Though Phoebe Bridgers grew up in Southern California, she spent a lot of her childhood in the Bay Area while visiting her grandfather, and she attended Outside Lands in San Francisco several times. She dreamed of performing at the music festival in Golden Gate Park one day.
The four-time GRAMMY nominee, 27, got her wish on Friday as she made her Outside Lands debut. She walked on stage with her beloved Danelectro 56 Baritone guitar to the sound of Disturbed’s "Down With The Sickness" as projections of pyro and other heavy metal conventions rose up behind her. Bridgers' logo, which evokes the genre, is emblazoned on the drums.
Fans packed in close to see Bridgers, but they gave each other space, with lots of couples hugging, swaying and singing along. In between songs, Bridgers' self-deprecating sense of humor emerged that brought laughs into an otherwise serious set.
"Who has the sniffles right now?" she asked, raising her hand. "Who has a complex relationship with their dad?" The crowd roared. "That’s cool," she replied, launching into "Kyoto," a nominee for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance at the 63rd GRAMMY Awards, which touches on how she feels about her father.
"This next song is an enormous bummer!" she warned with a smile before playing "Funeral," a song about a close friend’s heroin overdose.
After "Funeral," she took a moment to comment on the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, noting how strange it was to come back to the United States to the news after performing overseas.
"I hate this f—ing s—hole," she said. "Yeah, I don’t know, I feel like America is so romanticized, it’s insane. It’s nice to have a good time while we watch the world burn around us." She directed anyone "with some dough" to donate to the Mariposa Fund in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which provides reproductive health services for undocumented women.
As she reminisced about coming to Golden Gate Park for Outside Lands over the years (and introduced her grandfather, who was watching in the audience), she recalled a time that she was very happy about her all-black outfit and thought she looked cute — until a flying can of Red Bull hit her in the head and ruined her clothes and self-esteem.
Bridgers has called "Scott Street" a song about loneliness, but when she performed it, she came out to the crowd to let them sing it for her, handing the microphone to a teary woman who couldn’t wait to hug Bridgers after screaming the lyrics, "Anyway, don’t leave a stranger!"
GRAMMY-winner SZA performed at the opposite end of the large festival at the same time, which prompted Bridgers to say that she was bummed to miss her, and suggested that they were collaborating when Bridgers took a moment to go acoustic and noise from SZA’s show could be heard in the background. The competing set times compelled some to watch half of each, a strategy that was overheard throughout the day leading up to their headlining.
Concluding appropriately with "I Know The End," she thanked the crowd and shouted out her agent, Dave Rowan, who she first met at Outside Lands several years ago during four-time GRAMMY winner Jason Isbell’s performance, for scoring this meaningful gig.
"It was a dream come true, thank you!"
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