If you haven’t seen Phoebe Bridgers’ performance on Saturday Night Live yet, where have you been for the last few days? The star took to the stage to perform tracks ‘Kyoto’ and ‘I Know The End’ from her Grammy-nominated album ‘Punisher.’ In true rock star fashion, she ended her performance with an attempt to smash her guitar – which of course was met with an outpouring of anger on Twitter. Of course, this raises the question of why Bridgers was met with this response when rock icons have been doing it for decades?
There’s a whole multitude of possible answers to this question, but the most prominent is the fact that Bridgers is a woman. All she did was copy a trick performed by many before her, and put her own twist on it. Think Pete Townshend of The Who, or Eddie Van Halen. The fact that this behaviour has been practised time and time again should mean that it shouldn’t have been a big deal.
Imitation is something that Bridgers does best, with many aspects of her discography inspired by some of the world’s greatest. She collaborated with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus on her boygenius EP. The cover features the trio posed on a couch, much like the 1969 debut from Crosby, Stills and Nash.
The SNL performance was clearly a career-defining moment for Bridgers, not to mention that the guitar was $85, and the monitor was fake. The planned act of destroying this guitar couldn’t have been any more fitting for a relatively uneventful episode of the American favourite, it was a bold yet mildly hilarious act that embodied one of the rock genre’s oldest acts. It’s an event that should be seen as a victory for the star, a milestone in her music career. However, it was treated in a freaky misogynistic manner by middle-aged men on Twitter. Really, she should have been praised for her confidence, especially when we know that so many before her have done exactly the same.
