Thumbs

This song finds Lucy Dacus detailing a day she shared with a friend and her friend's father during her freshman year of college. The dad had mistreated his daughter throughout her life, and while her friend keeps nervously smiling, Dacus pictures her thumbs on his irises, "pressing in until they burst."

Dacus wrote the song during a 15-minute drive to dinner in Nashville. She said what happened was significant, but something she hadn't thought about for years. Like most songs she writes, she wasn't expecting it and it made her feel "weird, almost sick."

Dacus first performed the song a month or so later while on tour with Boygenius, her project with Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers. Her bandmates encouraged her to share it with the audience and Dacus continued to play the tune during her shows. "I knew I wanted a long time to get used to playing it since it made me feel shaky, so I ended sets with it for about half the shows I played in 2019," she said.