Phoebe Bridgers’ father, with whom she had a complicated relationship and with whom she had recently reconnected during the pandemic, has died. On Instagram, the singer announced his death, captioning an old photo of herself sharing headphones with him at a restaurant: “Dad, rest in peace.”
Bridgers has frequently spoken about her strained relationship with her father, whom she revealed to GQ in 2019 had a “drug problem” when she was growing up. The host of Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Date recently mentioned the “Kyoto” lyric “I’m going to kill you/If you don’t beat me to it,” which alludes to the father-daughter relationship. Bridgers took a beat and settled on a firm “no” when Dimoldenberg asked if the lyrics were still relevant.
Bridgers’ father, a carpenter who worked on film and television sets, is credited with introducing her to the singer-songwriters after whom she modeled her style and sound in the early stages of her musical career. “He was pretty money-conscious, and he didn’t like it when I started taking guitar lessons,” she told the New Yorker in 2020. “However, when it comes to music, he’s the one who listened to Tom Waits and Jackson Browne.”
In the same interview, the singer discussed the dynamics of her relationship with her father. “I have so much fucking empathy for him and so much fucking anger for him,” she explained. “It’ll always be day to day: Are we talking or not talking? “How’s it going?”
