Phoebe Bridgers has revealed which Taylor Swift song is her favourite and called the pop star a “king of her craft”.
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Appearing on Charli XCX‘s Best Song Ever podcast, Bridgers talked about first discovering Swift’s music via one of her guitar students when she was a “failed guitar teacher” in her teenage years.
The ‘Motion Sickness’ singer revealed that one of her students asked to learn how to play one of Swift’s songs, at which point she checked out the ‘Shake It Off’ singer’s back catalogue, and from there she “just started listening all the time”.
“It’s high art,” Bridgers said of Swift’s music. “She’s like the king of her craft. She’s just a perfect example of someone who uses all the resources at her disposal to be completely genuine.”
Charli then asked Bridgers to name her favourite track by Swift, and although the singer-songwriter has a vast discography Bridgers had an answer instantly to hand: ‘Betty’, one of three interconnected songs from Swift’s 2020 album ‘Folklore’.
“I like when songwriters make you decide what’s so sad about this person,” Bridgers explained. “It’s kind of not the movie version of a love story. You have a crush on someone and then you hook up with someone else because your feelings for them overwhelm you? That’s so fucking sad. I think it’s genius. And then we kind of don’t really know what happens at the end of it.”
Bridgers was also asked about her collaboration with Swift, the previously unreleased ‘Nothing New’, taken from the re-recording of Swift’s 2012 album, ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’.
“I can’t imagine getting to sing on a cooler project,” she said. “I connect with that song so much. It’s a masterpiece.”
During an interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers last November, Swift hailed Bridgers as “one of my favourite artists in the world”, adding: “If she sings it, I will listen to it. I just love her voice.” She also explained how her team-up with Bridgers came about, sharing that it started with a text message.
Bridgers recently recalled the “total high” of talking to Taylor Swift for the first time in a text exchange.
“I got this random text from Aaron Dessner that was really weirdly worded for him,” she said. “And I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ And as I was reading it, I [realised], ‘Oh, my God, it’s from Taylor Swift.’”
She continued: “We started texting about all kinds of stuff. It was just a total high. It felt like when you meet someone at a party and you’re in the corner all night being like, ‘Me too!’”
Meanwhile, Bridgers and Sloppy Jane took on a cover of My Chemical Romance‘s ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ at SXSW this week.
