Julien Baker

Early life

Julien Rose Baker was born on September 29, 1995, in Germantown, and raised in Bartlett, Tennessee, near Memphis. Her parents both worked in physical therapy; her father, after an accident in his twenties that led to leg amputation, dedicated his life to making experimental prosthetic limbs. Her parents separated while she was in elementary school. Baker grew up in a devout Baptist family and began playing music at church.

After seeing Green Day on television, she explored alternative music and became captivated by punk, hardcore, and metalcore scenes. She struggled with substance abuse as a young teen but found support in Memphis house shows and the straight edge punk subculture. In 2010, she co-founded the band the Star Killers, later renamed Forrister. She attended Arlington High School and then Middle Tennessee State University, where she studied audio engineering before switching to literature and secondary education; she left school to tour but returned in fall 2019 to complete her literature degree.

Career

Baker's first musical project was a post-rock ensemble in high school. During her first year at Middle Tennessee State University, she began writing songs alone in university practice rooms. She recorded what became Sprained Ankle in her dorm room using free studio time from a friend's internship, posting it on Bandcamp for friends. The album was picked up by 6131 Records and released in October 2015, topping many year-end lists and earning features in The New Yorker and The New York Times.

In March 2016, she gave an NPR Tiny Desk performance, the first of four appearances there, and played at South by Southwest and Newport Folk festivals. In October 2016, she contributed to a tribute to Elliott Smith, covering "Ballad of Big Nothing". She signed to Matador Records in 2017 and released a 7-inch single with "Funeral Pyre" and "Distant Solar Systems." Her second album, Turn Out the Lights, recorded with Calvin Lauber at Ardent Studios in Memphis, was released on October 27, 2017, to further acclaim.

She toured extensively, performing with artists including The National, Father John Misty, and Lucy Dacus, and appeared on CBS This Morning and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She has opened for or collaborated with Death Cab for Cutie, Conor Oberst, Paramore, and others. At Eaux Claires in July 2018, she performed with poet Hanif Abdurraqib.

Personal life

Baker is a lesbian, and her fraught experiences with organized Christianity inform much of her work. She came out to her parents at age 17 after years of being closeted and watching friends face conversion therapy or homelessness; her family was radically accepting. She previously identified as a Christian socialist but later found the label "sober queer Christian" damaging and has since adopted a less rigid approach to faith. She has been diagnosed with obsessive–compulsive disorder and depression.

In February 2024, she was named an Honorary Professor of Recording Industry at Middle Tennessee State University. She resided in Nashville until 2023, then relocated to Los Angeles. She is currently in a relationship with Boygenius bandmate Lucy Dacus.