-Our next guest is nominated for four Grammy Awards,
including Best New Artist, Best Rock Performance,
Best Rock Song, and Best Alternative Music Album
for "Punisher," which is available now.
Please welcome back to the show Phoebe Bridgers.
Hi, Phoebe. How are you?
-I'm great. How are you? -I'm great.
So this is your third time technically on the show.
It's the first time we're chatting.
You were in studio with Boygenius in 2018.
Then you did a beautiful film performance
for us during the pandemic.
Is it different as an artist being on a talk show,
one, where you get to film it ahead of time
and the other where you get to be in studio?
-Um, yeah, I --
I'm honestly going to be so spoiled after all this
because I love the control.
I actually -- When I was on your show with Boygenius,
I yodeled really loud on accident.
And, you know, you can't go back and fix it.
It was a nightmare.
So I like being able to listen to mixes and make changes.
-Is an accidental yodel something
that happens to you often or was it just in the moment?
-Yeah, I have the accidental yodel when I hit high notes
and then also an accidental Eddie Vedder
where if I hit a really loud note sometimes I have like...
[ Growls ]
It's pretty rad.
-I will let you know that I did not notice.
I only thought it was a wonderful performance.
I'm wondering how weird it is. You have this album,
and it receives all of this praise
and these multiple Grammy nominations,
and yet most of it is happening at home for you.
Has it been an even more surreal year than it is for most people
because you would have been so out and about,
I would imagine, on the back of this great album?
-Yes, it's so weird.
I hate that, like, the only connection
I have to my friends and the universe is online.
Yeah, it feels super weird.
Grocery store is where I hang out. That's it.
-Another thing that seems -- I don't know --
"Fortuitous" seems like the wrong word,
but, you know, again, this is an album that was written,
recorded ahead of time, but a lot of the issues,
you know, grief, family relationships,
the world ending, are very much at the forefront of this album.
How has that been to know that you sort of wrote
the perfect album for a very hard time?
-Yeah, I feel like I'm always having a hard time.
So, I'm terrified of everything,
always think the world is going to end.
So I think maybe even if I released
my first record around now,
people would have thought it was about COVID,
but, weirdly, I think, looking back,
I will remember the record more from
when I released it than when I wrote it.
It actually kind of does remind me of isolation,
I think, 'cause I played the songs so much in my bedroom.
-I've heard tell that your neighbors are maybe not thrilled
with living next to a musician who plays songs in her bedroom.
Are they -- Have they changed their tune
at all based on the success of the album?
-I have one cool neighbor, Michael,
who says "what's up?" to me and knows that I have a real job,
but there's one neighbor that tells me to shut up
and then my next next-door neighbor plays slap bass,
so I feel like I'm suffering from his slap bass.
Like, my acoustic guitar whispering
after a whole day of slap bass is just too much.
-Right. You're the tipping point.
-Mm-hmm.
-Again, I do think it's really important
to look at silver linings over the course of this last year,
and I will say I thought it was really awesome and cool
to see you on the cover of "Variety."
I don't know if you had told me March 11th last year
that you were going to be on the cover of "Variety" --
I would've been like, "Wow. What kind of year is it going to be?"
So -- But somebody got edited out of this photo.
-Oh, my God. I know. She really did.
[ Laughter ]
-So you -- you brought her to the photo shoot,
and they took a bunch with the dog, yes?
-Yes. -And then they just iced her?
-I know. I think there's, like, a video
of us doing the photo shoot that she's in it,
but she's super photogenic, so I don't understand.
She's just sleeping on my lap right now.
-Yeah, it must be, like, a weird Zoom filter right now
because she looks a little weird,
but obviously she's an incredibly --
We can all tell she's an incredibly beautiful dog.
Hey, one thing that's really cool --
I would love to finish with this -- is you
in the Best Rock category.
It's all female artists.
That's never happened before.
It's such a neat thing to be a part of.
Do you feel a connection to the nominees?
I know people always say, "Oh, it's so great
to be nominated with this group of people,"
but maybe this year that's even more true than normal.
-Definitely, yeah.
I'm such a huge fan of everybody who put out records,
especially in, like, the alternative categories.
I just feel like they're people I would have been --
We call it "tour bidding" when you're, like, on a festival tour
and you see the same people every day
because everybody put out a record at the same time.
So I feel like there are people that I probably
would have gotten pretty close with
because we all released music last year,
but being ripped away from that, it's cool to have something
so awesome as the Grammys bring us kind of closer.
-Also you released a cover of a John Prine song,
"Summer's End," and one of the days
that I feel COVID most became real to me,
because I was such a fan of his, was when he passed away
in sort of the early part of last spring.
And I'm assuming he was someone
that you're a fan of for you to do a cover like that.
-Yeah, that was the worst day ever.
It was just, you know --
He'd been struggling with his health for a long time,
but he pulled through and completely relearned
how to sing, and I saw him in Oslo.
It was the weirdest.
I landed the first day of tour, walked out of the airport,
and saw this huge sign that was like,
"John Prine Tonight."
And he represents kind of the pinnacle
of, like, American music to me.
So I saw him at this, like, theater in Oslo,
and people clapping very politely,
and he talked about American politics and was so charming.
And I've seen him a bunch,
but, yeah, that was a very depressing day
and definitely one of the reasons I chose it.
And he was nominated for Best New Artist in 1972,
which is pretty cool.
-Well, that is a very nice way to close this.
Thanks for doing that. Thanks for the album. And thanks for being here.
It's just a delight to see you, Phoebe.
-Yeah, thanks so much, man. -"Punisher" is available now.
We will be right back with more "Late Night."