"I'm biased but this is definitely about to be the best night of your life."

Lucy Dacus is behind a microphone, telling a sold-out crowd in Brooklyn what you might expect to hear from a musician gassing up an audience: Tonight is going to fucking rock. But the sentiment feels different coming from Dacus, who, along with her tourmates Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker, is mostly known for the naked emotional honesty of her music and the attendant crowd that music attracts. Here, having the best night of your life doesn't necessarily mean moshing to the front of the stage or having your face melted off by a bass drop (not that there's anything wrong with those things). More likely, it means you had a private moment of interiority during a song about loneliness, or death, or a broken relationship, the kind of moment that makes an 1,800-capacity room fall so silent you can hear someone take a pull from a Juul.

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That Dacus, Baker, and Bridgers are present here, together, is almost astonishing, given the similar yet complementary qualities of their music. Baker is known for her self-lacerating, minimalist take on emo, which first garnered her acclaim on 2015's Sprained Ankle; Dacus, whose music is the most rock-centric of the three, sings in a smooth, controlled alto on 2018's Historian; and Bridgers' uncanny ability to juxtapose the saddest and most mundane moments of life in her songs has earned her comparisons to her idol, Elliott Smith.

It's hard to believe that three young artists each known for her own brand of extremely personal, contemplative music would be able to meld their sensibilities into something equally as transcendent as their solo work, but the six-song EP they recorded together under the name Boygenius—itself a reference to the sometimes toxic display of ego passed off as a sign of brilliance in male creatives—is a rare democratic undertaking. It allows three songwriters whose individual work is marked by painstaking contemplation to join together in songs that, while still touching on themes of loneliness, feel communal and uplifting.

Lounging on a couch backstage before their first of two sold-out Brooklyn shows, Baker, 23, Bridgers, 24, and Dacus, 23, sound like they've been friends for a long time. Whether they're teasing Bridgers for her all-black wardrobe ("I opened her closet and it was like someone turned the lights off," says Dacus) or trading thoughtful anecdotes about what bothers them the most about the reductive "women in rock" label, it's hard to believe that prior to embarking on this co-headlining tour together—it's only their second gig—they had barely spent more than the five days they were recording their EP together in the same room.

GQ: When you heard each others' music for the first time, what did that feel like? Did you recognize similarities in your music when you first heard it?

Phoebe Bridgers: Like five dudes in my life texted me when Julien's record [Sprained Ankle] first came out. They were like, "Oh my god, this is so up your alley." Or like, "This girl sounds exactly like you." And I was like, fuck this. I didn't listen to it until my friend who shows me all my favorite music sent it to me and was like, "You're gonna fall in love with this record." And I listened to it, and I pulled over and I cried in my car.

Do you remember what song you were listening to?

Bridgers: I think he sent me "Everybody Does." I had a very visceral reaction and then I felt pissed. I was like, "Why does everybody know me this well!" [laughs] I was mad at the comparison, but I was like, I love this, and it was a more genuine [comparison] than just someone being like, "Woman, guitar." You actually know my music taste and were like, this is a thing that is exactly what you wanna hear.

So I was sensitive being compared to it, but also very genuinely relating to it. And it happened to a lesser extent with Lucy's music—I think because you front a band and I very much do not—and also the people telling me about you were like Julien, who was the first person to tell me, so I was like obviously I'm gonna love it. So yeah, I was sensitive to being compared but also flattered in this weird way where I'm like, we all are complementary, just not the same.

Lucy Dacus: I heard about you, Julien, from a ton of people. I came to New York, I was about to have a publicist for the first time, and I was asking her, "What do you like right now?" And she was like, "Julien Baker." And I went and met up with a friend at a restaurant and was like, "Who are you listening to?" "Julien Baker." Got dinner with my mom's friend and he was like, "Julien Baker." I was like, this is weird, maybe I'll check this out when I get home. And I got home and checked my email and Julien's manager had emailed me like, "Hey, would you like to open for Julien Baker in DC?" So I agreed to that show before hearing you. So our show was the first time I got hit by your music, which was sick, and also very cool to be introduced to your crowd, which continues to be a respectful, largely silent crowd. And then Phoebe, Julien told me like, "Phoebe's about to put out the best record of ever," [laughs] so I was just on the lookout —

Julien Baker: I stan my friends! [laughs]

Dacus: So Julien matchmade us. It's true.

Baker: I get a pride avalanche about you two, though. I met you guys both sort of at the same time and we got super close, and y'all are a couple of the only people that I really do that longform email catch-up thing with—I don't do it anymore because I feel like we're better at just texting to see what's up.

Dacus: I kind of miss it, but we have to get stuff done, so we just text.

Bridgers: I think the longform email is exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. Like having to think about going there…

Dacus: They just grow and then I never send them. It takes three weeks to write it.

Baker: But that kind of intense, once a month or once every two months checking in with you guys and being like, oh, here's a person that's in my boat, out in the world, floating around, doing their own thing. It's super nice.

Boygenius seems like such a genuine partnership as opposed to three solo artists trying to outdo each other, which is sometimes what the supergroup narrative can be. Did you ever think about starting a supergroup and what it would be like to relinquish some control to collaborate?

Bridgers: I only thought about working with you guys. Like, I literally have never thought about it, and definitely didn't really even consider a supergroup. It just was like, I'm so excited to collaborate with Julien and Lucy. I never really thought about our egos. I think I speak for a lot of women I know in music when I say this: you'll see some bullshit article where in the worst examples it'll be a picture of you and underneath it says it's someone else... There's a whole other dialogue going on behind the scenes where people will try to pit certain women in music against each other.

