Julien Rose Baker (born September 29, 1995) is an American indie rock singer and guitarist. Her music is noted for its moody quality and confessional lyrical style, as well as frank explorations of topics including Christianity, addiction, mental illness, and human nature. She has received six Grammy Award nominations and three wins as a member of Boygenius.[1]
Born and raised in suburban Memphis, Tennessee, Baker released her debut album Sprained Ankle (2015) while she was a student at Middle Tennessee State University. The album received critical acclaim and appeared on several 2015 year-end lists. Baker subsequently signed to Matador Records and released her second studio album Turn Out the Lights in 2017, to further critical success. Her third album, Little Oblivions (2021), embraced a more full-band sound and became Baker's first top 40 album on the Billboard 200 chart.
In addition to her solo work, Baker is a member of the indie supergroup Boygenius, alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. The group's debut eponymous EP was released in October 2018. Boygenius announced their reunion in January 2023, and their debut studio album The Record was released in March. Their newest release, titled The Rest, was released in October 2023.
Early life
Baker was born on September 29, 1995, in Germantown, and raised in Bartlett, Tennessee, a city near Memphis.[2][3] Her parents both worked in the field of physical therapy. She has spoken of being inspired by her father who, after an accident in his twenties resulting in the amputation of his leg, dedicated his life to making experimental prosthetic limbs.[4] Baker's parents separated while she was in elementary school.[5]
Baker grew up in a devout Baptist family, and her early exposure to music involved playing at her church.[2][6] After seeing Green Day on television, she was inspired to explore more alternative music and started listening to bands like My Chemical Romance and Death Cab for Cutie.[4][7] She subsequently became captivated by the punk, hardcore, metalcore, and screamo scenes, and has said some of her favorite bands were mewithoutYou, Underoath, The Chariot, Norma Jean, and Whitechapel.[4][7] She struggled with substance abuse as a young teen, but found support in the community surrounding house shows in Memphis, and became inspired by the straight edge punk subculture.[4][8] While in high school in 2010, Baker co-founded the band the Star Killers, who renamed themselves Forrister in 2015.[9][10][11]
Baker attended Arlington High School and then Middle Tennessee State University, where she had a campus job in the A/V department and initially studied audio engineering, before switching to literature and secondary education.[3][12][13][14] She eventually left school to tour full-time after the release of Sprained Ankle, but returned to campus in the fall of 2019 to complete her degree in literature.[15]
Career
2015–2017: Sprained Ankle and Turn Out the Lights
Baker performing at Rough Trade NYC in 2016
During her first year at MTSU, Baker began writing songs on her own, often utilizing the university practice rooms that stayed open late at night.[16] She wrote what would become Sprained Ankle in her dorm room and recorded it on free studio time that a friend of hers had gotten from an internship. She has said that she never thought the EP would be heard by a wide audience; she put it on Bandcamp so that her friends could hear it.[17]
It was picked up by 6131 Records, who released the album Sprained Ankle in October 2015.[11]Sprained Ankle ended up topping many 2015 year-end lists, and its success led to features in The New Yorker and The New York Times, with various critics calling it "heartbreaking," "hypnotic," and "striking."[18][4][5]
In March 2016, Baker gave an NPR Tiny Desk performance, the first of an eventual four appearances at the desk.[19][20][21][22] She also played at that year's South by Southwest and Newport Folk festivals.[23][24] Her performances from this period have been called "hushed, reverential events," with the audience often remaining quiet and emotional.[18]
In October 2016, she contributed to Say Yes! A Tribute to Elliott Smith, covering "Ballad of Big Nothing".[25]
In 2017, she signed to Matador Records, and released a 7-inch single consisting of the songs "Funeral Pyre" (previously called "Sad Song 11") and "Distant Solar Systems."[26][27]
In 2018, Baker formed the rock supergroupBoygenius with fellow indie singer-songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, both of whom she had toured with previously. The group released three songs in August of that year and subsequently announced an eponymous EP, Boygenius, which was released on October 26, 2018, to widespread critical acclaim.[33] The band spent that November touring the U.S., and performed "Me & My Dog" on Late Night with Seth Meyers.[34] The trio has continued to collaborate on each other's solo work since the release of their EP, lending backing vocals to two songs from Bridgers' Grammy-nominated Punisher (2020), "Please Stay" from Dacus' Home Video (2021), and "Favor" from Baker's Little Oblivions (2021), as well as Hayley Williams' Petals for Armor (2020) single "Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris."[35]
In 2019, Baker put out two 7-inch singles. The first, released in June, featured songs "Red Door" and "Conversation Piece," and the second in October featured "Tokyo" and "Sucker Punch" as part of the Sub Pop singles series.[36] All four songs had a slightly more produced sound than her previous work and were received very positively.[37] She also contributed to Tiny Changes: A Celebration of Frightened Rabbit's 'The Midnight Organ Fight', covering "The Modern Leper".[38]
On October 21, 2020, Baker announced her third studio album, Little Oblivions, accompanied by the lead single "Faith Healer" and an essay by poet Hanif Abdurraqib.[39]Little Oblivions was released February 26, 2021, and was preceded by additional singles "Hardline" and "Favor."[35] It was written mostly over the course of 2019, a difficult and formative year for Baker as she had to cancel various tour dates, struggled with her sobriety and mental health, and eventually returned to school to finish her degree at MTSU.[15] In January, she appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, performing "Faith Healer."[40]
In 2022, Baker released a B-Side EP to Little Oblivions and shared the single "Guthrie".[41]
2023–present: The Record
In March 2023, Boygenius released their debut studio album, The Record, to universal acclaim.[42] The band played Coachella 2023 in April. They then embarked on the Re:SET Concert Series and joined member Phoebe Bridgers for some opening sets on Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour.[43] In June 2023, the band performed in drag in Baker's home state of Tennessee in protest of anti-drag legislation that state governor Bill Lee signed into law that was blocked in federal court.[44] After a North America leg, they toured Europe, before returning to the USA for the second half of the tour.
