How Dare Phoebe Bridgers Break Her Guitar on SNL??

Video Transcript

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Welcome to get offset. My name is Emily and today I’m going to talk about Phoebe Bridgers smashing her guitar because apparently some people are pretty upset about it. And I’ve seen a few takes that are really funny. And I would like to dig into them a little bit more, please, like comment, subscribe. I mostly just talk about guitars and the, today I got some talking about, uh, a guitar.

So destroying instruments on stage is a long and storied history in rock and roll music. Um, it can probably be traced back specifically, but I don’t really know the specifics of it. Uh, the earliest instance of destroying an instrument on stage that I can think of is, um, Probable wife murder or Jerry Lee Lewis, uh, burning his piano, letting his piano on fire on stage after a show.

And if you’re curious about my, uh, accusation that Jerry Lee Lewis. Probably murdered his wife. It’s pretty suspicious. There’s um, an episode of this Graceland about it. I believe it was his fourth wife died under pretty suspicious circumstances. So did his third wife and also he didn’t marry his underage cousin.

So, um, that’s, it’s just a lot to unpack there and it’s really easy to, um, Digress. So let’s get back to it. So you have a Jerry Lee Lewis, lightest piano on fire. You have Jimmy Hendricks lighting his guitar on fire. You have the who’s smashing guitars. You have this guitar as seconds to live. You have the cover of, um, a clash record with, uh, uh, an instrument getting smashed.

Like it’s a big thing. You have, uh, bands like Nirvana, pretty famously destroying guitars. Chris Novoselic throwing his bass in the air and the MTV. Something to the award show. I think it wasn’t having to come back and smack him in the face. Like these antics are, are, they’re not new. And, um, it’s kind of interesting to see people get so mad about it when I’m pretty sure Sturgill Simpson destroyed his guitar on Saturday night, live at the very least a week beforehand, a machine gun Kelly threw his guitar on stage.

Maybe to attack probably who knows. I don’t, I won’t make assumptions about it, but I will say that no one really seemed to get mad about that. Gee, I wonder why, so let me just talk about some of the takes that I’ve actually seen people say, um, in some guitar forums, are you ready? One she should have given it to a kid.

I don’t know if people are serious when they say this. Um, at this point it’s just become such a memorable thing to say, uh, awhile back, 60, 60 cycle hum. Um, Ryan Burke from city cycle hum said that he had this, um, Epiphone guitar that he didn’t really like. And he had had an inquiry from. A gig bag manufacturer.

And they wanted him to test the durability of their cases. And he said, Hey, I’m going to test it with this guitar. I don’t like, and Hey, it might be destroyed. It might not. People went nuts to the thought of this hundred dollar guitar that Ryan had. It put a lot of his time and energy into. Getting destroyed for any reason.

So people kept saying, give it to a kid, give it to a kid, give it to charity and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I said, if you destroy that guitar, I will donate. I think it was a hundred dollars to rain city rock camp in your name. And Ryan messaged me. He’s like, Start at go-fund me. So I started to go fund me and then every time he did, um, another test in the series of videos he did for this guitar case or gig bag, um, he said, if you’re, if you’re mad that I might destroy a guitar, put your money where your mouth is, we ended up raising about a thousand dollars.

I think it was over a thousand dollars for rain city rock camp for girls, and he’s threw the guitar off a bridge. So I was like, I have to destroy it now. And yeah, people got upset about that. It was a, it was a stunt. And that’s fine, but like the idea of like telling somebody what they can and cannot do with our own, um, unliving property is really silly.

And it’s a weird assumption to make that Phoebe Bridgers doesn’t give back. And any sort of way to any sort of community. She’s probably inspired a lot of people to pick up guitar and start writing songs. And I think that’s a lot more valuable than taking, you know, a mid-level Dan electro baritone guitar and giving just giving it away.

