How A Shattered Elbow, Liz Phair and ‘Philly Malarkey’ Shaped Sad13’s New Mixtape Of Hypershort Songs
Categoria: Musica
No song on 1331, the first release by Speedy Ortiz leader Sadie Dupuis' solo project since 2020, cracks two minutes.
Por Billboard | 17/06/2026
When Sadie Dupuis began writing what would become the next Sad13 project, one of the topics on her mind was “Philly malarkey.” “We have a mayor I can’t stand who’s done a lot to really harm people,” the Speedy Ortiz leader tells Billboard from a hot-pink room in her Philadelphia home, as she reflects on incumbent Cherelle Parker’s shortcomings on issues from student protestors to public infrastructure. After Dupuis finished writing on the last day of May 2024, she planned to take a couple weeks before recording the material that summer. Then, on June 10, an accident upended her life. “It’s shocking I wasn’t killed,” she says of the biking collision that shattered the elbow of her fretting arm. “I went over the handlebars, I hit my head, I was cut all over my body. A week later, a young doctor was killed on the same street by a car doing the same thing: driving into the bike lane. “But it was funny,” she adds dryly, “to be writing about the mayor and hating the mayor and then I was nearly killed — and if not that, nearly taken off my line of work — because of a decision made by the mayor to move away from the bike infrastructure that we’ve all been pleading for.” That mayor-criticizing song became “People’s Loser,” one of the nuggets on Sad13’s new mixtape 1331 . A proudly DIY collection of 13 short songs ranging from 57 to 107 seconds, Dupuis’ third project under the moniker — and first since 2020 — lands July 10 on Exploding In Sound, Speedy Ortiz’s original label home. Today, the first three songs arrive: “I Am Now Completely Invisible,” “Art Institute” and “Watermelon Manicure.” Following the injury, Dupuis’ “life flipped over into a basically full-time job trying to rehab it,” powering through extensive nerve damage as her 1331 material, not to mention gigging with Speedy Ortiz, took a backseat. “My favorite thing that I learned is that all orthopedic doctors are, like, really into guitar,” she says. When some began to cast doubt on whether she’d be able to play again, Dupuis mentioned that she’d recently appeared on Rolling Stone ‘s “250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” list. “I’ve never dropped something like that,” she says, “but I found it very helpful in navigating the orthopedic-industrial complex. I wound up suddenly with the premier orthopedic surgeon at the hospital. I go to the Sixers’ PT person and I go to the Eagles’ PRP [platelet-rich plasma injection] person. They take insurance. [The doctors] pass my name along because they’re like, ‘Guitar player!'” While 1331 is lyrically a snapshot of Dupuis’ headspace in spring 2024, with nods to the fights for Palestinian justice and trans rights, her injury heavily informed the final product. She cou