scruffpuppie IS HERE
EMO Wunderkind Joins Phoebe Bridgers
Emo wunderkind Scruffpuppie aka JJ Shurbet just signed with Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records. She is joining a roster that includes MUNA, Claud, and Charlie Hickey. On August 24, the hard-driving pop-punk Assignment Song was released to streaming services. JJ wrote the song in rehab as an actual assignment from a counselor. After leaving the program and after six months of sobriety she rearranged, added to, and reworked the song with Marshall Vore (drummer and co-writer of half of Bridgers’ tracks from Punisher and Stranger in the Alps). She called the single being released on her one-year clean date a “cool coincidence.”
JJ told The Line of Best Fit that she chose to sign with Saddest Factory because “it felt like a family, whereas a lot of other labels I spoke to felt more robotic.” The feeling is mutual as Bridgers told NME, “I recognize the world I know in [JJ’s music], but it’s off center. It’s like she’s filtering everything through raw emotion, throwing some distortion on it all, and handing it back to us so we can feel something for a second.” That is all JJ wants is to make people feel.
In her 20 years, she has lived more than most people do in a lifetime. Growing up queer in a conservative family in a traditional town was not easy. Also, she has primarily overcome addiction on her own (she checked herself into rehab).
Calling Scruffpuppie a new artist would be a misnomer. There is quite a back catalog of music as she has been posting raw, barebones covers and, more recently, original songs on YouTube since the age of 9. Her first album in 2018, Zombie Boy alone, was two years’ worth of songs worked out on YouTube. Album number 2, released in 2020, which is also rad, was much more polished. We can’t wait to hear what she does on her first record for Saddest Factory.
