singing the song in front of a monster-truck rally.
76* LocationSong:
77** "Kyoto" references the first time that Phoebe went to Japan.
78** Played with in "I Know The End", implying that touring the world makes everything look the same.
79-->''Somewhere in Germany, but I can't place it\
80Man, I hate this part of Texas''
81* LyricalDissonance: Most of her songs are pretty sad, even her more upbeat ones. "Kyoto" in particular is an uptempo rock song about imposter syndrome, feeling lost while on tour, and her difficult relationship with her father.
82* LyricSwap: She loves this trope to the point where it would be easier to list songs where the chorus ''doesn't'' change more or less subtly with each iteration.
83* {{Mascot}}: The painted ghosts for the ''Stranger in the Alps'' album era.
84* MondegreenGag: "Demi Moore" isn't a CelebritySong; someone misheard the chorus "I don't wanna be stoned anymore" as "I don't wanna be stoned Demi Moore" and Phoebe decided to keep that as the title.
85* NonNudeBathing: The music video for "I Know the End" begins with a scene of Phoebe sitting in a large bathtub or hot tub full of water while wearing a skeleton costume.
86* PerishingAltRockVoice: She uses this in many of her songs, though less so in the more uptempo tracks (and, of course, this trope is entirely absent from that CarefulWithThatAxe closing section to "I Know the End", and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo9QRpcBJbI famously]] in "Me And My Dog").
87-->Who cares if I hit the notes the real question is did I have fun.
88* PrecisionFStrike:
89** "Smoke Signals", "Georgia" and "ICU", as well as the boygenius track "Revolution 0".
90** Her website is "phoebefuckingbridgers.com".
91* RockersSmashGuitars: She smashed her guitar at the end of her performance of "I Know The End" on ''Series/SaturdayNightLive''.
92* SittingSexyOnAPiano: She does [[https://youtu.be/H9KYQ_tnTtc this]] at the beginning of her live performance for "Late Night with Seth Meyers".
93* SkeletonMotif: She wears a skeleton suit in many of her performances, her music videos, and her "Punisher" album art. She even arrived at the 2021 Grammys in a black dress with a [[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/EILJYAp6wAb5Pqk5mn2GjsVn_7qf0GA_Svu3r3SfT5HeKH35Zf2TJC-57WzKpKZaJASeMCP0wxMI2HaAE6zXZoat5vfZWU761o5CFiR_-YjueQum5H2DIr4LyYZ1ftKMjd2FKQrH=s0 jewel-encrusted skeleton pattern]] from top to bottom.
94* {{Supergroup}}: boygenius (with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus), and Better Oblivion Community Center. (with Music/ConorOberst)
95* TextlessAlbumCover: ''Punisher''
96* ThatLiarLies:
97** "Kyoto" ends with a memorable version of this.
98-->''Guess I lied / I'm a liar / Who lies / Cause I'm a liar''
99** "Emily, I'm Sorry"
100-->''When I pointed out where the North Star is, she called me a fucking liar''
101* VoluntaryVampireVictim: In "Savior Complex":
102-->Baby, you're a vampire\
103You want blood and I promised
104----
105->''"No, I'm not afraid to disappear''\
106''The billboard said, "The end is near"''\
107''I turned around, there was nothing there''\
108''Yeah, I guess the end is here."''

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