Why Does Everyone Sound Like Phoebe Bridgers? 

I think the Spotify Effect is so real. Instead of finding artists that are in the same vein, it finds us artists that are exactly identical

What I don’t understand is why boygenius sounds so much like Phoebe Bridgers? She should sue

I mean the raspy, wide vowel, throat singing (think Halsey) that had a chokehold on music circa 2014-2016 was this same phenomenon. I’d be in the mall and hear some nondescript song and genuinely could not tell you if it was Halsey or an independent artist or a RU-vid cover or some other celebrity. There’s a reason that music from certain eras have a distinct sound. Producers see what’s making $$ and they overproduce it. They’re not thinking longevity or building a career. They’re thinking about a quick come up. This isn’t really new at all. We see this all the time.

TBH a lot of what I consider distinct about PB's sound (whispery vocals, cutting lyrics) are things where she was clearly influenced by Elliott Smith, and that's fine! She even wrote the song "Punisher" about him.

The PBE (Phoebe Bridgers Effect) feels like a product of the way all the music platforms push an algorithm. I've noticed youtube recommend much smaller artists recently all dependent on the vibes of the big song catchy song I just heard, and I think it's cool but also leads to weird almost "trends" in music. At least to the extent of song structures feeling so similar along with cadence idk

comparing ethel cain and taylor swift is soooo insane… i would have never ever even thought of connecting the two. maybe i haven’t listened to enough taylor swift but in my mind they are very different sounds

i listened to radiohead's in rainbows in 2020 and it left me thinking "wow so this is what all those indie rock bands in 2008-2010 got their sound". i agree that it isn't automatically a bad thing per se when a style becomes palpable, it's only inevitable, but you will find it hard to unnotice, and sometimes it can take you out of the experience a little bit. i'm usually just glad that i get to hear more of the sounds i like tbh

As an Ethel Cain, Lana Del Rey, and Taylor Swift fan, "American Teenager" doesn't sound like ANYTHING off of Speak Now 😭 Preacher's Daughter is gorgeous. Speak Now is also gorgeous. Also Ethel isn't a "gothic Lana Del Rey". Her style and music sense isn't even goth? Pitchfork is just wow lol. This phenomenon reminds of when people were accusing Olivia Rodrigo of copying Paramore and Taylor Swift. I wish people would learn that musicians can be inspired by each other!

maybe since pheobe bridgers has become more popular we associate this sound (which I think has been pretty common for a little while) with her more so we think these other artists are "copying" the pheobe bridgers™ sound lol

as a small artist one of my biggest fears is being accused of not being original or copying someone. i feel like as long as you're not intentionally copying someone's style and just using them as inspiration, there's nothing wrong with that. it's inevitable that some music will sound similar.

No seriously, I have found some of my favorite artists by looking for similar sounds. I think all artists are inherently different, even if voice tone or intonation are the same, we lowkey need to stop pitting artists against each other and support small artists!!

Delaney Bailey maybe sounds a little like her but she truly has her own vibe and sound. I love her so much, especially as someone who doesn’t really listen to Phoebe. Delaney is just so good (listen to What We Leave Behind, it’s her new ep, please it’s so good and will make you cry)

i scream bloody murder and kick my feet up when Dev posts

Indie rock sound existed way before mac demarco…. Look through anything from sub-pop or sandle creek Phoebe Bridgers sounds like a lot of other singer songwriters from the 90s-2000s , like a lot of stuff she was inspired by , she didn’t create a new sound or genre

Comparing Ethel to Lana is always so funny to me bc Ethel has been so vocal about Florence Welch being her biggest inspiration and I hear soooo much FATM in her music. I hear like…2% Lana in Ethel’s sound. Like you said “slow melody, deep voice lady sing song? She Lana clone 😠”

This is why I make a brand new playlist every season. It might have some old faves, but at least 80% of those songs I’ve never heard before making that list.

