You're listening to song exploder where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh, here way.

Before this episode starts, I want to give a content warning. There's some explicit language, but more crucially, the subject matter could be upsetting to some listeners.

There's an explicit description of a pretty violent act in the song, and there's some not explicit but implied behavior of a parent mistreating their child.

So please be mindful of that and take care before going ahead.

Lucy Dakes is a singer and songwriter from Richmond, Virginia. She put out her first album in 2016, and in 2018, she formed the band Boy Genius with Julian Baker and Phoebe Bridgers.

In June 2021, she released her third album, Home Video, which includes this song, Thumbs.

The first time I heard it, I knew I wanted to ask Lucy about how and why she made it. So after some COVID testing, we spoke in person here in Los Angeles. And she told me the story of how Thumbs took months and months to get right.

I'm Lucy Dakes.

The day that I wrote Thumbs was in 2018, but the event that the song is about happened like five years before.

I was 19 and had a friend who was crying because she just fell on the phone and she told me that her dad was in town. And she hadn't seen him for a really long time.

And I knew that he was a bad dude. And I just told her, like, I'm coming with you. You absolutely don't have to do this alone.

We met him at a diner-ish place. I wanted to say to him the things that I wish she would and I didn't. But all the silences I tried to fill with.

Like, yeah, you know, she's doing amazing. And he like kept trying to take credit and be like, I'm proud of you.

Like I tried to imply like has nothing to do with you. Like, how could he be proud if he wasn't there? Everything that she is is like from herself.

I am proud of her. And I respect her so much for those things because I've like had the privilege of watching her.

And I just immediately hated him. And I was like raised to just not hate, you know, like love everyone.

And I still try to access that love, especially when I feel hate coming on. But this is the first time that it just really won out. Yeah. Fuck that guy.

I started writing my own songs probably when I was like 15 and just kept them to myself or showed them to like a couple of friends.

But I had a lot of friends in Richmond just peer pressure me into doing shows. They'd be like, we need an opener. We know you write songs just show up.

And so when this happened, I was already playing shows, but I never thought about writing about this. I didn't even journal about it, which is odd for me.

It's hard to say if I was actively ignoring the story, but I wasn't thinking about it. Over time, I have recognized how powerful my dissociative powers are.

My brain will simply not show me what I'm not ready to see. And I think this was one of those things where just suddenly for some reason, the timer went off like, dang, it took five years, but now the thought is fully baked. And here it is out of the oven.

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