Boygenius, the rock supergroup made up of Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers, formed on a whim. When the three indie rock artists found out they were touring together in 2018, they decided to record a song to promote the tour. What was meant to be one song together snowballed into six on an eponymous EP released in 2018 that had many fans asking for more.

Each went on to create highly acclaimed solo albums and they all kept in touch, but later admitted they were sheepish to bring up working together again—each singer thought she was more excited than the other two about the prospect. Baker and Dacus dropped critically successful third albums, Little Oblivions and Home Video, respectively, and Bridgers rose to mainstream fame with four Grammy nominations for her sophomore album Punisher.

Then, during the pandemic, Bridgers sent the other two a demo and a text: “Can we be a band again?” The trio created a shared Google Drive and got to work. In late March 2023, they finally released their full-length album, the record, which many critics already consider one of the best albums of the year.

The album’s magic lies in harmonious guitar riffs and deeply felt lyrics steeped in nostalgia and humor (“Will you be a Satanist with me?”). The band name itself pokes fun at the fact that the musicians who get lauded as “geniuses” are almost always men. Navigating fame in a male-dominated industry is something the members of boygenius, all women, have experience with. 

The band has no frontwoman, a fact that often gets them compared to Crosby, Stills, and Nash. It’s a foundational characteristic of the group, one that defines their ethos. “We’ve all been in situations where we felt like there was a power dynamic or power disparity, or where we felt not at liberty to share our thoughts, or we felt that we were viewed as inferior in other collaborative situations,” Baker told Billboard in 2018. “I think we took care to be explicit and intentional about establishing a rapport of respect and trust. We did that intuitively.”

It also animates how they collaborate. “We all have equal input. Even on the songs that are led by somebody, we think through them together,” Dacus told Variety. The three wrote many more songs than appear on the record, and voted on which ones to cut. “I think part of deciding which songs to keep on is like, ‘Oh, well, we can’t have seven songs that are all Julien,’” said Dacus.

While the band works on each song together, fans can easily identify each artist’s contribution to a song, given their distinct individual styles. The heavy guitar lines are quintessentially Baker, the tender and literary lyrics likely Dacus, while Bridgers is known for her personal and sardonic stories. Working together amplifies each person’s talents so that the result is more than the sum of its parts. 

When writing a song for boygenius rather than for herself, Dacus told Loud and Quiet she’s in a different “frame of mind.” “I don’t want to make either of you sing lyrics that don’t resonate with you,” she said to her bandmates. 

Being in a room together helps—they took writing trips in California to make the record, and the beach is a motif in the album. “Phoebe will, say, bring an idea and say ‘I don’t know what to do next,’ and then we’ll all separately learn the chords, play it by ourselves, play in the same room…. We’d have the opportunity to say, ‘Come here for a second, and hear this,’” Dacus told Music Connection. “When we felt there was momentum around something, we’d all convene and affirm the things that felt right and scrap the things that felt wrong. Redirect until we got to a destination that felt good.”

The process of writing together is “less like we’re presenting a draft and then we collect edits from the others,” Dacus told Variety, “and more like we’re all building up raw material and assembling together.” 

The key to this kind of collaboration is to not get defensive about feedback. “I don’t remember a single moment of an ego about somebody wanting a lyric to go or stay,” Bridgers said in the same interview. “It felt like very unanimous-brain, to improve with small changes in each other’s work. It felt like for the greater good of the song, not just differing opinions on lyrics.”

Dacus summed up what makes the collaboration work: “I think it’s just that we share taste, and so our hit rate for each other is really high. When we miss, it’s not a big deal,” she said in the Music Connection Q&A. 

It’s also important that their honest feedback comes from a bedrock of affection. Bridgers added in the same interview, “It keeps my belief strong that y’all are telling me the truth all of the time because of the times that I show something and you’re like, ‘Huh?’ We have honesty with each other and it’s not an insult because I know you believe in my songwriting as good and great and pure.”

Ultimately, the collaboration is a combination of bringing each of their unique gifts to the table while trusting the process of soliciting feedback will make it better. “While our music is very different stylistically, I think we all have similar emotions to end quandaries that we’re trying to get at and with different literal vocabulary and musical vocabulary,” Baker told Vogue in 2018. “It was easy to get on the same page, but we didn’t necessarily approach it with a thesis.”

While the record isn’t explicitly a love album, it’s not not an album about the love that exists in friendship. The opening lines of “Leonard Cohen” are about someone who drove in the wrong direction because they were focused on making others in a car listen to a specific song—something that actually happened when Bridgers made the other two listen to Iron & Wine’s “Trapeze Swinger” on the road in Northern California. 

“I can’t believe you happened to me,” Dacus sings about her bandmates in the song’s final line. 

The closeness of the three, their openness to sharing vulnerabilities, mix styles, and bring new ideas without ego is exactly what makes the band so exciting, and likely what makes the collaboration such a powerful experience for both the members and listeners alike.

“And it feels good to be known so well,” the three croon on the record’s masterful fourth song, “True Blue.” “I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself. I remember who I am when I’m with you. Your love is tough, your love is tried and true blue.”