Phoebe Bridgers’ Odyssey: An analysis of “Haunted”
Phoebe Bridgers’ “Haunted” is an anthemic bluegrass jam from her phenomenal new album Lost Weekend that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. The song, set in 2023, presents a cathartic journey as Bridgers, still processing her father’s death the previous December, embarks on tour with boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus (who also sing backing vocals). I wanted to break down some of my favorite lyrics:
It is not this house that's haunted
But I don't want it either way
The concept of haunting is one of the tenets of Bridgers’ ouvre, and it’s impossible to interact with her work without stumbling across it. Even the cover of her debut album, Stranger in the Alps, is a childhood photo of young Phoebe edited to dress her up like a ghost. Here, Bridgers implies that *she* is the haunted one, regardless of her surroundings. This is a concept she’s played with before: on the 2018 boygenius track “Souvenir,” she wrote about her apparent knack for moving into places next to hospitals and cemeteries, joking, “I don’t know what that tells you about me.” In “Haunted,” though, Bridgers doesn’t feel like moving in. She wants to break out of that box, rejecting the tendency to wallow in her own gloom. The “house” in question might be her existing home and circumstances, or it might be a concert venue, with Bridgers showing initial reluctance to perform on stage in a state where she feels so overexposed and vulnerable. These opening lines, stagnant and morbid, contrast with the second verse…
I'm off to see an old friend
We're gonna get on the road again
I'll be wavin' from the plane
…Which provides an escape route for Phoebe as she leaves to go on tour. I can’t help but think of another bluegrass-influenced road trip song in Bridgers’ catalog, 2020’s “Graceland Too” (also a collaboration with Baker and Dacus), where the song’s subject, having emerged from a dark time, “could go home, but she’s not going to.” the record was the first full-length album from Bridgers, Baker, and Dacus as boygenius, and it was their first project together in five years, so ‘getting on the road again’ in 2023 really was a reunion for the trio. These lines carry a feeling of movement, as Bridgers goes from standing still in her hauntedness to moving rapidly through the world with her friends. I also love the visual of waving from a plane, a gesture that the person you are waving to will never see, but expresses the feeling of connection nevertheless, especially since one could interpret it as Bridgers waving to her father in the sky. Skipping quite a bit ahead in the song…
I'm gonna put myself together
You can go or you can stay
I'm gonna put myself together either way
This portrays Bridgers’ inner monologue as she’s about to step on stage. It’s also when Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus join in for backing vocals:
'Til then, I'm gonna listen
To the song of the siren
No, I am not afraid
By now, we’re all familiar with the image of Matt Damon’s Odysseus, strapped to his ship, screaming as he hears the sirens’ song. In a clever twist, the music that threatens to drive Phoebe to her death here is her own, repeated back at her by a crowd of fans. However, with her bandmates by her side, she can face both her own circumstances and her rabid listeners. She also resolves this dissonance physically in an earlier song on Lost Weekend. On “The Outside,” she describes diving into a crowd (like an entranced member of Odysseus’ crew) that, unlike in Homer’s work, “never let [her] hit the ground.” As the crowd carries her away, she sings, “you were there” - feeling her father’s presence as she re-embraces the career he was so proud of her for - perhaps recontextualizing her own haunting into something more comforting. In Phoebe Bridgers’ odyssey, she might not be able to go home, but she can go forward.
