Phoebe Bridgers Is My Own Personal Torture Machine
Why listening to sad music is like a drug I’m actively trying to quit.
I am sad, numb, trying to hold on to things that once made me feel alive. And, as the Goo Goo Dolls dramatically sang, “you bleed just to know you’re alive.”
Whenever I feel like emotions are a thing of the past and as though someone has scooped the Matilda out of me, that’s when I put on my chunky headphones, lay half-naked on my bed, and listen to…
Phoebe Bridgers.
Of course, once I’m done listening to all of her albums (starting with the one that feels most like a kick in the stomach, Stranger in the Alps), I then move on to Mitski, the Japanese House, the 1975, and so on. I am starting to unironically believe it’s a form of self-harm, because every time I feel like I want to die, all I can do is just add to that feeling by dragging myself deeper through the mud with Phoebe’s gut-wrenching music.
It all started back in 2020, the pandemic year. It was my first year of university, and I was homebound. In the Netherlands, curfew was at 20:45, so by 21:00, I was sitting at my little desk, preparing for a lecture, while shaking my leg like a maniac. I think I speak for everyone when I say that 2020, the beginning of the pandemic, was an insane…
