California s next Joan Didion can sing
Feb. 28, 2021
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For one thing, she can sing.
Phoebe Bridgers, a brilliant and versatile 26-year-old musician and songwriter, isn’t just contending for four Grammy awards this March. She is challenging the status of Joan Didion, now 86, as the most nationally respected and quotable of California interpreters.
Such a challenge is long overdue. It’s been 40 years since New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani declared that “California belongs to Joan Didion,” and the British novelist Martin Amis (backhandedly) praised her “almost embarrassingly sharp ear and unblinking eye for the California inanity.” Didion’s accounts of the Golden State, in both novels and essays, still influence American perceptions of our state, even though she moved to New York in 1988, and her work is mostly about a mid-century California that died with Jerry Brown’s first governorship. While Didion may have a new essay anthology out this
Watch Phoebe Bridgers Smash Her Guitar to Smithereens on Saturday Night Live
The Kyoto singer let it all out as the SNL musical guest. Feb 7, 2021
It s day 345ish of the pandemic and we re all still stuck inside. If you feel the need to violently smash something, you aren t alone. Phoebe Bridgers is here for you. On last night’s episode of
Saturday Night Live the singer-songwriter expressed what we’re all feeling when she shattered her guitar into smithereens against an amplifier. It was badass. The rowdy moment happened near the end of her performance of “I Know the End.” The second single from her critically acclaimed album