The girl genius of boygenius

For many, the band that defined 2023

My interest in boygenius had already been piqued when one of my students came to class one morning with a t-shirt from a concert she had seen over the weekend. The lettering was very gothic, font possibly Killuminati or Darkgone, suitable for a dark metal band.

But a close look at the script made it clear this was a clever marketing strategy from the band boygenius, lower case "b," one word. The band name is an excellent branding move in itself, as "boygenius" is the greater-than-the-sum of its parts female trio of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker, three rising solo acts in the alt-singer-songwriter vein, who came together for a self-titled 2018 EP. Songs such as "Ketchum, ID" set a template for both close harmonies and  each of the three singing lead on a verse, and songs about the inner workings of the exhausted touring musician's mind.

Boygenius' March full-length debut the record was the one album of 2023 that crashed almost every silo of the fragmented critical regimes…