When boygenius formed as a supergroup back in 2018, the move was a surprise. Members Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker all had successful solo careers as rising singer-songwriters, but together they were an entirely new force. The group's debut album, the record, received three Grammys and wildly exceeded the band's expectations.
But a lot has changed since the record dropped, especially for Dacus, whose fourth solo album Forever Is a Feeling comes out this Friday. The album is an ambitious departure from her typical indie rock sound, opting for lush strings and instrumentation. It's also an extremely personal album, chronicling the artist's increasingly more mature experiences with love and heartbreak.
Dacus talks to Morning Edition's Michel Martin about her songwriting choices on Forever Is a Feeling, why writing poetry is nothing like writing music and the future of boygenius.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Michel Martin: You experienced an enormous success with your trio, boygenius. That's you and fellow singer-songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker. The album won three Grammys. I know this is your fourth album, but do you feel any pressure to repeat that success with this album?
Lucy Dacus: Basically, no, I don't think I can repeat any of that. It feels like a one of one, fluke experience. [Laughs] A happy fluke. But that's not giving much credit to the music, I do think that we did a good job. But yeah, maybe I personally don't have those goals, but maybe other people do. You can't have other people's goals matter to you that much.
In the promotional material that the label sends out, there's a quote from you about the creation of this album. It really kind of caught me up short. It says, "you have to destroy things in order to create things. And I did destroy a really beautiful life." Can you share? What are we talking about here?
Gosh, it sounds so dramatic out of context. Sometimes friends will be like, remember when you said this? I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm so dramatic. But it's true — same dichotomy with growth and decay. Like there is no growing without decay and that cycle happening. So creation and destruction, you don't just get creation. Everything comes at a cost, in a way. And I'm happy to report I'm in a life that I really love and cherish, but I had to, you know, shed another life that I really loved and cherish in order to be here. It was just the desire of experiencing something different that motivated me.
Does that mean doing this album on your own, or is there more to it?
The album tracks a few instances of falling in love, a few instances of falling out of love. I mean, through boygenius, that felt like a huge change. I moved across the country — I'm from Richmond, Virginia, near where you are right now — and then lived in Philly. And now I'm living in LA, which feels so different. I think when you move, you can't conflate your identity with the place you've always been. I felt it was easier to see who I am in an unfamiliar place. The way I made this record was also very different. I feel like every time I make something, I have to relearn how to do it.
I have to say, the sound of this album, quite a few of the songs are very lush. We hear strings. We hear harpists. Going into the recording, what gave you the insight into how you wanted this record to sound?
Well, I was writing the songs and I noticed that they were very heartful. They're love songs, mostly. I was just thinking about how most art through time has been motivated by love, so it's not like it's new material. So while I was recording, I was just thinking about antiquity, both sonically and visually. That's why I like the oil painting for the album cover and playing these museum shows before I properly go on tour. And sonically, too, having a harpist and strings players and a celesta, that's a cool instrument. I think we put some harpsichord on it as well. Just kind of harkening back to some older sounds. I just thought that would make sense.
I want to talk about "Ankles." I have so many questions. This song hit me on so many different levels. Actually, a number of your songs on this album hit me on all these different levels. What inspired that song?
It's pretty cut and dry with the lyricism just like, okay, so I want you, but I can't have you. So I just have to think about you and pretend to be satisfied with that alone. So it's kind of this playful frustration and just like the tension of wanting somebody. It's definitely more lusty than I generally am.
Well it's very lusty but it is playful, but also the lyrics are so striking. Here, for example: "Agent of Chaos, Angel of Death, one of three ancient fates playing with your scissors again. How lucky are we to have so much to lose?" That's very powerful. It's dramatic, but sonically it's so fun. Don't get me started on the music video, which is hilarious. How about you describe it without giving it all away.
I shot this video in Paris with a friend, [the actress] Havana Rose Lu. And Havana is straitlaced in a suit and searching for me finds me at this, morning after, crazy party on a mattress on the floor, naked with a bunch of people. And then takes me through the streets of Paris back to where I belong.
You're in this gorgeous, fabulous dress, and just getting the dress through the streets is its own adventure.
I couldn't fit in doors. We had to go in an elevator once and no one could come with me, my dress took up the entire elevator. And again — lush craftsmanship. That's the other thing, I've been wanting to employ people who have very highly skilled abilities. I feel like that doesn't happen as much anymore. Just watching people make things by hand to such an excellent degree, I wanted to get some of that around me.
