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The first two lines of this song contrast existence and life as Phoebe exists in vague places but doesn’t truly live wherever she resides. It haunts us with the feeling of never being happy where you are as the writer fantasizes about Dorothy’s 3 clicks of her heels to return home in the classic movie The Wizard of Oz. This is a motif throughout the song: the Wizard of Oz story in comparison to the real one. In the state of today’s world, many people can relate to the feeling of just wanting to escape reality wherever they are. We are constantly searching for an escape– smoke weed, get drunk, scroll on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, repeat. While she fantasizes about clicking her heels, the Dorothy dreamer also escapes her misery with three clicks on a phone–the most addicting escape of them all–a few clicks and I’m home, back in the virtual reality that’s more bearable than whatever life I’m living in real time. No matter where she goes there is an emptiness that encompasses her like a stench that no soap can erase.

After closing her eyes and yearning to return home, Phoebe makes it back… But home doesn’t dispel the cloud of emptiness. Homeliness doesn’t seem to come no matter where she goes and the monotone motions of life follow her stealthily. You can hear the fear in her voice that this life will be forever, but you can also hear the reluctant admission to the cycle she can’t escape. Bridgers masks the feelings like perfume after a hotbox by trying to find beauty in the dullness. She channels Dorothy’s “theres no place like home” mantra, but the absence of her welcome committee makes it less of a homecoming and more of a retreat to the comfort of sadness. Try as she might to live the Wizard of Oz tale rather than her own, she can’t quite make it match.

But you had to go
I know, I know, I know
Like a wave that crashed and melted on the shore
Not even the burnouts are out here anymore
And you had to go
I know, I know, I know

In this verse Phoebe introduces a second person, someone she has addressed throughout the album. We can assume it’s the same person, as she always says “you” to address them. Her voice echoes the pain of being left in a hopeless place by the one person who brought hope. We feel it in the word ‘go’ as she reaches after someone who is just past her fingertips. Her “I know, I know, I know,” is washed with the pain of accepting the reality you want so badly to reject, but the next line reassures her acceptance; she knows that she can’t keep someone in her misery just because she needs them. Her voice rings with the weight her loss as Bridger’s brings us back to the title of the song with another repeated “I know, I know, I know.” The theme of knowing follows through each part of the song, and in her Wizard of Oz story she reminds us that she knows how this story ends.

Out in the park, we watch the sunset
Talking on a rusty swing set
After awhile you went quiet, and I got mean
I’m always pushing you away from me
But you come back with gravity
And when I call, you come home
A bird in your teeth

Bridgers watches a sunset with her partner but soon remembers the end of the scene with a disheartened sigh as she recalls “and I got mean.” Phoebe knows that when she calls, her person will always return with loyalty and all the love they can give, but she also knows that she can’t keep hurting them only to be forgiven and do it again. She knows it’s on her to make the change, to leave behind the sulk and sigh and sadness— she knows that she must change the ending.

So I gotta go
I know, I know, I know
When the sirens sound, you’ll hide under the floor
But I’m not gonna go down with my hometown in a tornado
I’m gonna chase it
I know, I know, I know
I gotta go now
I know, I know, I know

At this point we feel a change in Phoebe’s attitude. Instead of yearning for another life, she begins to prepare for the future. The soft music behind her voice takes a higher pitch as her voice similarly begins to curl up at the word floor, hope and anticipation filling the verses. Bridgers takes her stance and gains confidence; she is no longer fantasizing about Dorothy’s life while chanting no place like home— she defies the story. She knows the end to that story and she knows that she can hide under the floor, a metaphor for her own dwindling mental state. As the storm of her life, the world, and her story builds she sees that she can’t sit around waiting for her partner to come back with a bird. She can’t hide in her room, 3 clicks on her phone to escape. Her voice goes solo for the line “I’m gonna chase it,” making her declaration clear that she will not hide, wait, or feel sorry for herself anymore. She chases the fucked up mess of the world, the cold ways she treats people she loves, the hellish place that her mind creates. She knows, she knows, she knows. Phoebe has to go. On the last “know,” her voice lifts to push her out of the door and into the tornado and we enter the storm without hesitation. A lone violin begins to make its way into the story like a baby animal learning how to use his legs: a little confused but symbolic of a beautifully hopeful beginning of life. As the guitar picks up, the violin evens out, and the tick tick tick of a symbol builds we can almost see Bridgers trudging into the storm with determination glued to her bones.

