I stumbled upon Phoebe Bridgers' "Funeral" shortly after my classmate and neighbor passed away last semester. I was struck by the timeliness and candor of the first few lines:
I'm singing at a funeral tomorrow For a kid a year older than me I've been talking to his dad, it makes me so sad When I think too much about it, I can't breathe
Bridgers grapples with her friend's death as well as her own introspective response to loss. She conveys a sense of separation and apathy, no longer caring to search for meaning in her dreams as she resigns herself to a persistent depression that leaves her "doing nothing / again." Yet Bridgers also expresses a sense of guilt, as, relative to the death of her friend and the depth of his parents' grief, her own emotional suffering seems to pale in comparison. Her unvarnished lyrics thus illuminate attempts to understand her complex place in grief.
Lyrics:
I'm singing at a funeral tomorrow For a kid a year older than me I've been talking to his dad, it makes me so sad When I think too much about it, I can't breathe
And I have this dream where I'm screaming underwater While my friends are all waving from the shore I don't need you to tell me what that means I don't believe in that stuff anymore
Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time That's just how I feel Always have and I always will I always have and always will
I have a friend I call When I've bored myself to tears We talk until we think we might just kill ourselves But then we laugh until it disappears
Last night I blacked out in my car And I woke up in my childhood bed Wishing I was someone else, feeling sorry for myself When I remembered someone's kid is dead
Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time That's just how I feel Always have and I always will I always have and always will
And it's four a.m. again And I'm doing nothing Again