Just in time for Halloween, Andrew Bird and Phoebe Bridgers have teamed up to conjure the great poet Emily Dickinson with new duet "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain."
Bird explained to Vanity Fair that, while working on last year's Inside Problems, he had delved into the poet's work after an English professor friend mentioned the urban legend that one can sing any Dickinson poem to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" — a folk traditional dating back to at least the 1850s. "I thought, Well, let me see if that can be proven," he told the publication. "That just got me looking at her poetry again, and I kind of forgot about 'The Yellow Rose of Texas.'"
When he was particularly taken with "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain," he decided to set the 1861 poem to music. "That's kind of a remarkable line, and then the whole poem is almost as if she went to the bottom of the ocean and came back and said, 'This is what it's like inside my head,'" Bird said of Dickinson's piece. "It explores an account of an internal world, and it's one of the more perfect explanations of what depression feels like."
And who better to pay homage to the sad sapphic literary icon than Bridgers, who already has a song called "Funeral" from her excellent 2017 debut Stranger in the Alps. "She has such an intimate, crystalline voice, almost as if it's being beamed from inside her head," Bird said. "So I thought it was kind of the perfect voice for these words." They complement his stout, dead-forward tone, swirling around a ouija board of violins and other folksy strings, as well as some macabre whistling.
Give the duet a listen below.
Bird recently contributed to an abortion rights compilation, while Bridgers's next collab will be with Danny Elfman for The Nightmare Before Christmas concerts this December.
Bird explained to Vanity Fair that, while working on last year's Inside Problems, he had delved into the poet's work after an English professor friend mentioned the urban legend that one can sing any Dickinson poem to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas" — a folk traditional dating back to at least the 1850s. "I thought, Well, let me see if that can be proven," he told the publication. "That just got me looking at her poetry again, and I kind of forgot about 'The Yellow Rose of Texas.'"
When he was particularly taken with "I felt a Funeral, in my Brain," he decided to set the 1861 poem to music. "That's kind of a remarkable line, and then the whole poem is almost as if she went to the bottom of the ocean and came back and said, 'This is what it's like inside my head,'" Bird said of Dickinson's piece. "It explores an account of an internal world, and it's one of the more perfect explanations of what depression feels like."
And who better to pay homage to the sad sapphic literary icon than Bridgers, who already has a song called "Funeral" from her excellent 2017 debut Stranger in the Alps. "She has such an intimate, crystalline voice, almost as if it's being beamed from inside her head," Bird said. "So I thought it was kind of the perfect voice for these words." They complement his stout, dead-forward tone, swirling around a ouija board of violins and other folksy strings, as well as some macabre whistling.
Give the duet a listen below.
Bird recently contributed to an abortion rights compilation, while Bridgers's next collab will be with Danny Elfman for The Nightmare Before Christmas concerts this December.
