The singer, who has spoken in interviews and in her music about her complicated relationship with her father, reconnected with him during the pandemic
Phoebe Bridgers’ father, with whom she maintained a complicated relationship and recently reconnected with during the pandemic, has died. The singer announced his death on Instagram, captioning an old photo of herself sharing headphones with him at a restaurant: “Rest in peace dad.”
Bridgers has often discussed her strained relationship with her father, who she told GQ in 2019 had a “drug thing” while she was growing up. Most recently, during an appearance on Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Date, the host mentioned the “Kyoto” lyric “I’m gonna kill you/If you don’t beat me to it,” which alludes to the father-daughter relationship. When Dimoldenberg asked if the lyrics still hold up, Bridgers took a beat and settled on a resolved “no.”
Her father, who worked as a carpenter building structures for film and television sets, is credited with introducing Bridgers to the singer-songwriters after whom she largely modeled her style and sound during the earliest stages of her musical career. “He was pretty sensitive about money, and he didn’t love it when I was taking guitar lessons,” she told the New Yorker in 2020. “But, as far as music goes, he’s the one who listened to Tom Waits, he’s the one who listened to Jackson Browne.”
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The singer explained the dynamic of her relationship with her father in the same interview. “I feel so much fucking empathy and so much fucking anger toward him,” she reasoned. “It’ll always be day to day: Are we talking, are we not talking? What’s the vibe?”
Bridgers has not shared any additional information about her father’s death at this time.
