On the face of it, ‘Sidelines’, the song Phoebe Bridgers has contributed to the soundtrack of BBC TV show ‘Conversations With Friends’ is a low key departure from the guitar-based material that made up her past two albums, a childlike ditty built around a simple, chiming keyboard melody.
Give it a little more time though, and the wrenching enormity of Bridgers’ lyrics kick in – what was at first a pretty, rudimentary tune turns into an Imogen Heap level heart-aching beast as the 27-year old singer professes her anxiety over finding a person more important than herself to give a meaning to life where she thinks that before she would actually have been cool with dying, “Watching the world from the sidelines, Had nothing to prove, ‘Til you came into my life, Gave me something to lose”, which could be a blessing or a curse.
‘Sidelines’ is currently a standalone soundtrack release with no immediate plans for a follow-up album or anything. It’s available to stream on all the streaming services right now.
A promo video accompanies the release, using footage from ‘Conversations With Friends’ spliced with studio footage from the song’s recording. The show itself has been widely declared as pretty crappy, so it’s probably worth avoiding, but if you did want to check it out it’s on BBC 3 every Sunday night. You can see the video below: