Ahead of her upcoming appearance at this month’s Coachella festival, Phoebe Bridgers is the subject of an expansive new Los Angeles Times profile. As part of the piece, the publication reached out to Taylor Swift, who of course recruited Bridgers to join her on “Nothing New (Taylor’s Version)” from Red (Taylor’s Version). Swift took the time to respond with a quote about what it is about Bridgers’ music that makes it stand out to her.
Swift told the publication via email:
“I think that the specificity of Phoebe’s lyrics and the vulnerability she expresses in her voice when she delivers them is what makes her music so deeply impactful and moving for me as a fan. You feel like she’s reliving a precise memory or delivering a secret message to someone and you get the privilege to read it or hear about it. Her phrasing is very conversational, which turns her storytelling into something tremendously intimate, fragile, and real.”
In the piece, Bridgers also noted of working with Swift, “[The lyrics] hit me more than I thought it would. I was a lot more worried about my youth and getting discarded when I was 21. At that age, everybody writes about you as like a prodigy. To have won [Swift’s] trust was special — I knew there was a reason she thought of me. I was stressed and I wanted to get it right, but she was a great guide to me and approached everything with such care.”
Read the full feature here.