Now is a very tense time for a lot of people, but Phoebe Bridgers recently underwent 40 minutes of pure relaxation: She received an “ASMR massage” from YouTuber itsblitzzz (who also goes by Julia) in a new 40-minute video.
This isn’t some sort of reverse Hot Ones gimmick interview, as there isn’t any chatting going on throughout. The video is primarily Bridgers sitting and facing the camera with her eyes closed while her head, neck, and shoulders get massaged. It seemed like a positive experience for Bridgers: When asked how she felt afterwards, she responded with a laugh while sipping post-massage tea, “Amazing.” After Julia delivered her video outro, Bridgers told her, “Oh my god, that was so nice!”
In a Pitchfork interview from this summer, Bridgers cited Julia’s channel as one of the things that influenced her Punisher album, saying, “I have been watching ASMR videos since I was a teenager, before they were all that. They were called ‘whisper’ videos back then. I was doing a school paper on the lymphatic system and I stumbled upon all these weird massage videos that were specifically for people to fall asleep to. I would watch them for hours at the school library. Maybe a year or so ago I was trying to fall asleep and stumbled upon this hipster wellness witch. She’s a vlogger who also does ASMR videos, which is a very weird thing to be into, but I watch all of her sh*t. She apparently lives very close to me, and we have a ton of mutual friends. She’s very sincere, which is a quality that I usually find very cringey. But I love that she’s just someone I would consider cool and is also a vlogger; I thought that was mutually exclusive.”
Julia said in the YouTube description that article led to the two of them talking and getting this video together: “Basically, we chatted on the internet (how else do people meet these days?) and then she came to my house to film and it was a very relaxing time with good convo and lots of humor.”
Watch the video above.