Julien Baker

Julien Rose Baker (born September 29, 1995) is an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. She has received widespread critical acclaim for her music, which often confronts issues of spirituality, addiction, mental illness, and human nature. In addition to her solo work, Baker is known as a member of the supergroup Boygenius alongside Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. Baker was born on September 29, 1995 in Germantown, and raised in Bartlett, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis. Her parents both worked in the field of physical therapy, and she has spoken of being inspired by her father who, after an accident in his twenties resulting in the amputation of his leg, dedicated his life to making experimental prosthetic limbs. She grew up in a very religious Christian family, and her early exposure to music involved playing at her church. After seeing Green Day on television, she was inspired to explore more alternative music and started listening to bands like My Chemical Romance and Death Cab for Cutie. She subsequently became captivated by the punk, hardcore, metalcore, and screamo scenes, and has said some of her favorite bands were MewithoutYou, Underoath, The Chariot, Norma Jean, and Whitechapel. She struggled with substance abuse as a young teen, but found support in the community surrounding house shows in Memphis, and became inspired by the straight edge punk subculture. While in high school in 2010, Baker co-founded the band the Star Killers, who renamed themselves Forrister in 2015. She came out as gay to her parents at age 17, after years of being closeted and watching friends sent to conversion therapy or kicked out of their homes. However, she found her family was “radically accepting.” She attended Arlington High School and then Middle Tennessee State University, where she had a campus job in the A/V department and initially studied audio engineering, before switching to literature and secondary education. She eventually left school to tour full-time after the release of Sprained Ankle, but returned to campus in the fall of 2019 to complete her degree in literature. Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.