'Hopefully this will live up to the Beyoncé album!"

A tour by supergroup boygenius held up the queer country LP by Julien Baker Torres, as Hannah Ewens hears how they met and what it’s like taking on the new country queen

-  Hannah Ewens

Julien Baker and Mackenzie Scott are giggling about their new venture: country music. Baker, of course, is the indie star who makes up one-third of the supergroup boygenius, with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. Scott is better known as the singer- songwriter Torres. (They’re calling their collaboration, simply, Julien Baker & Torres.)

The latter was listing off her favourite classic artists when Baker chimed in, admitting she enjoys “some of that new shit, though.” Especially, the “really ignorant” song “Hard to Forget” by Sam Hunt. “The first time I heard it, I was like, ‘This is an offence to nature!’” Baker laughed. “But the more I heard it on the radio, I was like, ‘I love this song.’” (I listened to the truly heinous 2020 hit after our interview, and it’s so catchy that it corrupted me.)

But there’s also genuinely good new country music, says Scott, pointing to The Highwomen, a female supergroup who released a lesbian ballad about a man hitting on your girlfriend – “If she ever leaves me, it won’t be for you,” sings Brandi Carlile, surrounded by close harmony. “I’m glad someone wrote that song – we were all thinking it,” Scott says, shaking her head. Baker agrees, then does her best deep-voiced impression of the man: “All the lesbians who’ve ever been out with their girlfriends have had some dude say, ‘Hey’.”

Neither of these musicians is especially known for an affiliation with country music. Twenty-nine-year-old Baker crafts gentle, heartbreaking songs that land like prayers. The lyrics are selfcritical, often bleakly so, and delivered in a pure, elegiac voice that floats hauntingly above the music: a twinkling guitar, or, on her last album, a full band. More recently, she became borderline famous for making bands cool again with boygenius, picking up several Grammys along the way.