Phoebe Bridgers Covers Nirvana's 'Lithium' for BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge
Phoebe Bridgers performed a solo acoustic cover of Nirvana's 'Lithium' for BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge, stripping the 1991 grunge anthem down to voice and guitar for the long-running session where artists reinterpret other artists' songs.
The cover aired as part of Live Lounge Late, dated 19 August, according to BBC Radio 1's programme page. Audio of the performance is also available via BBC Sounds and on YouTube.
Bridgers didn't stop at the cover. In the same session, she performed two tracks from her third solo album, Lost Weekend: 'Lost Boys', which aired on Live Lounge Late dated 18 August, and 'Bobby'. Audio uploads of both are hosted on YouTube — 'Lost Boys' here and 'Bobby' here.
The session appears to have been recorded before Bridgers cancelled a run of intimate U.K. acoustic shows announced with just a week's notice. Those performances were slated to kick off Wednesday, 19 August in Kingston, London, with stops in Brighton on 20 August and Bristol on 21 August, according to Billboard.
Bridgers announced she had appendicitis in an Instagram Story that included a photograph of her in a hospital bed. The cancelled shows were intended to promote her third solo LP in small venues ahead of a larger run.
The cancelled dates are not the end of Bridgers' U.K. touring plans. She is scheduled to return for a run of arena shows this autumn, concluding with two sold-out nights at London's O2 Arena on 1–2 December. Whether the intimate acoustic shows will be rescheduled has not been confirmed.
The Live Lounge — a BBC Radio 1 fixture since the late 1990s — invites musicians to perform their own material alongside a cover of another artist's choosing, often producing versions that circulate widely among fans. Bridgers' session follows in that tradition, pairing an original-album push with a detour through a song that arrived three years after she was born.
'Lithium' originally appeared on Nirvana's Nevermind, the 1991 album that pushed the Seattle trio — Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl — into global chart contention. The song itself reached number 6 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1992.