I think it's an algorithm thing. Dream pop, shoegazer, etc trends comes in waves. Mazzy Star and that sound/vibe was huge in the 90’s too. Lana’s video games set the mood for 2012

Bony Bear has me crying

i feel like the more you listen to an artist, the less they start to sound like other artists. like, when i was getting into fall out boy and panic! i could barely tell them apart, but after a while i thought it was crazy to say they had the same sound because i could see so many differences. same vibe as what you said about death grips and jpeg mafia. brain find pattern in unfamiliar thing. adjust understanding of pattern as thing becomes familiar.

i never realize how im affected by youtubers little unique intros until dev posts and its not a happy little day

love smoking menthol 100s and listening to boney bear

Feels similar to the cursive singing effect

10:34 this reminds me of the time I was talking to this guy, about Lorde. I ended up showing him one of her songs, and he said «this is all right, but I think Billie Eillish does it better». no one had previously mentioned Billie in the conversation. i think he just heard a woman singing and thought, ‘hm, woman doing music?? this reminds me of someone i know’

This is why I absolutely miss google play music. It had the best algorithm for music. It suggested music to you based on your library instead of what current algorithms are doing now which is what you've been listening to lately. I'm not sure if that's how it worked but going based on being able to upload your library to it to recommend choices for you makes sense. Rip orange headphones

I fully believe that we need an overhaul of music platform algorithms. I want to listen to things similar to what I enjoy, but I also want to learn about new music styles or artists. (edit: forgot to mention how good of a video this was!)

I saw pheobe bridgers in the title and gasped

I was really scared this was gonna be a Phoebe slander video, I was so scared bc I NEEDS my Dev video fix but I'm glad I stuck it out !! I totally agree

i’ve always said that you can easily tell what genre or flavor of music is your favourite the exact moment that someone else says “all these songs sound the same”

I remember hearing that ceilings song by lizzy mcalpine and genuinely thinking it was a phoebe song for a while. It's definitely a thing

DID GENUIS EVEN READ THE GOD DAMN LYRICS TO AMERICAN TEENAGER

Bruh phoebe sounds like every obscure indie Midwest white girl singer from the last like 20 years

I graduated from high school in 2006, and at the time indie also meant both an aesthetic and sound as well, the indie girls liked photography and dressing vintage/thrift/alternative and had shorter hair, or natural hair, they enjoyed like folky sounds, I think the idea of what indie is is constantly morphing. But at the same time indie also meant independent, and I think indie from the 90s also had a different vibe, bands like sonic youth, pavement.

okay confession time, as a pretty new songwriter, whenever I listen to Phoebe Bridgers I cannot write a song cuz she just like gets stuck in my brain and everything I try to write sounds like her 😭

14:20 the whole lucy and phoebe thing is soooo true, and also the fact they are in the same band makes it super easy to see the difference between the two. You can very easily tell which song was mainly made by phoebe or lucy

Not The Smiths writing a song satirizing this whole concept of getting offended by references 40 years ago "if you must prose and poems the words you use should be your own, don't plagiarize or take 'on loan' cause there's always someone somewhere with a big nose, who knows, and who trips you up and laughs when you fall"

thank you so much for clearing up the Ethel Cain / Lana Del Rey thing i think Ethel has cited Lana as an influence, but that's literally it - she's just one of many influences & Ethel's lyrics + production are really distinct from Lana imo even if their timbre is similar/they happen to both focus on Americana themes

I am a huge phoebe fan, but never heard any of those other artists. Since I use RU-vid music, I truly think it's an Spotify thing

I saw the title and jumped

Im very into phoebe bridgers and also very into searows and the sounds are very very similar. I think a lot of it is to do with the production, because it's very stripped back, and often theres very little instrumentation, which is sort of pushed back in the mix. The vocal just sort of sits on top on a song like that, so if you get your vocal to sound like phoebe bridgers, and push the instrumentation back in the mix, you will sound a lot like her music. I love the sound. Theres a lot of differences that i could pick out between them, but the sound of the production they have going on is pretty much identical, as are the vocals. I feel part of the reason you see so many artists doing this is that its so easily replicable. Like if youve got a condenser microphone and a decent vocalist, you can get the sound

just wanna say I really enjoy your videos, your takes are always thoughtful and you look at all sides.