I think the inspiration is probably more valuable. The thing that she could do than just give away an instrument for some reason, that is her instrument. And maybe she does give away instruments. You don’t know what she does and neither do I, um, whatever. Uh, so that’s just one, one of the critiques that I’ve seen people, um, have.

So if you, if you have guitars and you want to give them to kids, give them to kids and don’t tell other people what to do with their own property. It’s not like they’re burning down a house in front of a bunch of people who could use a house. It’s just a guitar. It’s just a guitar. All right. The next thing I saw was that just smashing a guitar should be in the moment that should be authentic.

And she’d just be like, all this pent-up masculine rage. And then you just smashed guitar Spanish. Cause I can’t take that one seriously. I just can’t eat because it’s stupid. It’s stupid because most of the time a guitar is getting smashed. Someone decided to do that ahead of time. Like if I I’ve never smashed a guitar, but if I did, I would, I would think about it first because I probably wouldn’t be playing the whole show with my favorite guitar.

Just to smash it at the end, you, you plan this stuff in, in advance and you, you can say that’s not authentic, but it is entertainment and it is entertaining. And musicians or entertainers. So like, I, I, it’s also stupid because not like these people who are most famous for smashing their instruments on stage, they planted in advantage using Jimi Hendrix just had a canister of, of lighter fluid.

Just kept it next to his, his, his amp or something. Get the tucked away under his pedal board or in his guitar case. No, he knew he was going to light the guitar on fire at the end of the show. So what it was entertaining, the who had their texts like dummy up their guitars a little bit to make them easier to smash, repeat towns and would like glue the next neck of a guitar on just so it would come apart easier.

So it’d be more impressive. Uh, Nirvana. Chris from Nirvana said that he would loosen the bolts on the neck of his base. And he would essentially just snap the, the, the, the neck away from the body to make it look like he smashed his base without actually ruining his base. And typically he could just put it all back together at the end.

And he got really mad at himself once when he actually broke the neck of the base. Because those are expensive. And then when Nirvana got big, um, fender was send them factory seconds and then they would use them for the last song and smash their guitars. They planned it and that’s fine. It’s entertaining.

And yeah, Phoebe did, um, tell Daniel electro that she was going to smash the guitar. They said, good luck. Those are hard to break. And apparently they are so. It plus for that build quality of their day now. Um, and then she did the right thing and telling SNL that she wanted to do it. So they gave her, um, a dummy monitor.

So she wasn’t actually damaging anybody else’s property, but her own. Again, I don’t know why you care. And the, and I liked the entertainment of it. Um, being planned out, not like, and I thought it was off the cuff enough. I like, I didn’t expect her to do it. I knew she was going to scream because it’s on the record.

I didn’t know she’s gonna smash a guitar. And I thought that was pretty funny, um, for reasons I’ll get into, but I liked that they, they, they rigged up some pyrotechnics on the monitor wedge so that when she hit it, It sparked. That was pretty fun. That was fun to watch. That’s just my opinion on it. Um, and then the most ridiculous of the comments I saw was that it, it kind of blends into the authenticity argument.

Um, A little bit, someone made the claim that it looked like she didn’t want to do it, that someone had told her to do it. And I just got a wonder why that person would assume that a woman doesn’t have any agency over what the hell she does on stage. And that’s really all I had to say about that one, because I feel like that one’s pretty stupid.

Even if it was someone else’s idea, it’s her career. I think it’s pretty obvious that she has a lot of agency in. And what she does because she does a lot of things that I think that traditionally corral is wouldn’t be super duper into, but, but she does it anyway, like playing a BC rich guitar, even her early shirts were when she was especially foci where like had that metal font on them.

And that’s kind of what, one of the things I want to say is that I think people, miss is just how. Funny and absurd is that of all people who are like smashing guitars on SNL, it’s a person who’s most famous for writing supremely sad folk songs. And she’s up there with a BC rich warlock or whatever for one song.

