Few have a grip on expressing the emotions that come with the human experience quite like Julien Baker. If you haven’t cried to her music yet, now’s a good day to start, with her new single ‘Favor’ seeing the feels extraordinaire reunite with her boygenius collaborators, Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers. The first comment on the recently posted clip sums up the concept pretty aptly: “So many lines in this song articulate what I struggle to, almost in an uncomfortable way, like I’m being exposed. But the discomfort also feels fresh and relieving? I don’t know. Thank you, though.”
Bridgers, who has been enjoying her on success off the back of her 2019 magnum opus Punisher, describes Baker as “one of those people whose opinion you want to hear about everything.” She continues: “A true critical thinker with an ever-changing and ridiculously articulate worldview. Her music changes in the same way, and this record is my favorite thing she’s ever done. I’m sure I’ll think the same about the next one.”
Meanwhile, Dacus explains that the song was recorded in Nashville on the same day that the trio recorded a song of hers and Bridgers’ Punisher cut ‘Graceland Too’. “That day had the same atmosphere as when we recorded the boygenius EP”, she adds. “Making music was just a natural result of being together, easy as can be but also rare in a way that feels irreplicable”. On ‘Favor’, she notes that it makes her “think about how truth only ever breaks what should be broken, and how love is never one of those things. I’m always honored to be brought into Julien’s life and music.”
‘Favor’ is the third single to be released off Baker’s forthcoming third studio album Little Oblivions, which is out on February 26th. For more from the record, you can listen to the previously shared ‘Faith Healer’ and our sternly recommended pick, ‘Hardline’.
