Phoebe Bridgers is a lousy ally and not what she pretends to be.
An article I saw on CNN by Lisa Respers France is titled “Phoebe Bridgers wants you to know Women can smash guitars too”, framing Bridgers as a wronged feminist who is sticking up for equality. As soon as many people of varied sexes, genders and age brackets started rightfully spamming comment sections and critiquing (in mass numbers) yet more music blog articles fawning over the pathetic and clearly staged SNL performance, Phoebe’s PR damage control went into overdrive. We know women can smash guitars and the patriarchy if they want to. Bridgers is actually a hypocrite who benefits from it at the expense of a Latina survivor, me.
David Crosby who called the SNL fake-sparks performance pathetic on Twitter was then trolled by Bridgers as some sort of out of touch boomer-type (bitch, you could never). NME claimed she was anarchic, despite her getting permission to “smash” the guitar ahead of time from the manufacturer? Hundreds and hundreds of people express in comments that it was corny and felt staged and so magazines beholden to her label, which gets all their artists asses kissed disproportionately in the press, immediately pivoted to acting like the responding people were all men and that it is only out of sexism.
Let’s talk about anarchy. Uh, L7 threw used tampons at an audience of sexist men. Don’t give accolades to a selective feminist who benefits from a problematic label conglomerate Secretly Group but wants to point out every other shady power dynamic in music when it suits her.
She made headlines calling out Ryan Adams for abusing power dynamics but has frequently ignored completely how Secretly Group has helped my abuser Sam France with DARVO on me. Sam is the singer of Foxygen (on the same label conglomerate) a guy who admitted in court to striking me in the mouth and who has abused the legal system with his label’s multi million dollar blessings and influence against me for years. He had an RO granted under “the slimmest of margins” -judge’s words- when I, a self represented Latina woman with no legal help, went up against him slandering me and he refuses to leave me alone ever since. There are plenty of red flags and gaping holes in Sam’s stories over the years and I have moved thousands of miles from him but Bridgers is fine with being on the same label with him without ever calling out that it is fishy.
James Felice from The Felice Brothers was paid to perform on my psych folk album Romantic Cancer and knows Bright Eyes and Felice Brothers got me inspired to start my own musical path as an artist. It meant a lot to work with him but not so much when I learned his best friend Conor Oberst — despite having many label options available- was doing a record with Phoebe on my abuser’s label. I can remember exactly how scared I was many times dealing with Sam and these people want me to downplay my teeth getting knocked out by a six foot dude when I am five foot one, just to “keep the peace.” You want to tone police me about that? I asked James to please warn Conor and Phoebe (and tried many times myself) about the label and I was just stonewalled and gaslit so the boat wouldn’t be rocked. I was treated like “some crazy girl” when I was IN Foxygen when we got best new music from Pitchfork and I KNOW firsthand how much magazines kiss the ass of any Secretly Group artist way disproportionately to real indie labels artists. Look up the label owner’s net worth.
Still not good enough for you? Phoebe blocked me on social media when I pointed out she was a hypocrite for ignoring violent threats her best friend from Sloppy Jane made against me when I OUTED a Burger Records producer for SEXUALLY HARASSING ME. There is proof he did it on the internet including him saying he wanted me to have a threesome with Jenny fucking Lewis, but everyone still wants to cape for the clown.
I thought Phoebe cared about producers being inappropriate? But not her friend and Sloppy Jane’s buddy “Papa Joel”
Joel Jerome? He produced my record The Orange Glow and would tell me he wanted pictures of me for a spank bank, crop photos he took of my cleavage without my consent and post them online and say I had to have his babies and that I looked fertile. While he was producing me and held the keys to my future, ostensibly. Haley Dahl tried to say I was a fake and perpetuated the internalized sexism trope that it is “Just his sense of humor”. Bitch doesn’t even know me. And while she pretends to hate Ariel Pink now, before I knew how Trumpy, burnt out, problematic and shitty Ariel is he helped me find a lawyer (Radical Law) at one point to try and defend myself against my abuser yet again. We stopped being friends when I called Ariel out upon learning how he allegedly treated his ex and he withdrew help, but at the time I was sitting right next to him when Haley texted Ariel kissing up to him and saying not to help me and that I was “dangerous”. As if Ariel is an innocent baby who needs protecting from women and isn’t a threat to them. These people don’t have a fraction of my strength and are in a privilege bubble the size of L.A.
The right thing to do is admit these things bear scrutinizing, not pivot away from them, focus shift or ignore me completely to continue your ascent to Grammy land, Phoebe. Hope Fiona Apple defeats you cuz she actually deserves it. Stope acting like you are the wokest spoke on the wheel. Super “anarchy” to be on a label that has a monopoly on the indie press. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
Haley is Phoebe’s best friend and Bridgers recently told Spotify she gave her the best advice she ever got in a huge ad campaign. The same person who threatened me for outing a predatory guy they are both chummy with. But I am supposed to believe everything Phoebe says? Like Bridgers staged and performative guitar smash, she is not the real deal she claims to be. And FYI, maybe next time someone tells you they have a “rape room” tell them you think that is fucked up and warn other people not to fucking support them right away, not when it is a trending hashtag.
