{"id":1256463,"date":"2025-03-30T20:21:41","date_gmt":"2025-03-30T20:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/?p=1256463"},"modified":"2025-03-30T20:21:41","modified_gmt":"2025-03-30T20:21:41","slug":"i-would-never-be-able-to-sing-a-song-that-a-robot-wrote-lucy-dacus-on-her-new-albums-themes-of-artistry-and-intimacy-pop-and-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/pt\/i-would-never-be-able-to-sing-a-song-that-a-robot-wrote-lucy-dacus-on-her-new-albums-themes-of-artistry-and-intimacy-pop-and-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I would never be able to sing a song that a robot wrote\u2019: Lucy Dacus on her new album\u2019s themes of artistry and intimacy | Pop and rock"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I<\/span>n the shadow of a Hogarth painting, accompanied by guitar and violin, Lucy Dacus<\/a> is singing about disappointment. The painting depicts Thomas Coram, founder of the Foundling Hospital in London\u2019s Bloomsbury district. A shipbuilder by trade, he is portrayed in full baroque garb, a style usually reserved for the aristocracy. But amid the classical architecture and rich fabrics, he is shown as he was: the thread veins on his face, his feet not quite touching the ground. The setting is apt for Dacus\u2019s disquisitions on life and love, and the ways they can exceed, or fall short of, the expectations we place upon them: the moments that feel exalted, idealised, as well as the times when reality intrudes on the fantasy.<\/p>\n

The Foundling Museum<\/a>, the setting of tonight\u2019s intimate show, also holds a deeper meaning for the singer-songwriter, who was raised in Mechanicsville, Virginia by adoptive parents; the mother who raised her was herself adopted from an orphanage at a young age. \u201cI had nothing like this growing up,\u201d says Dacus to the assembled crowd. \u201cWe don\u2019t have the concept of a foundling in the US. It would have been cool if the other kids at school had known that was fine.\u201d The previous day, after her photoshoot in the museum\u2019s grand-looking court room, she is visibly moved upon learning about the building\u2019s history, and its current work training care-experienced young people. She asks the organisers about inviting some of the trainees to the concert: it would, she says, be a way of showing them \u201chey, I\u2019m doing cool shit \u2013 you can do cool shit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cool shit in question is the kind of life most teenagers dream of. Signed to Matador in 2016, aged 21, Dacus has been crafting sumptuous, emotionally astute music straddling folk and indie rock since the release of her debut, No Burden<\/em>. Two critically acclaimed albums followed, producing singles such as immaculate breakup anthem Night Shift<\/a> and the yearning, Springsteen-esque Hot & Heavy<\/a>. A through-line of her discography is the arresting interplay between her agile, velvety voice and often unsettling lyrics: on the quietly devastating Thumbs, inspired by the time she accompanied a friend to meet her estranged, abusive father, Dacus imagines placing her thumbs on the man\u2019s eyes, \u201cpressing in until they burst\u201d.<\/p>\n

In 2018, she joined forces with Californian Phoebe Bridgers and Tennessee-born Julien Baker, two songwriters who share her enthusiasm for 90s alternative music, ethereal harmonies and dry internet humour, to form supergroup Boygenius<\/a>. After a self-titled EP, their chart-topping 2023 debut The Record<\/a><\/em> was nominated for seven Grammys, winning three of them; the group made history as the first all-female band to win best rock song and best rock performance. The group also won a Brit, and the band\u2019s first UK gig, a sold-out 25,000-capacity show<\/a> at London\u2019s Gunnersbury Park, has also been their biggest to date. They replicated Nirvana\u2019s historic 1994 cover shoot for a Rolling Stone<\/a><\/em> interview<\/a>, in which the magazine called them \u201cthe world\u2019s most exciting indie band\u201d. They are currently on hiatus. \u201cThe goal is not a repeat of that experience,\u201d says Dacus, sipping green tea in a room downstairs, under a different Hogarth painting. \u201cThe reception to The Record<\/em> outpaced what any of us expected. Then the time since then \u2013 thank God we\u2019ve stopped. It\u2019s nice to chill a little bit.\u201d A later question about the band is met with: \u201cLet\u2019s skip it. Because it\u2019s not about them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dacus\u2019s focus today is firmly on her accomplished new solo album, Forever Is a Feeling<\/em>, an intensely personal record that should crystallise her reputation as an important artist in her own right. In the run-up to its release, Dacus has deliberately scaled things down, playing a selection of tiny gigs in boutique, atmospheric venues: the neo-gothic Vondelkerk in Amsterdam; a candle-lit show at the \u00c9glise Saint-Eustache in Paris, where she dedicated a song to her girlfriend (\u201cI wonder if that has never been done in this building,\u201d she mused<\/a>, eliciting cheers). For the first time, she has had the money and resources to invest in an elaborate aesthetic for the album, which centres largely around classical art. The cover is a Renaissance-style oil painting of Dacus by artist Will St John; in the video for lead single Ankles<\/a>, she is a portrait who has come to life and escaped from her frame, wandering around Paris in a custom-made Rodarte gown.<\/p>\n

The portrait imagery reminded many of C\u00e9line Sciamma\u2019s film about forbidden love, Portrait of a Lady o<\/em>n Fire<\/em>, but it may also be a reference to a key part of Boygenius lore: the time that Baker found Dacus reading Henry James\u2019s The Portrait of a Lady<\/em> backstage at a show they played together in 2016. Fans have fervently speculated about Dacus and Baker\u2019s relationship, which, while not exactly kept secret, has until now never been confirmed or denied. Several lyrics on Forever Is a Feeling<\/em> corroborate what many had long suspected: \u201cYou knew when you caught me reading at your show\u201d, goes Big Deal; elsewhere, the \u201cmost wanted man in West Tennessee\u201d nods to Baker\u2019s hometown of Memphis.<\/p>\n