To all the podcasters, aspiring actors and up-and-coming writers that have tried to explain to their extended family what it is exactly that they do for work... this one's for you.
Phoebe Bridgers might be able to relate a bit, as she exclusively tells E! News that her grandfather only now realizes she's a legit musician. It only took, oh, you know, four Grammy nominations.
The singer (please don't confuse her with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the Fleabag comedian) scored four noms this year, including for Best New Artist, Best Alternative Music Album for Punisher and Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song for "Kyoto."
Phoebe tells E! News, "My grandpa, like, finally knows that I have a real job, you know?" He wasn't the only family member that was absolutely stoked by her first Grammy nominations. She woke up to "a trillion texts from my mother is how I found out," she says.
In some ways, her family also helped inspire her latest album. She explains that she wrote part of it on tour and focused on her feelings about "how overwhelming my life was getting" and "how much I wanted to go home," because she was separated her from her family. "So it is kind of an isolated-sounding record," she shares.
Now that the 26-year-old artist has had her big break, Phoebe is imparting her words of wisdom onto other musicians trying to make it in this industry.
"When I was a kid, I was put in a lot of rooms where especially older men tried to make me feel like they were doing me a huge favor by paying attention to me or by exposure or whatever," she recalls.
In retrospect, she says, "I would have given myself a lot more comfortability and I wouldn't stay up at night, like, wondering how I was being perceived or what a specific person thought of me. Just be cool, take everybody seriously, be nice, but also don't compromise yourself for somebody else's comfort."
She's had a lot of time to figure that out: Phoebe has been writing music for as long as she can remember, even before her high school days. "I had a couple different bands that, in retrospect, are bad," she admitted, before looking at the bright side. "I think I needed to be able to make all that music to be able to write something that I really like now."
Since then, Phoebe has collaborated with The 1975, Fiona Apple and The National. This year, she landed on the TIME 100 list and performed on Saturday Night Live when Dan Levy hosted.
The Pasadena native has realized that "songwriting is actually really accessible" for anyone interested. As she puts it, "You don't have to be some like weird evil genius in a basement to write interesting music, and I think that's getting kind of dismantled by a younger generation of people."
Tune in to the Grammy Awards on Sunday, March 14, to see if this music genius will take home any trophies.