American singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers tackles country and bluegrass on “Haunted,” the seventh tune off her album “Lost Weekend,” with bluegrass outfit Nickel Creek and her Boygenius bandmates providing support.
This song looks at celebrity from a very strange perspective. Bridgers sings of putting on makeup as the stage lights go up, equating them to candles on a cake, then offers a caution behind the imagery: “If you’re gonna make a wish then you better be specific, you’re gonna have to live it every day. It sounds more like good advice obtained the hard way than a complaint.
That honesty applies to Bridgers’ discussion of privacy, too. There is a difference between lying and deciding what not to say,” she sings, a line that sums up how she has dealt with the public scrutiny of being an openly bisexual artist whose personal life is the subject of constant speculation. The song doesn’t so much relieve the conflict as simply name it.
Musically, “Haunted” is a big departure. Bridgers has rarely pushed into her country inspirations on record, but this fiddle-driven composition develops into an unexpectedly joyous finish. On the side of hope over fear, she sings, “I am not afraid, you won’t have to open a heart that’s broken, water’s gonna flow either way, my heart is growing either way.”
Her late father also comes up here, linking “Haunted” back to “The Outside” and “Still Standing” elsewhere on the album – which lyric hit you hardest here?
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