disclaimer: all opinions are my own.
It wasn’t until recently that I started listening to boygenius, the supergroup trio consisting of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker. When their album, The Record, released back in Marsh 2023, I found a few of my friends on Discord listening to it. Yes, I know I’m a weirdo for liking to see what my friends are listening to on Spotify.
When I finally did my research on the band, I was aware of Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus’s solo discography: the former having collaborated with my problematic favorite and the other I found via Spotify listening to “Kissing Lessons.” I didn’t really familiarize myself with Julien Baker until after I started listening to boygenius. I don’t exactly recall how I discovered her solo music, but once I heard her song, “Favor”, it hit a sweet spot in my ear that rung, leaving me curious to learn more about her music.
Now much like girl in red, boygenius is one of those music groups that is often “queer-coded”, which is defined as music or any form of medium related to/consumed by queer people. This was one of the personal factors as to why I started listening to boygenius as the trio is consisted of queer women. As someone who is nonbinary but has some complicated feelings on being femme-presenting, I find boygenius to be comfort music to my ears.
The charm of boygenius is that from the group’s own description, there is no defined frontwoman. Each member contributes equally to the creative process. And a funny story from how the band got their name was from having worked with several male collaborators who were overconfident in their abilities. After all, there is no shortage of meh songs made by famous male singers in the music industry (I’m looking at you Justin Bieber). Radio music is a sharp contrast from how Boygenius isn’t afraid to experiment with all sorts of sounds and explore different themes in the lyrics of their songs.
As pride month comes to an end, I recommend everyone to give even a snippet of boygenius’s music (and their individual works) a listen. It’s not mainstream, like being queer itself, but it is just as good as about anything you hear on the radio (and oftentimes, better). The only thing is that people miss out on good music considered underground, so there is not much media coverage on it. In this era where homophobia and transphobia are on the rise in 2023 somehow, let’s amplify queer voices and hear their stories.
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