It’s Good that The Rock and Cristiano Ronaldo Are Not in Boygenius
Not all supergroups are successful. Many are not, in fact. But this one is.
Julien Baker is walking towards me in the Nashville airport. She’s wearing a hat and carrying a guitar case. I recognize her tattooed hands sticking out from her jacket. We make brief, unintentional eye contact as we pass, me heading to the Southwest terminal to go back to Philadelphia and her seemingly walking toward the exit to go home. I say nothing to her because I am already on the phone, and also I don’t want to disturb her.
This really happened the other week. I feel like I need to make that my lede because every other profile of Boygenius lately starts with a cold open of the band currently involved in a photo shoot, or color about what they’re doing around the interview and where it’s taking place.
Boygenius, the supergroup made up of singer/songwriter standalone powerhouses Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, has no leader. There’s no creative director. There’s no bit player or sidekick or anything like that. It is one of the rare examples of a supergroup working, where each part is equal to one another, and also avoiding being genuinely good, unlike many supergroups which exist as novelty acts.
There is no ego that outshines the rest – at least not publicly. In fact, most of what we know about the Boygeniuses is that they are genuinely very good friends while also being collaborators and, essentially, coworkers. This fact that they like each other has dominated the press cycle surrounding the release of their full length debut “The Record,” which is a great record.
Profiles in outlets like Rolling Stone, Them and the LA Times underscore just how healthy the relationship between the three parts of Boygenius are, so much so that it seems to be the default narrative when discussing the band right now. The articles are full of scenes where they’re cracking each other up with inside jokes, connecting on some spiritual level, or just generally being supportive.
This is from the Rolling Stone feature:
“Lifting each other up [is] how we create,” Bridgers says. “We all get to be the lead. We all get the high of each other being in the front, which is so sick and has been the ethos of this band since day one.”
Supergroups aren’t new. Boygenius isn’t the first example of a few highly talented and independently successful people combining forces Power Rangers style. It’s just often they don’t really work. Many times they are the result of powerful egos clashing, controlling personalities going head to head, and personalities and creative outputs that just don’t gel.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson joined the Fast and Furious franchise in Fast Five, the fifth movie but fourth movie if you look at the plot chronologically (which I do). His character, DSS Agent Luke Hobbs, becomes the Fast Guys’ primary adversary, as he is the law and he is trying to stop them from committing their car pranks.
Shortly after joining the franchise, it became clear that Johnson was trying everything in his power to shift the franchise to be about him, rather than the crew of actors who had been along for the ride for years, carving out a nice, regular payday based on the consistent releases. He was now going to be the star. A series that was known for its ever-growing ensemble would now just be another - ahem – vehicle – for The Rock. After some time, reports came out that he and Vin Diesel did not get along at all, as evidenced by more than just their insane fight scenes in the movie.
It was apparently also in both of their contracts that their characters could not lose a fight. Hence why their fight scenes included both of them beating each other full on video game style, including flying through the air at times, before being pulled off of each other or ending in some other form of a stalemate.
The Rock is now gone from the franchise, despite really trying his best to derail it, even launching a spin-off movie with Jason Statham and no one else, thus delaying a much-needed fat paycheck for the rest of the usual crew. Jason Momoa is in the new one, and they recently added John Cena, who seems like a much more agreeable WWF addition, despite his muscles and marketability not unlike The Rock. I’m excited for the new one, now that it’s sort of getting back on track sans Hobbs, but there’s still the issue that it’s pushed itself away from the heart of the franchise – street racing – and I’d love to see a return in some way.
Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, Boygenius.
You could argue that what makes Boygenius so successful is that, unlike the Fast and Furious franchise, there’s no egotistical star trying to turn it into something it’s not, and by that I mean both Rock and Diesel, who was supposedly the one who wanted to push it into generic action movie territory instead of just being about racing. You could, however, argue that maybe The Genius have a similar clause in their contracts that no one could win or lose a vocal fight, so we’re given gorgeous three-part harmonies and weaving melodies, their versions of fights-to-a-tie in prison cell blocks.
Take the first song on The Record, which is sort of Dacus-lead at first, but a sum of all three voices and nothing else. It’s this beautiful, old-fashioned lullaby leading into the Baker-led “$20.” But, to say any song is led by or focusing on one of them is incorrect. Each song truly showcases the collective.
The highlight on the album, for me, and surely others, too, is “Not Strong Enough,” which showcases the Boys’ ability to work off of each other, with one verse and chorus Bridgers, one verse and chorus Baker, a Dacus Bridge that leads to all three layering on top of each other before Dacus brings it home. No one takes a back seat at all. It’s a song that seems like it was concocted in a lab to just hit every sweet spot imaginable.
