Following the immense success of their first album, the record, boygenius — a trio consisting of Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers — released the rest, an EP with four of the group’s favorite songs that didn’t make the final album, on Oct. 13.
As a self-proclaimed “girl idiot,” I listened to the rest the night of its release with a few friends. When the third track, “Voyager,” came on, the room went silent. At one point in the song, I looked up from the lyrics on my phone to find my friends and myself flabbergasted and sobbing up a storm.
“Voyager” is a melancholic reflection on an unsuccessful relationship, with heartbreaking lines that remind listeners of the group’s beautiful yet sob-inducing songwriting. Bridgers is featured as main vocalist on the track while Dacus and Baker harmonize in the background. The instrumental is simple, with just Dacus and Baker’s angelic hums and a soft guitar that plucks throughout, but I believe the song’s simplicity makes it even more heart-wrenching.
My favorite moment of “Voyager” comes in the third verse:
“Walkin’ alone in the city /
Makes me feel like a man on the moon (Ooh) /
Every small step I took was so easy (Mmm) /
But I never imagined a dot quite as pale or as blue (Ooh) /
You took it from me, but I would’ve given it to you (Mmm).”
Bridgers never fails to tug at heartstrings with her recurring space themes. One can easily understand the loneliness Bridgers describes through her comparison of walking alone in the streets of a city to a lone astronaut on the moon, far away from any form of humanity.
The “dot” Bridgers reflects on is our world, Earth, which looks tiny from the perspective of a man on the moon. It is implied in the last line of the song that the world was taken away from Bridgers by her former partner, but she would not have hesitated to give the world to them, which may be one of the most heartbreaking things I have ever heard. There is no way of beating the “sad girl indie” allegations with this song.
“Voyager” is a simple yet gorgeous track that I highly recommend listening to, along with the rest of the rest, pun intended.