I don’t know. Because I listen to a lot of The Cranberries and Dolores O’Riordan’s solo stuff and there just isn’t a lot of artists that sound like her so Spotify seems to struggle to find stuff that sounds like her for me. So they end up just recommending a lot of general 90’s rock and general Irish music that sounds similar in different ways. The Irish music has similar themes and singing techniques but are usually of a completely different genre, and the 90s rock is similar in genre but different themes and singing techniques.

People forget all the Beatles clones back in the day and Led Zeppelin Clones as well (which is still happening Greta Van Fleet) It happens

as an artist, there’s something so scary about copying someone else. like, i like how some people sound, and I wanna integrate that into my music, but I don’t want to be a copycat?? when I think of how I want my music to sound, I think of artists that I’ve liked in the past,, but then I get stressed on “How do I make my song sound good like theirs do” I don’t know maybe I’m Trippin . it’s a rly big fear esp as someone just starting out

In defence of Alix Page her newest EP is pretty distinct from that exact Phoebe sound. Also her EP last year, at the very least, the first two tracks of the four sound almost nothing like Phoebe

dev lemons copied my existence. Everything she does I've actually already done.

Kurt Cobain obviously. There were 10s or 100s of bands and artists who tried to either look or sound like Nirvana. It was all over the late 90s and up to the mid/late 00s when post-grunge died.

YES thank you for bringing this up cause every artist in my discover weekly sounds like this

i love phoebe so much and i was scared that you were gonna say something negative about her/her music. i also do think these artists sound a lot like her, but that’s probably because they have similar voices. thank you dev! 🩵

But is Phoebe Bridgers really that original in the first place?

I personally am a huge fan of Phoebe Bridgers and Boygenius, and I completely agree that there's nothing wrong with artists taking influence from someone else, that's just part of making music. I think it's just a personal thing for me, I've just heard so much music over the last few years that sounds like Phoebe that I'm just sort of ready for a different sound to take over indie music lol

some guy: "everyone sounds like phoebe bridgers" me about to recommend QueefJerky: oh boy do i have something different for you

to add onto the topic of people comparing artists that don’t really sound the same: muse and radiohead. the biggest criticism i see about muse is that they’re just “clones” of radiohead which like, isn’t true at all? vocally matt bellamy and thom yorke do have some similarities but that’s just because they were both heavily inspired by jeff buckley lol

Things have changed a lot since Bony Bear...

Dang, no credit to either creator in the thumbnail or the video???? Lame.

indie rock has defined a sound vs a label long before mac demarco, at least since the noughties

insane how out of all the things from ethel cain pitchfork could link to taylor swift they chose american teenager and speak now....and not folklore, one concept album, to preacher's daughter, another concept album. and like even then apart from a very visual narrative story story being told in both albums, there's not much else thats similar

i smile, scream, and run around my room when dev posts

The Spotify algorithm apparently will analyze the audio of songs if it can't find much info online. That means it will find very similar songs naturally, much like how RU-vid can detect copyrighted music in the background of a video. It would take a human or more advanced machine learning method to classify songs beyond a more surface level.

I've had the same experience with people who sound like Dominic Fike too

i like finding similar music becuase i listen to it so often i get sick of my favorites quickly so finding similar but different stuff lets me keep going with the same music vibe

Delicious content you have fed us, ms lemons

I love watching music reactions and I’ve noticed a difference between music nerds and casual music listeners reaction to “guts” by Olivia Rodrigo. Casual music listeners compares it to Avril Lavigne Demi lavato and Miley Cyrus, meanwhile music nerds compared it to weezer Green Day and some rock bands that I have never heard of

Damn, i didn't know mac set off all my bands like that. My favorite band is actually Vacations but through spotify had shown me EVERY SINGLE BAND you shown on screen lol. I can only say that even if they share the same vibe their songs have entirely diffrent messages and perspectives. I really enjoy every single one of them in their own diffrent ways.

ppl when someone cant make a completely 100% different song w/o any previous inspo: 😨😨😨😨

i found some of my favorite artists thru the phoebe effect!! searows is one of my favorite singers and i hate seeing people put him in a box because he sounds like phoebs🥲

I'm very happy we live in a world when we get to listen to so much music.

One thing that's missing here is also that this is how genres work. There's a possibility some of these artists were already doing similar stuff, but one person off their scene/genre got big and now it seems like everyone is copying them.