This couldn’t happen if Cristiano Ronaldo were in Boygenius.
When Cristiano Ronaldo went back to Manchester United after his spell at Juventus, he had already won everything there is to be won on a club level in his time in Portugal, England, Spain and Italy. He had nothing left to prove anyone. But still, had that ego he’s known for, which brought him back United, despite his age and the fact that United was now looking toward younger attacking options for a sustainable club future, like the newly-arrived Jadon Sancho and academy treasure Marcus Rashford. Also, he was displacing Edinson Cavani, who one could argue was better suited to United’s play style under manager Erik Ten Hag.
Ronaldo’s second tenure in Manchester was marked with goal droughts, temper tantrums, breaking kids’ phones, leaving the stadium during games, all of which did not sit well with Ten Hag, known for not letting big names in the dressing room control things instead of him. No one was bigger than the club in his eyes, even someone rightfully in the “GOAT” discussion along with Lionel Messi.
Ronaldo left the club and fucked off to Saudi Arabia, where he’s scoring for fun with seemingly no challenge at all, but it’s a glamorous life he gets to live and he is making absurd amounts of money.
While on the topic of Lionel Messi, the financial missteps of his home club Barcelona resulted in his tearful departure to oil club Paris-St. Germain, which had by now assembled its own supergroup to compete in continental Europe, complete with GOAT-regent Kylian Mbappe and Messi’s former Barca strike partner Neymar, among other supporting stars.
But look at where we’re at now - multiple manager dismissals later, PSG have been knocked out of Champions League, their only true target anymore, and Messi – LIONEL MESSI – is being booed by supporters at the Parc des Princes for what fans believe is a subpar performance across the field. Messi walks about 70% of a game. He does not track back on defense. It just isn’t part of his game, and PSG knows that. Argentina’s system worked in the World Cup because he didn’t have to track back, he just had to be Messi.
A situation like Ronaldo joining the band could be enough to destroy the wonderful thing Dacus, Bridgers and Baker have created.
I can neither see Phoebe Bridgers being booed at the Parc de Princes, nor Julien Baker abandoning the group to perform in Saudi Arabia. And that’s really what this article is about.
To call friendship and cultivating a healthy environment the “secret” to Boygenius’ success would be false, because it’s hardly a secret. As I said before, it’s the focus of just about every profile on the band. The articles are full of quotes demonstrating their affection toward one another, the way they recognize their own faults, compensate for weaknesses with other strengths, and grow as a unit – as people in their 20s still figuring out life.
In a moment while being interviewed by the LA Times’ Amos Barshad, Bridgers recounts her youthful hubris, and how she probably could’ve stood to be knocked down a peg or two while she was younger.
That prompts Baker to share her early days in a “bro-y hardcore music scene” where all she wanted was to “shred so much that everyone will have to respect my band, like, ‘Look how many f— scales I can do f— fast, look look look look look.’ And around you guys, I feel like I can be the try-hard ‘pick me’ guy I wanna be because that’s all I ever was. And I don’t feel bad about it.”
Bridgers, listening carefully, says “hearing you say that is helping me love myself. That’s like so sweet.”
Oh, and not to be left out, Dacus then does something really nice, too.
Suddenly, an interlude: Dacus has noticed I’m bleeding from the mouth. Likely I banged the lip of my metal water bottle into my gums, while sipping, without really noticing. Dacus makes sure I get a paper towel and a moment to stanch the bleeding. Baker asks if I’m OK. Bridgers shares a consoling story about herself getting jammed in the mouth with a glass bottle and then breaking out into tears. For a few minutes, the warm insular Boygenius embrace is extended out.
As friends, the Boygeniuses are really like the Friends from “Friends.” But not just the Friends, the characters on “Friends” who also leaned on each other to face the world when it hasn’t been their day/week/month/even year. They resemble the friends who played the Friends on “Friends.”
Apparently, at the start of the show’s development, somehow David Schwimmer was the hottest shit among the six actors, and he made it a point to use his pull and make it that they would all be paid the same, and would stick together, so no one could be written off or paid less than anyone else. They all got fabulously rich as they shared the show’s spotlight from the pilot to the finale.
The original title of the TV show "Friends" was apparently "Six of One," representing the fact that there were, in fact, six of them, but they formed one little unit.
At it’s peak, the friends on Friends made a million bucks per episode, thanks largely due to the original agreement they made with each other and the equal nature of the show.
To that point Boygenius really is a noteworthy case in a successful supergroup, proving that you really can keep friendships intact when the stakes are so high and the spotlight shines so bright. Really, they seem to have taken a lesson from Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto, and have done more than just created a friendship.
They created a family.
These pockets ain’t empty, cuz.
Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is The Hives.