Phoebe Bridgers’ Madison Square Garden Return Was Unforgettable
The singer-songwriter played her biggest show in years, and banning phones only made it better
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Coachella
The screams started long before the lights dimmed at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Thursday night — layers and layers of them, bouncing off the walls of the arena. The merch lines wrapped around the concourse, with the customers broken up into sections so as not to interrupt foot traffic. Outside, fans climbed upstairs from the underground, emerging out of the Penn Station subway entrance. It’s been freshly painted orange and blue, to celebrate the Knicks being in the N.B.A. finals for the first time since 1999. But despite the occasional cheers of “Let’s go Knicks,” this isn’t a basketball game. It’s a Phoebe Bridgers concert.
This show was a total surprise, announced just four days ago, with $1 tickets available only through lottery. It’s the finale to an incredible month, in which the 31-year-old singer-songwriter resurfaced for the first time in three years, shocking fans with acoustic pop-up shows across the country. That run began in Roswell, New Mexico, and capped last weekend in Fargo, North Dakota, all at intimate clubs that only hold several hundred people.
So it was only natural that the trek culminated at a place that holds 22,000, roughly more than 50 of those venues in one room. (If that math is incorrect, feel free to quote the opening line to “Waiting Room”: If Bridgers was a teacher, we’d totally fail her class.)
The last time Bridgers performed at the Garden was in October 2023, when she made her debut at the historic venue with her supergroup boygenius, alongside Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus. Before that, she was on tour behind her 2020 breakthrough album, Punisher, released six years ago this month. But unlike those shows, tonight was a phoneless affair, with devices locked away in Yondr pouches (we were given black bookmarks, with silver ink telling us where we were seated).
That made the entry process long and tedious, but it was more than worth it — particularly to see the crowd illuminated only by the flames of lighters raised high in the air, a euphoric feeling many of them were probably experiencing for the first time, having been too young in the pre-smartphone era. Bridgers told the crowd that she loved the “internet-free zone,” though she knew some were probably breaking that rule. “If any of you stuck an Apple Watch up your ass to record this, please don’t post it on the internet,” she said.
“I’m trusting you.”
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Bridgers arrived onstage with platinum blonde hair and a Black Sabbath shirt, continuing her streak of wearing some choice band tees over the last month onstage, from Radiohead to the Grateful Dead. She was joined by her longtime collaborator Christian Lee Hutson (he’s the friend she’s singing about on the Punisher beauty “Halloween”) and keyboardist Nick White, who played on the Punisher tour. Cozy living room props are all the rage right now — Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman’s recent shows featured a television set and several glowing lamps, while Dacus had a couch onstage for her recent solo tour.
But only Bridgers would play the Garden surrounded by rotary phones, lava lamps, and space posters. When she sipped her mug of tea, or leaned back on the couch to strum her acoustic guitar, you felt like you were right next to her.
In addition to phones, pens and paper were also banned. That’s because fans have been leaking the lyrics to the new songs she’s been slowly revealing to the world, eager to decipher who and what they’re about. We’ll respect that rule, but just know the new songs were some of the best moments of the show, as Bridgers dazzled the crowd with the latest look inside her brain.
The lyrics were tighter and more introspective than ever, and you can tell she’s been experimenting with her vocals. She showcased the same new songs she’s been performing over the last month, and sandwiched one live debut with some New York themes between the Stranger in the Alps classic “Scott Street” and the finale “I Know the End.”
Bridgers didn’t play “Garden Song” — that’d be too on the nose — but she sprinkled fan favorites from Alps and Punisher into the set. Her most brilliant lines, like the gutting “I hate you for what you did/And I miss you like a little kid” on “Motion Sickness,” were made to be chanted at the Garden. The same goes for the nautical-themed birthday party she dreams about in “Moon Song,” and when we heard thousands of voices yell “You are sick and you’re married and you might be dying,” you couldn’t help but marvel at the staying power of her music.
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There were many sincere moments in the show, like when Bridgers thanked the audience for “deflecting” their conservative parents, the same way her late father did. She also shouted out the Immigration Bond Freedom Fund, a group that aims to release people from immigration detention centers, which received the proceeds from the night’s tickets. She revealed her plans for an official fall tour, which she formally announced this morning, and joked about how all of her songs are about the past. But that’s exactly what we love about them, and why her absence was felt so deeply these last few years. We tried to stay clean and live without, but surrendering to the sound felt too good.
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