In October 2023, the band released a second EP, The Rest.[45] During the second leg of their The Record tour they debuted the songs night by night. Baker features most prominently on the last song of the collection, "Powers."[46] The band's album, The Record received six nominations at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards including Album of the Year and Record of the Year, ultimately winning three, including Best Alternative Music Album. As of the 1st of February 2024, Boygenius is on hiatus, describing the situation as 'going away for the foreseeable future'.[47]
In October 2023, Baker released the track "Thick Skull" (Re: Julien Baker) on Re: This Is Why, a remixed version of Paramore's This Is Why.[48] Baker composed the opening theme to the television series Orphan Black: Echoes, which first premiered in November 2023.[49]
After dueting a couple of songs together at Baker's 2024 New York shows, she and musician Torres were announced as a joint act on the lineup of several festivals for 2025, including Big Ears in Knoxville, Tennessee and High Water Music Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, teasing a project called "Put a Little Sugar In The Tank" on their social media. [57]
Baker is known for her personal, confessional songwriting, and her music has been categorized as a mix of indie rock, indie folk, alternative, and emo.[58] The sparse arrangements on her "fragile, gentle" 2015 debut, Sprained Ankle, feature only her voice, guitar, and occasional piano, and her stage performances for many years consisted of her alone, utilizing a loop pedal.[59] 2017's Turn Out the Lights saw the addition of occasional violin, as well as organs and "cavernous-sounding production."[59][60] Her performances from this period have been called "hushed, reverential events," with the audience often remaining quiet and emotional.[18]
Baker experimented with a more full-band sound for her 2021 release Little Oblivions, and has commented on feeling limited by expectations to adhere to her established style.[60] The album newly featured drums, bass, keyboards, mandolin, and banjo, all played by Baker on the recording.[61] On tour following its release, she played with a full band and debuted new, multi-instrument arrangements of her previous work, describing the band's sound as "post-rock."[62][63]
"Baker's gentle touch [...] evok[es] an entire world — of suffering and healing, eagerness and fear, loneliness and companionship, distance and intimacy — in its search for a more human truth."
— Marissa Lorusso, "The 200 Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women", NPR[64]
Baker's writing is infused with religious themes, and it often is noted for its occasionally violent imagery.[59][65] Hope, redemption, love, addiction, shame, self-loathing, and direct appeals to God are all prominent motifs throughout her work.[66] Her music often features frank explorations of addiction and sobriety, and she has been open in discussing her experiences with substance abuse and mental illness.[67][68][69]
The grand project of Julien Baker, as I have always projected it onto myself, is the central question of what someone does with the many calamities of a life they didn’t ask for, but want to make the most out of. I have long been done with the idea of hope in such a brutal and unforgiving world, but I’d like to think that this music drags me closer to the old idea I once clung to. But these are songs of survival, and songs of reimagining a better self, and what is that if not hope? Hope that on the other side of our wreckage — self-fashioned or otherwise — there might be a door. And through the opening of that door, a tree spilling its shade over something we love. A bench and upon it, a jacket that once belonged to someone we’d buried. Birds who ask us to be an audience to their singing. A small and generous corner of the earth that has not yet burned down or disappeared. I can be convinced of this kind of hope, even as I fight against it. To hear someone wrestling with and still thankful for the circumstances of a life that might reveal some brilliance if any of us just stick around long enough.
Personal life
Baker is a lesbian, and her fraught experiences with organized Christianity inform much of her work.[18][71] She came out to her parents at age 17, after years of being closeted and watching friends get sent to conversion therapy or kicked out of their homes. However, she found her family was "radically accepting."[18] She previously referred to herself as a Christian socialist, but has spoken on how being constantly labeled the "sober queer Christian" early in her career was damaging to her understanding of her identity, and led to her questioning and reevaluating many foundational aspects of her life.[72][73][74][15] She has since discussed the ever-changing nature of her relationship to faith, saying she is no longer interested in labeling her beliefs so rigidly and that she is trying to adopt a less dichotomous worldview than the one she was raised with, calling the realization "freeing."[75][76][74] She has been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. [77]
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