The Meaning Behind “As Above” by Phoebe Bridgers and How She Grapples With Mortality

“As Above”, the penultimate track on Phoebe Bridgers’s haunting new album Lost Weekend, finds the singer airborne as she glimpses pieces of her life below.

The track’s scant piano riff persists against ghostly synth layers that threaten to consume it. Perhaps a metaphor for Bridgers as she grapples with life’s death sentence that we all share.

Behind the Lyrics

The first verse begins with Bridgers on an airplane. Trying to keep calm amid the dense chaos that is flying, she watches Hot Tub Time Machine, a sci-fi comedy about time travel.

Trying not to look down,
Making faces at a kid on the plane.
Trying not to freak out,
About being a couple days late.
Started watching a movie,
One where they go back in time.
And it got to me,
I don’t know why.

“As Above” continues the album’s mortality anxiety. And here is Bridgers with the thirty-thousand-foot view, paraphrasing an ancient maxim.

As above, so below.

The vantage point changes from massive heights to a zoomed-in memory of her mother driving herself to the hospital. Then she submits to how her lover will someday take her for granted. It’s okay, really. “Leave it to me, and I’ll make it happen,” she sings.

I thought about Air Force One,
Flying over Omaha.
I thought about my mom,
Driving herself to the hospital.
I’m always looking for the exit,
I’ve never been afraid of heights.
Now, I don’t want to live forever,
But I don’t wanna die.

You Won’t Have To Believe in Magic

The meeting of past, present, and future, and time, generally, are recurring themes of Lost Weekend. It’s time, place, but also absence.

We are anxious about unknown futures. And we long for parts of the past because what’s behind us is what’s familiar. The rest remains mysterious, uncertain, scary.

Another reading of the chorus hook may be that death haunts Bridgers everywhere. In the air and on the ground. Her terrestrial proximity won’t change the dark ending we all face.

“Whatever happens after,” she sings, “it doesn’t matter.”

History is full of people shaping their lives around religious faith, or the thought of conscious stars that care about human affairs. When death arrives, Bridges shouts from the skies, “You won’t have to believe in magic.”

As above, so below.
As it was, so it goes.

Photo by Frank Hoensch/Redferns