Driving out into the sun
Let the ultraviolet cover me up
Went looking for a creation myth
Ended up with a pair of cracked lips

These lyrics come out as more of a chant than a sing-song as the instrumental slowly builds, and listeners are begging for what’s next. I see her walking into chaos and chanting these lyrics and as everything gets worse, she walks steady and strong and straight like a rock planted in a raging ocean.

Windows down, scream along
To some America first rap, country song
A slaughterhouse, an outlet mall
Slot machines, fear of God

Windows down, heater on
Big bolts of lightning hanging low
Over the coast, everyone’s convinced
It’s a government drone or an alien spaceship

The low beat comes in at the bottom and the levels of the song take shape as Phoebe is engulfed in the ultraviolet sun and the air and the world and the hatred and fear and anger and hopelessness and she is ready to let it out. We ride shotgun as she screams a song in her car, ready to crash into the anarchy of life. In the year of COVID, BLM, and so, so much more an abundance of artists have felt the need to release music about the state of the world. Unfortunately, most things I hear are along the lines of “we’re stuck inside, I need a quarantine bae” or “2020 sucks!!” It’s all very silly and light; people trying to make 2020 into some cute trendy year. But if you tear back the stupidity and “2020 the year from hell” narrative, you see what 2020 has brought: the end. It’s much more serious than a silly Netflix special about quarantine or a hit single about being stuck inside. No one will admit it, no one will acknowledge it, but Phoebe isn’t scared anymore; she chases the storm. She pokes at how rap, country, and pop are all mushed into one hellish concoction of people-pleasing. She sees the way we put our hope into capitalism and malls and escaping into a slot machine and pretending that God might actually save us. The microscopic pleasure of having cool air with heaters on keeps her steady as the world crashes, no one trusts anyone and no one knows what to believe. No one knows how to be happy so we all stay numb.

Either way, we’re not alone
I’ll find a new place to be from
A haunted house with a picket fence
To float around and ghost my friends
No, I’m not afraid to disappear
The billboard said, “The end is near”
I turned around, there was nothing there
Yeah, I guess the end is here

Hellfire escapes my speakers as the end arrives, Phoebe’s music blares into the world like a hole clawed into the facade of okayness, a forced tear in the cloth to show us the truth, a voice that is ready to scream at the state of life.

The end is here

This isn’t just a lockdown tune or quarantine bop, it’s one last rage of power and loss, hope and despair, pain and fury, fear and courage. When all these emotions crash at once all you can do is scream your heart out and then move forward. What else is there to say? Where else can you go?

The end is here

Ditch your fear of disappearing, be a ghost. The world is only a ghost of what it used to be, just let go let go let go.

The end is here

After all the instruments make their break, everything goes insane, and Phoebe has screamed out everything inside of her, we hear her breath heaving out of her lungs as if to dispel any last organism inside her soul. When there’s no more voice and no more instruments and no more world and the end is here, what is left? You. When it’s all over Bridgers remains, her breath remains, as much as she tried to get everything out she remains.

The end is here.

“I Know the End” is one of the only pieces of music from 2020 that truly unleashes the horror of it all, no boppy tune or catchy chorus because 2020 was not about fun and silliness. It gives hope without masking truth; it doesn’t force positivity in a painful situation but it reminds us that pain can bring possibility. The end is here, but maybe that means the beginning is next. Phoebe Bridgers defies the story we are supposed to hope for, she defies the mask that everything is okay, she runs straight into the storm and lets it swallow her, she trusts that a new beginning will emerge. I hear the voice of a turning point. While it feels like we are stuck on the losing side of every battle, “I Know the End” empowers us to fight the battle until our last breath and stay grounded in what we know is right. So with Phoebe Bridgers playing through my headphones so loud it hurts my ears, I find the will to write my own story and face 2021 with courage, determination, and dignity.