With influences effect on the music industry: i will never forgive mac demarco for generating 500000 white guys with identical guitar tones in the mid 2010s, and also indirectly stifling the rise of bands like Alvvays who should have been getting accolades 7 years ago instead of now

about the spotify algorithm ill say i really like it. i always check the discover tab, constantly finding new songs and artists (and even sub-genres tbh). some of my favorite songs i heard this year i only know bc sptify recommended it

Phoebe bridgers pronounces her words way clearer and her lyricism is another level

the ethel cain x lana del rey x taylor swift thing is just so illiterate

In the 1950s when Elvis hit there were tons of people who were "Copycats" in his wake. Some turned his style into their own thing and surpassed it (See Johnny Burnette's early punk track "Train Kept Rollin" for an example) and others were so bad at copying him its embarrassing ( Ral Donner's "You Dont Know What You Got"). Any trend in popular culture is going to have imitators and I dont think it's a bad thing at all. With the access to uploading people have these days it makes sense that people's early work is going to reflect someone else's. To me it's just part of the artistic process. Nothing new.

something that a lot people miss is the burger records as a the massive influence / staple it actually was. even though now you can find them virtually nowhere [good], they DID have influence and reach - mac demarco, beach house, wavves, fidlar, and later on with their first two ep’s, the garden - would be heralded as huge influences on indie music generally from 2010-2016 or so. music scenes blooms out from one point and extend, comparison isn’t a bad thing but i think … informed comparison is more important. re: phoebe/billie/etc, isolated vocal tracks of a forlorn sounding singing and a slowly building musical package was … Extremely popular. not just in the 90s with artists like enya and that larger new age fad that happened there or kate bush or lesser known artists like this mortal coil/elizabeth fraiser/cocteau twins or even vespertine era bjork. [it’s also not too different from the works of artists like jeff buckley] ethereal music was around before those women, they have their inspos. they all have their roots in someone like karen carpenter !! it was also popular in the 2010s tho when we were all babies with the rise of vocalists like sia. re: mac, he was highly influenced by the rise of outsider music in the late 90s and 2000s, that was helped by people like nirvanna wearing daniel johnston’s shirts or listing r stevie moore as a fave artist. and … i really don’t like LDR and i won’t be just spewing hater shit so i’ll keep my mouth shut . But what i’m saying is i wish people expanded their musical history and dug some into the surrounding scenes and influences to learn about the broad spectrum of influential and important music. iv worked at record shops and as a beat mixing dj since as soon as i was able to, iv collected vinyl since i was like 11 and discovering music is one of the BEST!!! experiences of all time. i just wish when people felt some lethargy concerning everything sounding the same, they took the time to watch a vid or read an article or interview to find what came before . Rip

I haven't watched the whole video yet but I hope the fact that Billie Eilish was able to pop off in the first place thanks to Miss Lana Del Rey's work years prior and the way it influenced and inspired Billie is mentioned... cuz Lana was the OG sad girl before it was cool 💅

music has always been this way. Someone gets successful… the formula is created. There is no risk in copying a winning formula.

you pulled dræm girl from the deep depths of my memory

ime usually being similar to the point of there seeming to be a relation of intentional derivation it's short-lived and by their next album (presuming the derivative one to be their first) they've begun to much more clearly defined their own style, which as they expand upon and grow allows you to retroactively hear in the early "derivative" stuff more of what in that were germs of their own distinctive unique individual sound to come. i remember Braids releasing Native Speaker and thinking like wow it's literally AnCo, but with a woman singing. to which my response was like cool eff yeah sounds good to me, and got really into the album. their next album. would already diverge enough and set the tone for the rest of their career, and i didn't catch any AnCo influence in it really. sidenote: i never got into phoebe bridgers but i became obsessed with night shift by lucy dacus -- in 2018, at which point i already felt a bit late to the party. i don't remember hearing about phoebe bridgers until like literally over two years later so the insinuation that the direction of influence would flow from bridgers to dacus is so unfair and just patently chronologically wrong. to be completely honest i was a bridgers hater at first because i thought her music was unremarkable and safe. now i recognize i was just being old bitter and judgey

Comparing artists can be both a positive and negative thing at the same time. When you're trying to describe a sound of an artist, it's so easy to find an existing reference point to compare it to but it's just so easy to fall into the trap of just calling anyone who sounds like someone else entirely derivative. The issue that really pops up when you get to the Pitchfork reviews and such is the weird feeling of going to such a comprehensive music review website and them giving the most basic, mainstream comparisons of artists as if the people who read Pitchfork regularly are the people who only listen to the top 40 charts.

dev your hair is stunning oh my lord you look gorg!!!!!

