After more than six years, Phoebe Bridgers is back with her highly anticipated third studio album, Lost Weekend, released through Dead Oceans.
Last seen performing with indie rock supergroup boygenius alongside her best friends and fellow musicians Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, fans have been waiting for Bridgers to return to solo music and follow up her sophomore album, Punisher, released in 2020.
In 2023, the trio released their debut album, the record, and garnered awards for Best Alternative Music Album, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Performance for the track “Not Strong Enough” at the 2024 Grammy Awards. Bridgers took home the most awards that night, also winning Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for “Ghost in the Machine,” her collaboration with SZA on the latter’s acclaimed sophomore album SOS.
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Spanning 53 minutes and 16 tracks, Lost Weekend is a culmination of being in the thick of it all — losing a parent, falling in love, and growing up. Her sonic evolution from her 2017 debut record, Stranger in the Alps, released just over a month after her 23rd birthday, to Punisher, a record released amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and now Lost Weekend, sees the 31-year-old singer-songwriter return with the same introspective songwriting but armed with a greater sense of maturity.
Produced by Tony Berg, Ethan Gruska, Jack Antonoff, and Bridgers, with additional production by Alex G, Lost Weekend is described as her roomiest and strangest record yet. “The music I’ve listened to the most for pleasure is probably ambient music, but I don’t even think I realized how much interstitial stuff there was on the album until it was done,” Bridgers shares.
In a nutshell, the album capitalizes on the big changes in her life, mainly the extremes of both love and loss. Bridgers’ father, Tony, passed away in December 2022. Throughout the album, Bridgers navigates her grief through various facets, including relief, regret, sorrow, and rage. On the other hand, new romance also enters the picture, which is captured to the rest of the album.
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Check out the track list below:
“The Outside”
“Lost Boys”
“Kill Me”
“The Governor’s Waltz”
“Bobby”
“Lost Weekend”
“Haunted”
“Panorama”
“Still Standing”
“Liberty Tree”
“Never Going Back!”
“Other Plans”
“Lost Parade”
“I Can’t Wait”
“As Above”
“Lost Weekend (Reprise)”
“The album is vastly different from what it was when I started. It’s nothing at all like I imagined,” she shares. “There are certain things that seem now like the heart of the album that weren’t part of it for a long time. I think most indie musicians, at least the ones I know, write for two years and make an album and then they write for another two years and make another album, but if I’d stopped after two years or whatever, it would have felt like walking off a cliff.”
With Lost Weekend, Bridgers comes to terms with stepping away from the public eye, driven by a desire to create a different relationship with the music she was making and the world ready to embrace it. “The album’s about that, in a way. And it could only have been made on the other side of that reckoning,” she adds.
