Phoebe Bridgers

FOUNDER, SADDEST FACTORY RECORDS SINGER AND SONGWRITER

PPhoebe Bridgers’s devastating yet welcomingly absurd sophomore album,

Punisher, gave fans the solace they sought during quarantine, garnering both critical acclaim and four Grammy noms, including Best New Artist. But like most “new” artists, Bridgers has been around—creating her signature nihilistic folk sound with wit and relatable lyrical specificity—since even before her debut album, Stranger

in the Alps, was released in 2017. (She was touring with Julien Baker in 2016.)

Punisher is Bridgers at her finest: lightly touching on heartbreak, but mostly reveling in poetic existentialism. Bridgers extended her creativity this year to promoting the album, delivering performances, often from her apartment, that were both aligned with her musical ethos and perfectly designed for the moment. She performed her single “Kyoto” on Jimmy Kimmel Live, for example, while sitting in a bathtub in paja

mas, accompanying herself on a mini synthesizer and belting the lyrics “I’m gonna kill you” into a toy microphone. On Saturday Night Live,

Bridgers smashed her guitar, causing sparks to fly and outraging a few “purists” for destroying her equipment. (She later noted that male musicians have smashed equipment for years with little pushback.) Last October, Bridgers took her wry sensibilities even further with the launch of her own label, Saddest Factory Records. “I was frustrated as a music fan, having to send my label a 10-page email if I thought something was cool,” Bridgers says. Its cheeky website is designed to look like an intern’s desktop screen, with folders titled “Not Porn” for music videos, links to social profiles in the “Digital Ass(sets)” section, and fake messages from Phoebe herself, asking the user, “Where the hell is my oat latte?!” Saddest Factory Records has already signed two musicians, Claud and Muna.