Back in 2017, Gracie Abrams posted online showing off her rocket-print bedsheets, and Phoebe Bridgers commented underneath: "I have the exact same sheets." At the time, neither of them had even met Paul Mescal yet. Nine years later, fans dug that comment back up from deep in the timeline and pasted it under the new song from Bridgers' third studio album, *Lost Weekend* — because she sings about a "bed" in it.
*Lost Weekend* dropped on August 14, and the track "The Governor's Waltz" contains this line: "She could pretend that she's me / Since she took my place in the bed on that stage / It didn't keep me up at all." Fans pointed out that "the bed on that stage" echoes the stage setup from Gracie Abrams' tour — a bed strikingly similar to the one seen in Bridgers' pandemic-era livestream performances. Someone on social media added that the two of them actually grew up using the same Garnet Hill bedsheets, the same set actress Diana Silvers has also used, and there was even an old article specifically covering this. The detail itself is trivial, but it makes the lyric read as unnervingly precise.
The chorus gets even more direct: "Let's see how long we can go without touching / Why don't you sing me to sleep? / I know you don't really wanna jump / But do it for me anyway... Let's see how long we can go without talking / Watch me pretend to be asleep / I'm right beside you and you're nothing at all / You said you'd never leave / But maybe you'd leave for me." Over on Reddit, one fan read this as Bridgers essentially handing off her "old life" to Gracie Abrams: "I was never good at living that life, so go live it for me." Another fan argued the whole song actually carries a more humorous tone — Bridgers poking fun at the absurdity of this love triangle, rather than delivering a bitter accusation.
Bridgers and Paul Mescal were reportedly engaged in late 2022, before splitting soon after. Mescal later said publicly that he'd try to keep his relationship status private going forward, quoting something his *All of Us Strangers* co-star Andrew Scott told him: "All that's left after love is grief, which sounds brutal, but I think that's kind of it." Last fall, when he talked about his relationship with Gracie Abrams, he described it as "incredibly precious"; Abrams, for her part, said her relationship with Mescal had given her a lot of creative inspiration, calling it "like a mirror" that let her see her past relationship patterns in a new light.
On the title track "Lost Weekend," Bridgers sings directly about the engagement that never made it to a wedding: "I was supposed to get married but I called it off / I've always had a temper / When things don't go the way I picture / I'm restoring the natural order / Learning the same lesson over and over." Right after "The Governor's Waltz" comes "Bobby," a love song written for her current boyfriend, Bobby (real name Robert Pickering Burnham): "You followed me home like you'd done it plenty of times / You have to duck to get through that door / If you don't like any of my friends / I'll kill them, I'll kill them." One song for the embers of an old flame, one for the steadiness of a new one — placed side by side, the sequencing itself says plenty.
In its five-star review of *Lost Weekend*, NME singled out "The Governor's Waltz" as one of the album's "most affecting moments," saying Bridgers "wades into the darkest corners of love" and "admits, with one barbed piece of self-mockery, to the resemblance between herself and her ex's new partner." Even though she rarely discusses her relationships publicly, she doesn't hold back on the details once they're in a song. Separately, some fans have speculated that Geese frontman Cameron Winter appears under a pseudonym on two other tracks on the album.
Bridgers previously debuted *Lost Weekend* in full by playing the album at planetariums around the world, paired with custom-made visuals. Next week she'll play a handful of small, phone-free shows in the UK, before kicking off the North American leg of "The Lost Tour" next month. The tour then extends to the UK and Europe in November and December, with stops including Dublin's 3Arena, Manchester's Co-op Live, and London's The O2. Check official ticketing pages for details.