But also the craftsmanship of your lyrics. It made me wonder, do you also write poetry? Does your writing live in other places other than song?
It's interesting, I have through time and with music, I'm not judgmental of myself at all. It just is what it is. It comes kind of painlessly. Maybe it's painful upon reflecting and being like, oh, that memory is painful. But writing feels pretty easy. Poetry feels difficult and ugly. Like my poetry, I'll read it and I'll be like, this is either bad or even if it's good it makes me feel bad. Maybe because music has, generally, meter and rhyme. It doesn't have to, but there's somewhat of a structure in music, whereas poetry is like everything I can't fit, everything that is too spiky for me to fit anywhere.
One of the reasons I brought up the video for "Ankles" is that I also love the video for "Best Guess." I have so many questions about that, it expresses a beautiful sentiment: "I love your body. I love your mind. They will change. So will mine. But you're my best guess at the future."
I have to tell you that it almost brought me to tears. Just because, you know, you're so young. And you would have no way of knowing that after a very long relationship, that is something that you confront. I mean, people get sick, right? Their bodies change. Things happen. And yet you can still [say] it's your best bet. I just found myself asking — forgive me, I hope I'm not patronizing you — but I just wondered how somebody your age would have an insight like that. Where did that come from?
This feels like a huge compliment. I think I laugh because my dad asks me this all the time. He's like, it took me, you know, decades longer than you to realize that, how did this happen? You know, it might be because I read a lot. I haven't really thought about this, but in answering this question it might just be because I'm reading a lot of perspectives all the time. And also in books, there's actually duration and breadth that you can't fit into music most of the time. Movies sometimes, you can notice a breadth of time or it's faked with makeup. Seeing characters change over time, you know that happens with people, but you're in real time with them. Whereas in one book, seeing how people change to each other and how emotions change — I guess that's just a lesson that got through to me from books.
Going back to the video, it's gotten a lot of traction online, particularly in queer spaces. You want to describe it?
So the thought was, you know, this is the first love song I've written where I actually use female pronouns. Like I say, you are "my girl" in the song, which feels unique. I was like, maybe I'll just lean into that and have like a bachelor party for me where I'm in this hot suit. The references were kind of like nineties Calvin Klein ads.
The point wasn't to represent lesbianism. It wasn't to represent butchdom. But there are a lot of mascs in the video. You know, there's a lot of women and non-binary people. We have a trans man in the group and there's a few people who were like, can I show off my top surgery scars? And it's like, absolutely. It was a really beautiful day for everybody involved and everybody in the video. Some of them are my friends, like E.R. Fightmaster, Naomi McPherson from MUNA, Towa Bird, Cara Delevingne, which was cool for me because she was one of the first lesbians I knew about.
And then I did this contest on TikTok for people to apply. The metrics were if you are smooth or suave or can pretend to be, maybe you're masc — because I was trying to get people who would be comfortable in a suit and comfortable looking in a camera. It was a wide net. And then the fires happened in LA and so we had to put it together super quickly and we narrowed down all the entries to people that we thought were in LA from their profiles.
Was it as fun as it looked? I mean, it looked like it was so fun.
It was fun in a deep way. Do you know what I mean? Do you ever have a night that's so fun that you feel like it hit in your soul? Like people were having fun and like, crying? People were like, I've never been in a space where I felt this comfortable. I have never been able to completely relax my body in a space with people just because being masc sometimes you're a rarity in certain spaces.
Just forgive me, but by masc, what do you mean — masculine presenting?
Yeah, masculine presenting. I consider myself superfluid. There's some times where I feel very boy and then there's other days where I feel very girl. And then many days where I feel like neither. In "Ankles" I'm in this gown and "Best Guess" I'm in these suits. I like being able to show people the whole gamut of how I personally like to represent.
Before we let you go, the boygenius project made a lot of people very happy. I personally can attest that my daughter was obsessed with that album. So I did want to ask if you think that you might get together for another album or another project?
There are no plans. I think we have a lot of hanging out to do before we even talk about that. We decided at the beginning of boygenius we would put in one year just to protect our friendship. Because if you are constantly commodifying your relationship, it can start to become a product and not just the reality of your life. So that's what we've been doing since boygenius is just hanging out and basically detoxing from being, like, viable. So there are no plans, but boygenius lives in our hearts.
This audio story was edited by Phil Harrell and produced by Julie Depenbrock.
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