Boygenius will release their debut album in March
(Picture: Boygenius)Until yesterday, Boygenius, composed of Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus, hadn’t released new music as a band since their self-titled EP in 2018.
But they delighted fans with three new singles, $20, Emily I’m Sorry, and True Blue, on Wednesday (January 18), ahead of the release of their newly announced debut album.
While Bridgers, Baker, and Dacus are each accomplished solo singer-songwriters in their own right, Boygenius is a project that came about after the three met while working in similar circles in the music industry.
Initially fans of each other, a friendship between the three blossomed in early 2018 when they co-headlined a tour.
Their EP was released just months later, in October 2018. Bridgers told Rolling Stone that creating the EP was “not like falling in love. It was falling in love”.
The band got its name with a nod to the “boy genius”, the male prodigy who’s praised for his ideas from a young age.
Speaking to Vogue in 2018, Bridgers discussed their name and said: “Men are taught to be entitled to space and that their ideas should be heard because they’re great ideas and women are taught the opposite. That they should listen instead of speak and all that stuff.
“So a ‘boygenius’ is someone who their whole life has been told that their ideas are genius.”
She told Vogue in the same interview: “Nobody thinks twice about five dudes starting a band, but as soon as three f****** women start a band they’re like, ‘girl band!’ or like ‘girl project!’.”
Appropriately, then, the announcement of their debut album has been marked with a Rolling Stone cover which pays tribute to Nirvana’s 1994 iconic cover, while their EP art pays homage to Crosby, Stills & Nash’s album.
They’ve worked with each other in the meantime, releasing demos from their EP for a fundraiser in 2020, and performing at a benefit concert in November 2022.
Now, more than four years after their first EP, fans can look forward to a full-length album, titled The Record, on March 31.
Released on Interscope Records, their album will be the first major-label release for all three members, who are each signed to indie labels (Bridgers is signed to Dead Oceans, while Baker and Dacus are both signed to Matador.)
There will also likely be a tour later in the year — Boygenius is set to play at Coachella in April, but no other tour dates have been announced just yet.
