FEATURE:
Labels Mates
IN THIS PHOTO: Clockwise from left: Charlie Hickey, MUNA (framed), Phoebe Bridgers, Sloppy Jane (cardboard cutout), Scruffpuppie and Claud photographed on 12th October, 2021 at the Paramour Estate in Los Angeles/PHOTO CREDIT: Sami Drasin
Inside Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records
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MAYBE this will turn into…
PHOTO CREDIT: Frank Ockenfels
a proper run of features, but I read an article on the Billboard website a couple of weeks back. I do wonder whether people look at labels and they are important at a time when we have Spotify and Bandcamp. I feel that a good label has its own identity and ethos. That is definitely true of Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records. I have left this a little while to cover. Similar to the way singer-songwriter Lucy Rose launched Real Kind Records last year, having an artist front a label means that you get that experience, expertise and affinity. Bridgers’ label seems to be a very special and interesting proposition:
“Just before the pandemic, when indie-pop singer-songwriter Claud got coffee with Phoebe Bridgers to discuss signing to Bridgers’ new label, they talked about Nickelodeon’s iCarly. In a 2008 episode of the show, about a teen girl with a popular web series, a high-powered network executive picks up her program and, little by little, changes it beyond recognition. Claud wanted to know: “Are you guys going to do that to me?”
Bridgers had little interest in that approach. The first time she listened to a Claud song, she was so taken with the music, she texted her manager to ask if Claud was signed before the track even finished. “The weirdest part about having a label is being like, ‘What you’re doing is so awesome that I want to mess it up! Let me fix something that’s not broken for you!’ ” jokes Bridgers. In the end, her pitch to Claud was simple: “I think I could amplify what you’re already doing.”
That ethos underscores Saddest Factory Records, the label Bridgers unveiled in October 2020, with Claud as her first signee. A stand-alone label within Secretly Group — home to Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguwar and Dead Oceans, which signed Bridgers in 2017 — Saddest Factory marks a new chapter in the career of one of indie rock’s brightest rising stars and pandemic success stories. Since releasing her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps, the 27-year-old has steadily built word-of-mouth buzz thanks to her intimately detailed, quietly devastating songwriting that, following 2020’s Punisher, deeply resonated with a grim national mood — to the tune of four 2021 Grammy nominations and a February performance on Saturday Night Live.
Now, with her own label, Bridgers is offering artists a chance to similarly grow at their own pace, with little interference and all the resources of the Secretly Group team. “If I had put out my first record on a major label, I think I would’ve immediately gotten dropped,” she says. “Dead Oceans had to twiddle their thumbs until people gave a s--t about my music — and they weren’t going to give up on it. That’s how I would describe the deal [with Saddest Factory].”
The label’s roster — which also includes alt-pop trio MUNA, chamber-rock project Sloppy Jane (led by Haley Dahl) and singer-songwriters Scruffpuppie and Charlie Hickey — also benefits from Bridgers’ creative savvy, on display in her inventive, early-pandemic remote performances, during which she turned a skeleton onesie into a fashion staple, and tongue-in-cheek merchandise. (One sweatshirt features the hand gesture for a certain uncommon sex act.) “She’s a marketing genius,” says MUNA vocalist Katie Gavin, who compares Bridgers to Lil Nas X.
And while Bridgers is in her element when helping artists with music videos or kooky promo ideas, she’s perhaps most vital when acting as a kind of artist-to-executive translator. “I don’t talk to [Secretly Group staff] that much,” says Claud. “I’m like, ‘How did they just know that’s what I was thinking and I didn’t even tell them?’ But now I realize it’s because Phoebe has been telling them.”
Bridgers talks about her leadership as almost haphazard — every signing was “weirdly serendipitous,” the roster’s large number of LGBTQ+ and nonbinary artists is “a total accident.” (“Queer people are making the coolest f--king music by leaps and bounds, to me,” says Bridgers, who is bisexual.) But her self-deprecating comments about not reading spreadsheets or understanding budgets bely the very intentional community she has created — a place where artists are free to be themselves and can focus primarily on making art.
Now, with Saddest Factory just over a year old, Bridgers is relieved to see all the effort start to pay off: Sloppy Jane and Scruffpuppie are readying new albums, while Hickey released an EP in February that will get a physical release in November; Claud is touring with Bleachers (frontman Jack Antonoff tweeted that they are “one of the best new artists”), and “Silk Chiffon” recently became MUNA’s first hit on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart”.
Having been around a while, the label has brought in some terrific and varied talent. Bridgers is an artist who take risks, but she also has a great ear for new talent and artists who are going to make a change in the music world. I may spotlight other artist-run labels in the future weeks. At the moment, I want to react to that Billboard article. That important relationship between Bridgers and the Secretly Canadian label is important. Bridgers is not just an artist who has set up a label and is randomly signing people she liked. She has crated and crafted an identity and tapestry that is unique and fascinating. With its own skin and some of the most promising artist around signed to her roster, I feel we will see Saddest Factory Records grow and become one of the most impressive and go-to labels around. Maybe labels are less impactful than they used to be though, for artists, signing to the right one is vital regarding their career. Phoebe Bridgers can offer her signees a stable where they are fostered and supported. It is good to see of the success already; her artists releasing some great work and building their own platform. Bridgers is looking forward to getting everyone together for a proper label party. One of the most inspiring and hardest-working musicians in the world, Phoebe Bridgers is so inspiring and pioneering. The magnificent and impressively-stocked Saddest Factory Records is a label that will continue…
TO grow and grow.