Phoebe Bridgers, 26-year-old American singer-songwriter, a guitarist and a producer from Los Angeles, made her solo debut with ‘Stranger in the Alps’ in 2017. She followed this up with ‘Punisher’ which earned her widespread critical acclaim and four Grammy Award nominations.

Even though most of the artists in the ‘Best new artist‘ category don’t feel ‘new’, the Grammys sure have a weird system to determine eligibility. Bridgers has been in the game for many years now, with a good amount of work under her belt and multiple albums.

Bridgers was the safest bet in the ‘Best new artist’ category as none of the Best New Artists were nominated for Album Of The Year. However, she lost the tie.

Bridgers has also featured in musical groups boygenius (with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus) and Better Oblivion Community Center (with Conor Oberst).

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Bridgers, as a child, made extra income by performing at the Pasadena Farmers Market. The talented musician graduated from the Sequoyah School in Pasadena and Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.

Her career rose after she met American singer-songwriter Ryan Adams through mutual collaborator Harrison Whitford. In January 2017, Bridgers released “Smoke Signals” and it was no turning back for her.

Bridgers joined The Joy Formidable and Ryan Adams for select dates on their respective US tours before playing at South by Southwest in March 2017. The guitarist, in June 2017, signed with independent label Dead Oceans. Subsequently, she released her debut studio album Stranger in the Alps in September which received critical acclaim.

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Bridgers is known as a ‘serial collaborator’ and has featured on or co-released tracks with Lord Huron, Fiona Apple, Matt Berninger and The National, Manchester Orchestra, The 1975, and Kid Cudi, among others. She also has worked on projects with Conor Oberst, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus.

In an interview with the Rolling Stone, Bridgers said she “spends most of her days working on her music, and in her free time reading and walking.” “I’m a fucking granny. I don’t really drink, I don’t really smoke, so if I’m not in bed by 10 o’clock, I’m alone just watching Netflix,” Rolling Stone quoted her as saying.

In 2018, she collaborated with indie singer-songwriters Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus only to release three songs in August and subsequently announced an eponymous EP, which was released on October 26, 2018 to widespread acclaim.

In February 2020, she released the single “Garden Song”. On April 9 2020, Bridgers released “Kyoto” and announced that her second album Punisher would be released on June 19, 2020.

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Bridgers released the album on June 18, stating, “I’m not [delaying] the record until things go back to ‘normal’ because I don’t think they should. Here it is a little early.”

While working on Punisher, Bridgers also produced Christian Lee Hutson’s album Beginners, which was released on Anti- Records in May 2020

Bridgers got four nominations at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards for Best New Artist, Best Rock Performance, Best Rock Song, and Best Alternative Music Album.

On March 9, 2021, Bridgers released a singles session, featuring cover of John Prine’s “Summer’s End”, with a version of “Kyoto” featuring vocals from Jackson Browne.

Bridgers identifies herself as bisexual. She dated Ryan Adams in 2014, before breaking up. According to reports, her song “Motion Sickness” is about their relationship.

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Bridgers was in a relationship with touring drummer and musical collaborator Marshall Vore until around 2017. Her songs ‘ICU’ and ‘Smoke Signal’ are believed to be about Vore.

The singer and songwriter Elliott Smith is one of Bridgers’s favorite musicians. As per The New Yorker, “The title track from “Punisher”—the term is a jokey pejorative that musicians use to describe the type of overzealous fan who lingers at the merch table a little too long—addresses Bridgers’s deep devotion to Smith.”

“I wrote a song about how, if Elliott Smith were alive, I probably wouldn’t have been the most fun person for him to talk to,” she was quoted as saying by the New Yorker.