Phoebe Bridgers on Roller Skates: Why 'Lost Weekend' Took Six Years

Wearing roller skates and surrounded by 200 fans, Phoebe Bridgers publicly addressed for the first time why her new album took six years to complete. The setting was Moonlight Rollerway in Glendale, California, on August 11, during a listening party and fan Q&A for her new album "Lost Weekend."

"Lost Weekend" officially dropped on Friday, August 14, marking a full six-year gap since her 2020 solo album "Punisher." When a fan asked how she decided "now" was the time to return, her answer was refreshingly unfiltered: "I mean, I didn't love every part of being away from music." According to Variety, Bridgers admitted that after "Punisher" came out, she did want to take a step back for a while, but never intended for the break to stretch on this long.

"I kept booking studio time and then pushing it back... booking it, pushing it back, pushing it back again," she said. "I really wanted to be doing something. So I'd go into the studio, then take six months off, then go back. That's how this album ended up taking forever. But that was okay too." Rather than framing this as an inspirational story, it was simply an honest account of a cycle of procrastination paired with an unwillingness to stop entirely.

More noteworthy than the delay itself is the promotional approach Bridgers has chosen this time around. She skipped traditional media interviews altogether, opting instead for a handful of no-phones-allowed pop-up shows, along with specially designed visual screenings held at planetariums around the world. At the roller rink event, she said she wanted the entire rollout to "feel like something that's actually happening." This deliberate sidestepping of conventional press cycles and social media tactics echoes, in a way, the same rhythm she described in the Q&A — cycling in and out of the studio, refusing to rush the finished product.

While "Lost Weekend" is her first solo album in six years, she was far from absent during that stretch. In 2023, she released "The Record" with her boygenius bandmates Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, an album later named NME's Album of the Year. On this new record, both Dacus and Baker make guest appearances again, joined by Conor Oberst, her partner in Better Oblivion Community Center, her partner Bo Burnham, as well as Jack Antonoff, Alex G, and others.

The credits also reveal a mysterious vocalist billed as "Son-John Johnson," which many fans suspect is a pseudonym for Geese frontman Cameron Winter, based on the highly recognizable voice heard on "Kill Me" and "I Can't Wait." Fans have also dug up another detail: former Black Country, New Road frontman Isaac Wood appears on a hidden track called "Best Dressed" — on the CD version, it's tucked into a silent passage before opening track "The Outside," while the vinyl version places it as the final track outright. Additionally, some fans speculate that the album's "The Governor's Waltz" is about her past relationship with Paul Mescal, though this remains purely fan speculation and has not been officially confirmed.

In a five-star review, NME wrote that the album "could only be made by a creator with complete confidence in their own words and musicianship — someone who may have started writing this third album feeling lost, but by the end, isn't lost at all."

As for the tour, Bridgers will kick off a series of no-phones-allowed intimate shows at Union Chapel in London on August 17, followed by dates in Kingston, Brighton, and Bristol. The tour, dubbed "The Lost Tour," launches in North America next month, with UK and European dates scheduled for November and December.