Phoebe Bridgers' Coming Out to Her Mom Caused a Rift between Them — inside Her Personal Life

Grammy-nominated rock singer Phoebe Bridgers is openly bisexual and is never afraid of talking about her sexuality, and she has been strong enough to also speak out against sexual misbehavior in the music industry.

26-year-old singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers debuted as a solo artist in 2017 with the album “Stranger in the Alps,” and ever since then, she has been a fixture in the folk-rock and indie-rock scene.

But apart from her artistic achievements, Phoebe has attracted the interest of the press and media because of her views of sexuality, her personal relationships, and her involvement with the #MeToo movement in the music industry.

COMING OUT TO HER MOTHER

While Phoebe is now openly bisexual, she once had to face her mother and come out to her mother, Jamie, which caused a rift between them for a while. Fortunately, the two are now on the best of terms about it.

As Phoebe has shared with the press, she used to shave her hair off and refused to wear skirts, which made other people of her age assume that she was gay, something that affected her in an unexpected way.

The singer recalled that during her teenage years, people that wanted to experiment with their sexuality approached her to experiment with her without taking her seriously, which at one point became too much to handle.

Despite this difficult experience, Phoebe managed to figure out her own sexuality and came to identify as a bisexual, an orientation that she revealed to her mother as soon as she felt ready.

Phoebe’s mother had a hard time coming to terms with her daughter’s sexuality initially, which briefly harmed their relationship, but the singer later said that Jamie made an entire change of mind and is now a supporter of the LGBT community.

“My mom now has her pronouns in her Instagram bio, she’s fully embraced everything,” Phoebe told Them magazine in October 2020, also sharing that Jamie now talks about it in her stand-up comedy routine.

MORE ABOUT HER MOTHER

Jamie raised Phoebe and her brother Jackson by herself, and she worked different jobs as a receptionist and executive assistant to support the children and the household, and she managed to provide them with a comfortable life.

As Phoebe told the New Yorker in 2015, she would have considered her family to be middle class if she had grown up elsewhere, but growing up in Pasadena, California, she felt of a lower class than all the actors and directors around.

Phoebe also has to thank her mother for having encouraged her musical aspirations from an early age, when Phoebe rejected classic musical training out of rebellion and fell in love with the guitar.

As Phoebe acknowledges, Jamie was also the person that introduced her to folk music and singer-songwriters, so much that Phoebe has shared that her mother is almost entirely responsible for her music tastes.

PHOEBE’S RELATIONSHIP WITH RYAN ADAMS

Phoebe’s story with singer-songwriter Ryan Adams started in 2014, when she was 20 years old and Adams approached to produce an album for her, which evolved into a romantic relationship.

However, five years after their affair, Phoebe accused Adams of sexual misconduct and abusive behavior in 2019, writing about it in an essay for the New York Times, which made her an inspiration for a #MeToo movement in the music industry.

“I know it used to be worse and now it’s getting better. But I know guys in bands who send their tour managers out to go find young girls to bring backstage,” Phoebe told GQ in 2019.

Phoebe is not the only person in the music business that accuses Adams of such behavior, with the singer citing at least seven women and more than a dozen associates of Adams, suggesting a pattern in the latter’s behavior.

Phoebe was in the middle of her first Australian tour when the story broke, in an effort to detach herself and her name from Adams and the accusations against him, instead of focusing on continuing to make a name for herself as an artist.