Phoebe Bridgers turned up at the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge with a guitarist and two songs: Lithium, the 1991 Nirvana track, and Bobby, one of her own from Lost Weekend. Rolling Stone put the video out on 27 August 2026 and added the detail that reframes the whole thing, which is that she taped the session only hours before she was taken to hospital with appendicitis.
The diagnosis cost her a run of British shows, which had to be rescheduled. "I got appendicitis for my birthday," she wrote on Instagram, saying everything in the UK that week would have to move and that she would make it up to people.
The cover is a first. Bridgers had not taken on a Nirvana song before, though the band has circled her for years. In 2023 her group boygenius restaged Nirvana's 1994 Rolling Stone cover photograph, and in 2024 Dave Grohl joined the group at the Hollywood Bowl to play Satanist.
Grohl was also supposed to appear on The Record and never made it. Bridgers has described the near miss plainly, saying he "slept through it or whatever, and we didn't end up meeting." The Nirvana thread in her career has mostly been that kind of thing, adjacency rather than contact, which makes a straight cover of Lithium the closest she has come to the source.
Lost Weekend came out on 14 August 2026, her third studio album and her first solo record since Punisher in 2020. Rolling Stone's Angie Martoccio gave it four and a half stars and called it a "spectacular song cycle on love and loss," writing that it is her longest and most daring record.
Next is the Lost Tour, a phone-free arena run opening 15 September at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis and closing 12 December at Sweden's Avicii Arena. The appendix, judging by the reschedule, has already had its say about the calendar.
The session is one small piece of a loud year. Lost Weekend arrived in August after she booked phone-free UK shows around it, and the indie run around the album also turned up a hidden track featuring Isaac Wood.
The facts
- Bridgers covered the Nirvana song Lithium for the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge.
- She also played Bobby, a song from her album Lost Weekend.
- She appeared with a guitarist for the session.
- Rolling Stone says she taped it hours before being hospitalized with appendicitis.
- The diagnosis forced her to reschedule several UK shows.
- Lost Weekend came out on 14 August 2026, her third studio album.
- It is her first solo album since Punisher in 2020.
- Her phone-free Lost Tour opens 15 September at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Indianapolis.
How this checks out
Single source
Reported by a single outlet
Only one outlet has reported it so far, so it stays a single source.
Cited sources 1
Every outlet that reported this, linked to what it published. Equal credits, in alphabetical order.