And then she’s doing the rock and roll thing of smashing a guitar on the next song. I don’t, I don’t think how I don’t get how you don’t see a little bit of humor in that at least a little bit of humor, uh, and get that’s. That’s hilarious. Like it was hilarious when she just started screaming into the microphone also because nobody who is unaware of that song.

Um, I know the end, uh, would probably expect her to just start. Screaming. My husband was really surprised. I don’t think he’d listened to that. Um, that song, and I know my podcast co-host was surprised, which we’ll talk more about tomorrow, but. While, while like this is new and while I’m like experiencing just this weird, this weird reaction to it, like you don’t have to like that people smash guitars.

And for the record, I don’t really think she smashed that guitar. Like she didn’t, I don’t think she destroyed that guitar. I bet she can just tune it back up and play it again. Like it looked like it, it looked like it kinda won that battle. Between the fake monitor wedge. Um, and there’s one other thing that people are saying that it, um, is lame that she didn’t actually break the guitars kind of the other end of it.

Like she took a lot of wax at that thing. And what I want to say is, I think, I do think she probably should have held it from if she wanted to break it, held it from closer to the headstock that would’ve gotten her, uh, more velocity, more momentum, I think. And then also that she was saying it she’s like.

Shorter than me. I’m five seven. Um, and then she was, uh, hitting it on a wedge that came up about a foot off the floor. So she really had like a lot less distance from up here to ground to make a good, like, solid connection with that, with that, with the floor that would, um, create more moments and then break the instrument more easily.

Also, she apparently didn’t dummy up her guitar like Nirvana and the, who did. Hey, I mean, she planned some aspects of it. She didn’t seem to have a thought about that one as much, but that’s again fine. It was her performance. I thought it was good. I thought it was really fun to watch. I enjoyed it. And, uh, isn’t that what entertainment is is about and being a musician, entertaining people and shooting your shot.

I mean, Being on SNL other than like performing at the super bowl, probably one of the most difficult gigs in the world to get and, um, um, you know, very happy for her. She’s been having a great, great 12 months or whatever, uh, nominated for a bunch of Grammy’s performing on us now on late night TV. Uh, it’s just so different than like three years ago playing 150 cat fan use.

So. People are going to get mad about really anything that somebody does. And if, and I think that, uh, the argument cannot really be made that, um, she needed the style or the, um, joke of smashing a guitar over, over the substance of her art. Again, nominated for a bunch of Grammy’s really, really critically acclaimed.

Stuff. I think a phenomenal song writer, a really, really talented singer. And I really think that she’s doing whatever she wants with her career. I think she’s writing it and having fun while she’s doing it. And, um, I think that, I think that’s admirable and, you know, I don’t like to spend whatever, like opinion, equity or value I have complaining about stuff.

I don’t like I do it sometimes. Yeah, sure. But if I didn’t like it SNL performance, I’ll probably going to look at my husband and be like, and, and if I really like it, I’m going to say nice things about it. I just don’t see the point. And, um, I don’t know. Crapping on something just because it’s not for me.

Um, not my style of music, machine guns. Kelly’s not my style particularly. And I don’t really know much about him. I don’t find him particularly offensive from what I do know about him. I loved him when he co-hosted a catfish. Again, I’m not talking about machine gun Kelly. Um, yeah, but that’s the video.

Those are the critiques that I saw. Um, let me know your opinions in the comments. Tell me how dumb and wrong I am. Probably. I know you want to do it. I don’t, I don’t really care. Um, but anyway, thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding, um, like comment, subscribe below. If you feel like it. Um, if you do buy things from places like reverb.com or Sweetwater.

Um, or want to put your music online via district head, please check out the affiliate links in the video description. It helps us tremendously and keeping up this channel and we really appreciate, um, Just yell in general. Well, have a great rest of your night.

Uh, if you’re watching this on Monday the eighth, check out the podcast, as it drops tomorrow, where Andrew Rinard and I talk about this a little bit more along with a bunch of other fun things. We have a podcast we release every week by, I mean, at this time,