Like Lindsey [Jordan, of Snail Mail] in a bunch of interviews was asked like, "So, Phoebe Bridgers…" just 'cause of our fuckin' hair [laughs].

Baker: There can't be two blonde girls in the scene at once!

Bridgers: And we see each other at a festival or something and are like, that's such horseshit. It's so funny. And it makes us mad but like, it's a community of people all talking about it—that's not real, that's an invention.

Baker: Painting with broad strokes, I feel like a lot of journalism makes it out to be like the collective consciousness has a finite imagination for multiple women at one time in a similar genre. Side note: I think we're not really that similar at all, but people group us together. People will bring [Phoebe] up a lot because we tour together and we're friends and we interact on the internet. People bring [Lucy] up because we're on the same label and we're friends, and but it's just like, if we were dudes that would never happen because our music sounds really different!

Bridgers: People will talk endlessly about five white dudes playing shoegaze and how different it is, and like, literally war each other about which one you're allowed to like and the differences between the two bands, and then women literally play guitar and whisper sometimes and scream sometimes and they're like, "Same!"

Baker: I hate those articles—this is a pet peeve of mine—like move over X, here's the new Y. And it's just like, X didn't become obsolete because there's a person doing a similar thing. You also don't have to be like the new old-thing, you're just the current you-thing.

A lot has been written about how women are "taking over" indie rock, and it's true, many of the best releases in the past few years have been from women. Do you guys feel a shift, being inside it? Does this feel like a moment to you, or just something the music press is making into one?

Dacus: The way people ask about being a woman in rock constantly, what I try to say is that depending on the day, I have a different feeling about it. Some days I'm like yeah, we need to talk about it, something is happening, it is awesome, and people should not miss the point that it's happening. Other days, it's like, it's not special, you know? Being a woman is boring as hell [laughs]. Lots of people are women! The fact that that's remarkable is insulting. It should not be remarkable whatsoever. And then some days I'm just like [shrugs], which is kinda how I feel today.

Bridgers: Yeah, it's not a genre, and so it can be insulting to be like, "Click these 10 links of women." [jokingly] "Music!" "Women!"

Dacus: The thing is, it's not gonna die down. Like, is this a "moment"? A moment ends.

What really bothers me is the implication that women are getting covered because the press outlets are finding them, like they need something to fill the women slot and that's why a band is getting the spotlight. I've had a lot of guys say to me, "It's so lucky that you're putting out music now because there's such a moment for women right now."

Bridgers: Oh my god…

Dacus: Also men being like resentful like, "If I was a woman I'd be famous."

Baker: That's like saying, "It's so great that you wanna vote right now, because you couldn't have done this back when we told women they weren't allowed to vote." This is something I feel like is necessary, another nuance—it seems like [the music industry] is not less male dominated, there's a lot of just like, imaging of women. There are still men in the professional or behind the scenes world that are controlling women to build credibility.

Like the male producer trope.

Bridgers: Yeah. Like they're using women to virtue signal their wokeness. Like, "Open for me, sing on this song," but you will not have the benefit of being treated like a peer. This is gonna be skewed like I'm doing you a big favor by having you. Like [you're] being used as a symbol instead of as an artist.

All of you make really personal, contemplative music that feels like it was written from a solitary place. How do you get out of your head to collaborate when being in your own head is an asset in each of your solo work?

Dacus: I just trust them. And it's because I've known you guys and who you are before we started doing this. I wouldn't do it the same way with other people and I think that's why it is special. I don't think I'd be able to manufacture the same thing with other people. It also helps that—Phoebe said this in a good way—we have a shorthand for understanding each others' lives because of touring, so we don't have to go and explain every little thing. In fact, mid-sentence, the other two might be like, "Yep." That happened more often than not.

Baker: I feel like having a pre-existing relationship with you guys where I already trusted you with stuff about my life as a person, knowing that you guys understood my personality, made me feel less like I had to defend or explain or qualify the lyrics that I was writing, because I knew you guys would value or understand that.

Dacus: What's so nice about this press cycle and doing interviews with you guys is that it's like, I wish all friend groups or friends had people asking questions about their friendship. That's kinda what this feels like. We're just able to express [our feelings] to each other in a way that other people don't find the time to.

Well, in the spirit of that kind of friend group-therapy, what do you get inspired by in each other?

Bridgers: It is truly like, everything. I have so many answers. I'll say one thing that I really appreciated about yesterday that's very new for me. Being in a space where I was yesterday, I felt like I kinda fucked up on TV— it was not a big deal but it was definitely not what I was intending—[I appreciated that] we don't have to give each other context for how we feel, like knowing that you guys both understood exactly where I was, and exactly how you would like to get talked out of feeling insane when you feel insane, that is very inspiring to me.

Dacus: I am inspired also by what you guys aren't. Just the fact that you have been able to resist being jaded or entitled or hardened by the shit that you see or have been told that you are. You could easily just be really burnt out or not really see the point. But I feel like y'all still have your hearts open wide to what's happening, and that's great.

Baker: You guys have been able to preserve your wonder and gratitude and appreciation for this occupation or this ability to create songs and be a musician. I've watched as both of you have gotten increasingly more confident—because I feel like when I met both of you, you were already more confident than me, but like so much more so now—getting to see you guys as examples who are not afraid to advocate for themselves and make not just your needs but your desires and your wishes for your own life known... I really respect that. I feel like I've learned a lot from you guys about not compromising yourself. Because I feel like I'm a person who accommodates a lot.

[All three join their fists together in a collective fist bump]

Baker: Thanks y'all. For us just doing the Wonder Twins thing.