Thank you for closing the closet door 👏👏

SOLD SOME SHERM TO A FIEND LOOK LIKE PHOEBE BRIDGEEEERS

yep its time to FINALLY have this conversation lmfao

Definitely from 2018-2021, I saw so many locals bands who were clones Mac Demarco/ The Strokes, not that they sounded exactly like them (or were even as good as them for that matter). It was really frustrating seeing so many different groups doing the same thing, since there were things about them that made them unique but they didn’t lean into. The surf punk, indie scene got super tiring. People also referred to that kind of scene as the “indie” scene which was hilarious since all these punk bands would shit on them not realizing that everyone was independent lol. This is obviously not the first time this has happened and definitely won’t be the last, but I just hope that artists who haven’t found their own sound continue to try and build and refine it instead of trend riding. Or in the case of so and so “clones” on Spotify or wherever, hope that they are more than just that sound.

this is off topic to the video,sorta, but it made me light up to hear that dev listens to the same music as me and so many other ppl. i love mac demarco, current joys, vacations, eyedress, etc. they’re all on my playlists, and to realize big ppl like dev listen to them is js so cool to me😭💗

Dev look like an angel

It’s a good day when Dev uploads

Very juicy video, 10/10

Oh god😂i.cant wait to watch this one

Let’s be real it’s all just the evolution of music from bands like the smiths. Small variations over time

errr what? Am I crazy or has this ALWAYS been a thing since music existed.......?? What's the point of even making this a discussion when there are ALWAYS gonna be artists that sound almost identical to eachother no matter what. Absolutely they're copying, but guess what, EVERYONE does that. That's why music exists today.

So interesting. All the bands you listed as similar to Mac DeMarco are some of my top bands and I could never get into Mac 😅

hey why don’t you credit the people whose tiktok you used??

Mac demarco copied current joys current joys was currently happening before Mac Demarco currently copied current joys style which they currently still do to this current moment

I love when you shout like Pete Davidson mid-sentence 🎸😂

I think of punk/hardcore with this,how many Gism,Dystopia,Show Me the Body,Distillers,etc. clones or derivatives I've heard is insane. Though ,it's not all bad,I've found great music that way. I do believe it's worse when they act like they're innovating in a genre or groundbreaking anything by popularizing a music style.

I'll go a step further and say not only is being influenced by other artists a good thing, but I'm instantly leery of any artist who doesn't listen to other artists for fear of being influenced by them. The history of music is people being influenced by other people. It's a sonic tapestry that blankets across time. It's perfectly fine and normal to enjoy a sound, be inspired by a sound, and make music like that sound. Where it can cross into messier territory is when inspiration crosses into pure mimicry. Where the unique individuality of the artist is suppressed in order to adhere to a preconceived notion of how they want to sound. But the thing is, art-especially music-is really hard (and perhaps impossible) to make in a way that's compelling to other people without the artist putting some of themselves into it. So I don't really worry about it.

I saw that in the first TikTok they mentioned Searows and I just want to say that he is his own person, but he’s phenomenal and you should listen to his music all the same! His first album emotionally broke me as someone who wears her heart on her sleeve and falls in love really easily and is still growing and learning every day. The new EP did not disappoint either! Searows writes some really slow and devastating acoustic songs, and also some gorgeous love ballads. In conclusion, I recommend Guard Dog (his first album) to anyone that stumbles upon this video, Phoebe Bridgers fan or not.

thank you

I saw the title and clicked. I was thinking this the other day 😅

getting flashbacks to when someone said my original music sounded like phoebe bridgers and it haunts me to this day