The Julien Baker Renaissance

Graphics by Sarah Tarlin

By Anna Geisler, Staff Writer

Julien Baker’s Path With Boygenius and Beyond

After nearly a decade in the music business, Julien Baker is finally receiving the acclamation she deserves: not only as a performer, but as a musician and a foundational pillar of modern rock and roll. Back on tour this fall for the first time since her highly successful run as a member of Boygenius and their esteemed 2023 album The Record, Baker is redefining what it means to be one of the industry’s most humble indie darlings. On a new strand of tour dates spanning eight cities for her 2021 album Little Oblivions, the indie rock artist is taking new-found mainstream success into her own hands. With intimate venues like Chicago’s Thalia Hall and Los Angeles’s The Bellwether and a full band of some of her closest collaborators, Baker is touring on what she does best: tugging heartstrings with raw lyricism and powerful guitar solos. 

Hailing from Memphis, Tennessee, JB (as she is often affectionately called) found her love of music within her Baptist upbringing. With often frank explorations of heavy themes like addiction, religious trauma, and mental illness, Baker rose to prominence in the Tennessee music scene as early as her time at university studying to be a high school English teacher. Opening for artists with the likes of Paramore, The National, and Conor Oberst’s Bright Eyes, it was more than established that the young guitarist had a knack for sound engineering and soulful record production. 

Gaining Mainstream Acclaim

Shortly after the album run for her sophomore record Turn Out The Lights, JB joined forces with fellow singer-songwriter proteges Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers to establish the famed supergroup, Boygenius. The six song EP was released in October of 2018 to heavy critical acclaim, with a strong review from Pitchfork’s Dayna Evans who described Julien’s distinct style as a combination of “enormous emo minor tones and a voice that could blow down a building.” In March 2023, the group reconvened after each pursuing three new solo records to put out their first full album, The Record. In what cannot be truly described as “overnight success,” the summer of that year was run by Phoebe, Lucy, and Julien. Ranked the second best album of the year by Billboard and awarded three Grammy awards for the project, ‘The Boys’ had truly made it. 

Where To Go Next

The question posed now is, of course, where does an artist go from that place of such success very rarely reached by indie artists on that broad of a scale? Better yet, how does one go on defining themselves as a musician individually after being a member of a collective artistic project? Julien Baker is navigating both dilemmas with immense grace. In the Boygenius cover story for Rolling Stone, Baker spoke further about navigating musical identity post the initial “I made it” moment, stating “I don’t think that my life can change and blow up without my permission. I could just go play these gigs in bigger venues than I’m used to playing, and then I could just continue to go home and go help my neighbors mow their lawn.”