With 2023 officially in the books, boygenius must be exhausted. Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker spent the past year soaring to mainstream adulation on a rollercoaster of live performances and press supporting their debut album, the record. To add yet another accolade: “Not Strong Enough” was voted as the No. 1 song on The Current’s Top 89 of 2023 countdown.

The trio truly was everywhere. They toured across North America and Europe, claimed six Grammy nominations, recreated Nirvana’s iconic 1994 Rolling Stone cover, played live and portrayed Troye Sivan in a sketch on Saturday Night Live, rocked out on late-night talk shows, and embodied a flattering profile story for practically every publication with an A&E section.

The group’s friendship-focused album, released by Interscope Records, appeared on nearly every music publication’s top albums of 2023 lists, and claimed the top spot on many. Back in 2018, boygenius’ release of a self-titled EP made them one of indie rock’s most fiercely beloved bands. When they announced the record, fans waited in vivid anticipation for the next batch of tracks to create a sense of community.

The second single, “Not Strong Enough,” cleverly references Sheryl Crow and the Cure in lyrics observing society’s contradictory expectations regarding gender roles and mental health. It was the first song by any band member to reach Billboard’s No. 1 spot on Adult Alternative Airplay. Even Barack Obama’s ears were stuck to the song, which he included on his annual summer playlist posted to X. (Dacus reposted the former president’s list with the comment “war criminal :(“)

The band members have explained the song’s meaning in the context of a noncommittal relationship. For Bridgers, it’s about self-hatred combined with a God complex.” Referencing mental illness, she tells Genius, “I think we’re all guilty at some point in our lives of being like, ‘I couldn’t possibly be accountable to another human being.’”

Zooming out of the songwriters’ personal perspectives to look at the song through the lens of the year’s most prominent new headlines, “Not Strong Enough” holds space for admitting uncertainty about one’s own life and the world at large, both in the present and future. Casual everyday discourse, essays in small creators’ newsletters, and deep think-pieces in major magazines and newspapers have detailed people’s anxiety, apathy, and anger in the face of societal events that make them feel powerless — to governmental bodies, to forces of nature, and to their own minds.

Bridgers begins the song with, “Black hole opened in the kitchen,” an expression that feels like opening any app containing news updates. Social media platforms could feel like intimate spaces with pictures of friends and family. Instead, most feeds and “for you” pages are inescapable vacuums of reporting on the alarming realities of war, political turmoil, xenophobia, climate change, capitalism, and so much more.

“The way I am / not strong enough to be your man / I tried, I can't stop staring at the ceiling fan and / spinning out about things that haven't happened / breathing in and out,” Bridgers, Baker, and Dacus sing on the first chorus. The song doesn’t push listeners to sink into despair but recognizes the need to surrender to uncertainties and try to maintain composure amidst inevitable downward mental spirals.

The band’s North American tour skipped the Twin Cities in 2023. I traveled to Washington to see them at the Gorge Amphitheatre. On a warm evening in July, the sun set behind the valley, and the musicians harmonized to the record’s opening track, “Without You Without Them,” backstage. Before their encore, they wrapped the main set with “Not Strong Enough.” It was one of the most powerful moments of the evening. The song’s bridge: “Always an angel, never a god” repeated over and over, increased the energy with each impassioned word up to a climax.

Boygenius are one of those bands that people will likely proudly tell younger generations they saw perform live, or listened to, when they were at their peak. But is the record their peak? The trio tells NME they don’t feel pressure to put out another album soon.

Maybe boygenius’ best is yet to come, or maybe we’ll look back on “Not Strong Enough,” as an ephemeral moment when a group of friends, who kissed and tackled each other at every show, compiled feelings of existential dread into a four-minute track. The only certain thing is whatever headlines open black holes in our phone screens in 2024, we’ll be doing the only thing we can do: breathing in and out.