Multiple Grammy nominee Phoebe Bridgers took the Saturday Night Live stage Feb. 6, bringing her Midwestern “Omaha sound” to New York City.
Comedian Dan Levy of the acclaimed comedy Schitt’s Creek hosted SNL last weekend. While his spot is well-deserved (Schitt’s Creek having swept the Emmys and garnered plenty of Golden Globe nominations), another rising star, Nebraska’s angsty folk princess Phoebe Bridgers, introduced an audience of millions to her music when she performed her hit “Kyoto,” which is nominated for both Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance.
For her second performance of the night, Bridgers played “I Know the End,” a song which begins softly but crescendos into cacophony, similarly to the “Wall of Sound” production process originally popularized among Motown artists and the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.
In the days following her SNL appearance, however, Bridgers has faced some frankly unfair criticism from the public and from figures in the music industry for the ending of her performance of “I Know the End,” during which she smashed her guitar and amplifier.
At the end of the main body of the song, the arrangement collapses in on itself and the music becomes aggressive, swirling into a chaos which is reminiscent of both the themes of her acclaimed album Punisher, like grief, loss, and feelings of abandonment and disillusion with modernity. Once the climax of the song hit, Phoebe took off her guitar and started whacking her amp with it, invoking rock guitarists before her.
Strangely, though (or perhaps not), instead of focusing on the artistry and musicianship she displayed, many took issue with the smashing of her instrument, including rock insiders.
Guitarist David Crosby of classic rock band Crosby, Stills and Nash came out of the woodwork to give his opinion on Twitter, writing, “Guitars are for playing…making music…not stupidly bashing them on a fake monitor for childish stage drama…I really do NOT give a flying F if others have done it before, it’s still STUPID.”
Within rock n’ roll, perhaps more so than other genres, there exists a culture of masculinity which has guided its history and, more strikingly, the composition of its artists. This masculinity has led to well-documented feats of aggressive showmanship, notably the smashing of guitars (which was pioneered by the Who’s Pete Townshend). For all the many male artists or groups in the genre, the women of the genre have had no choice but to try and keep pace with that aggression and machismo.
The problem within this arises when examining the double standard between the male-dominated rock industry with the women artists therein. The reason female rock artists like Bridgers face such repudiation from within stems from the inherent exclusivity of the rock n’ roll genre. When women are forced to match that macho intensity that arises from being a predominantly male musical movement, they face accusations of being “childish” or—and this is an incredibly common complaint—that they are “trying too hard.”
The underlying issue, then, is that women in rock are both encouraged to strive for success in a cutthroat industry and discouraged from “trying so hard.” The gatekeeping that goes on in the world of rock is, unfortunately, still alive and well. By making the standards for female rock musicians so high, traditionalists have built and tried to maintain an overwhelmingly masculine barrier around “their” genre.
But that isn’t the direction it’s heading!
It’s okay if you watched the performance’s end and thought to yourself, “That was a little extra.” Acts of destruction like that don’t appeal to everyone, and that’s to be expected. Nothing has universal appeal.
However, that is not what these critics are doing. By writing off Phoebe Bridgers’ actions as puerile, wasteful, and “stupid,” stalwarts in the genre like Crosby and disapproving commenters on social media are trying to dissuade female performers—who represent the future of rock—from contributing to the catalogue of great. In other words, in their resolution to belittle talented women like Bridgers, these insiders who have been in the industry for so long are actively dooming the very same rock n’ roll culture that produced them and nurtured their opinion in the first place.
Phoebe Bridgers already is a rock star (just ask the Recording Academy!), and historically, smashing guitars is just something rock stars do from time to time. To levy attacks against components of her stage act and presence in spite of her talent completely undermines the struggle of women in rock since its inception.
Let Phoebe Bridgers smash her guitar! To suggest that this is childish and somehow an affront to rock culture is to perpetuate a silly double-standard and enforce an obsolete status quo.
IMAGE TAKEN from Instagram: @phoebebridgers
