This is a list of places where I’ve listened to Punisher: the emergency room, my childhood bedroom, a northern Michigan hotel room, my East Quad Residence Hall room, a Culver’s bathroom, the park near my house and my high school science class, every day for over a year.
I hate repeating music, and I only let myself listen to the same song once a day for fear of overplaying it. But Punisher is different. Its 40-minute runtime seems the perfect length to get me out of my own head, while somehow helping me to understand my thoughts.
Punisher is now five years past its release. And half a decade later, after rarely skipping my weekly listen of the album, I still feel like there’s so much buried in it. What Punisher taught me at 15 is not what it teaches me now, and what I was so sure Phoebe Bridgers was saying doesn’t quite seem to fit anymore.
Punisher was not only significant to me when it released, but also, it pretty quickly became a cultural phenomenon of quarantine. This album cemented Bridgers’ status as a legend in the folk and indie rock scene, with a very distinct stripped-back sound: Her nearly whispering multi-layered vocals dance over a gentle humming piano or a distant fingerpicked guitar. Her voice often sounds far away, giving a distinctly spooky effect to the album. Her brilliant lyricism shines, and she takes a few major production leaps from her iconic mellow sound, like on the surprisingly upbeat “Kyoto,” or on the blood-curdling screams on “I Know the End.”
Bridgers’ commended lyrical style often leans into sharp specificity. She sings, “The doctor put her hands over my liver / she told me my resentment’s getting smaller” and “I used to light you up / now I can’t even get you to play the drums.” I used to think this obsession with particularity made her lyrics perfectly concrete, with the ingenuity coming from how easily she could lay out the exact truth of her thoughts. But now, I realize this obsession with specificity acts as more of a vessel for truth: a playground for taped-over, scribbled out meanings.
On “Moon Song,” Bridgers writes “You couldn’t have stuck your tongue down the throat of somebody who loves you more / So I will wait for the next time you want me / Like a dog with a bird at your door.” It has the edge of her typical wit, but contains more mystery every time I hear it. Is “you couldn’t have” purely honest, saying this person genuinely couldn’t have found somebody more perfect? Or is it quietly sarcastic, a “you couldn’t have” with an eye roll, in the tone of a sarcastic “you shouldn’t have,” knowing she’s the person they’ve always truly wanted? I don’t know.
It’s not just the inherently confusing, sticky lyrics that evolve the more you listen to Punisher, but the seemingly simple ones as well. On “Garden Song,” Bridgers says “I hopped the fence when I was 17 / Then I knew what I wanted.” 15, 16, even 17-year-old me — who had never done anything more rebellious than staying up 30 minutes past my supposed bedtime — thought this lyric was sick as fuck. Now, I laugh it off as something that a teenager would think is wildly badass. I love the naivety of it, a naivety I didn’t even identify in the lyric five years ago. Not only was Bridgers’ rebellion at 16 feigned, but also my teenage confidence that I understood her tone — taking the line as awe rather than disparagement. This evolution makes the listening experience so fruitful, allowing me to understand how I’m processing the final dregs of my teenage years depending on how I think about that line. I hope in five more years, I’ll find another piece of her delivery to be the truth of the lyric, a tone likely to match whatever I then feel about my teenage self.
With time, the act of listening to Punisher is not only one of personal enrichment, but also an academic, eclectic one as well, due to how referential the writing is. The album’s collection of references further challenges the attempt to make complete sense of Bridgers’ writing. Many of the songs reference Elliott Smith, Bridgers’ longtime muse. The title track is dedicated to him, making the album a sort of devotion. I’ve started to listen to Smith because of her love for him, seeking to find parallels for myself — her obsession comes through way more often than I’d realized.
“Moon Song” has “and we fought about John Lennon until I cried,” a lyric I used to accept at face value, but now, as a Beatlemanic confused by Lennon’s legacy, I find myself both admiring and flinching away from. I find her confusion relatable and comforting, as I similarly struggle with his work. The “Wizard of Oz” reference on “I Know the End” seemed clear to me on early listens, in “three clicks and I’m home.” It never needed much more thought. But on a recent listen, “I’m not gonna go down with my hometown in a tornado” clicked as another Ozian moment. As I get older, and know more art, Punisher bursts in brighter color. Slowly, references show themselves to me, revealing more meaning to the lyrics, more understanding of the patchwork of Bridgers.
On “Halloween” Bridgers repeats “I’ll be whatever you want.” On “Graceland Too” she says “Whatever you want me to do, I will do.” On Punisher, she promises to mold around the wants of others, no matter what that want is. It’s also the spirit of listening to the album. It bends under my life, from soothing to scary to funny to hopelessly and endlessly sad, depending on my day’s mood. Punisher will give you whatever you want.
In “Stoned at the Nail Salon,” Lorde writes “‘Cause all the music you loved at sixteen you’ll grow out of.” But I disagree, at least with Punisher. Five years isn’t a long time, but it’s enough to know that this album will always have some treasure for me. When I think that I’ve grown out of it, Punisher grows right along with me.
At 15 years old, moping with chipped black nail polish and wired earbuds in science class, I thought I really got Punisher. I thought my teenage brain had all the tools to unlock it, and I was just pretentious enough to believe I’d unwound the web of her storytelling. At 20, I understand that not only will I never “understand” Punisher — but I also don’t want to. I want the album to continue to crack me open in new ways, to teach me about myself during college graduation and doctors’ appointments and even retirement.
It’s a comfort to realize that the album still has meanings I cannot understand, whether that’s due to my age or what I have yet to go through or people I’ve yet to know. I can listen to Punisher tomorrow and find things I’d miss yesterday. At 50, I’ll discover even more.
The sly crypticness of Punisher doesn’t just give the album longevity; it forces the album to match every era of my life. And it’s not just that Bridgers does a wonderful job creating art that can mold — rather, she forces me to process my thoughts. To interpret a line differently from how I used to is to process what’s changed in my life since my last listen, to reconceptualize small things that change my way of thinking. I’ve learned Punisher is an opportunity to give yourself permission to feel your growing pains, art that forces you to be honest with your thoughts.
Maybe all albums you loved in your teenage years change shape with time. Maybe Punisher isn’t special for how it molds itself around my swirling life. The album no longer feels fresh — I have too many memories stuck to every track. But Punisher, more than anything I loved at that time, still feels like a mystery. It’s a mystery I’ve understood I’ll never truly uncover, because I don’t think I want to.
I’ll run with Bridgers in circles for another five years, and on and on. Each time, I’ll get lost with her on purpose.
Summer Managing Arts Editor Campbell Johns can be reached at caajohns@umich.edu.
