LUCY DACUS

Lucy Dacus's songwriting is distinguished by striking vulnerability and vivid, novel-like imagery: her spare 2018 song “Night Shift” begins with the evocative lines: "The first time I tasted someone else's spit, I had a coughing fit," delivered in a dusky even-keeled voice. The Virginia native started playing guitar as a teenager and later studied film before leaving college and pursuing music more seriously. Dacus recorded her 2016 debut, No Burden, as a part of a friend's school project, which led to a deal with Matador Records. Two years later, Dacus released both a lauded solo effort, Historian, and an album with the indie supergroup boygenius, which also features Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers. Dacus spent 2019 releasing a series of singles (including a cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing In the Dark") before releasing another collection of literate songs, Home Video, in 2021. 

On her fourth solo album, Forever Is a Feeling, Dacus takes a heartfelt stab at answering the question, "What is my life about?" and in doing so, opens another desire-related can of worms. While the record explores the intoxicating, confusing, fleeting qualities of romance, it simultaneously functions as a fan-fic-worthy relationship reveal. (She went public with her relationship with boygenius bandmate Julien Baker weeks before the album's release.) On Forever, Dacus dives headfirst into the implied complications, recruiting co-producer Blake Mills for subversive, swooning folk-pop numbers that revel in the mysteries of love, and what precedes it. 

"I want my life to be about love," Dacus told Apple Music about writing Forever. "It feels corny to say. But that's part of what this project is — the idea that talking about love is corny. I don't think love is all you need, but I do think you need it amongst everything else."