‘Lost Weekend’ In Space: How Artists Like Phoebe Bridgers Turn Planetariums Into Music Venues

“It’s like making a music video,” Andrew Bundas says.

“There’s no one way to do it.” He’s speaking about an unusual but increasingly popular visual medium for musicians to promote their new music: planetarium shows.

As planetarium educator for the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., Bundas has worked on two of the most high-profile examples in recent years: Lil Yachty’s album release events for his Let’s Start Here in 2023, and, last week, listening experiences celebrating Phoebe Bridgers’ Lost Weekend release.

From Aug.

10-14, fans around the world packed into 44 planetariums — in such far-flung locales as Bozeman, Mont., Vancouver, Glasgow and Auckland — to listen to Lost Weekend while watching one of two different visual experiences Bridgers offered in partnership with Spotify: a planetarium dome show, with original photography by National Geographic ’s Babak Tafreshi, or a laser show.

But on Aug.

13, the night before the Lost Weekend album release, Bridgers herself showed up to the Liberty Science Center’s Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium, speaking to the audience of fans and performing three tracks in the planetarium space.

“That she came out the night of the release of the album to physically be in the planetarium, I think says a lot about how much she cared,” says Bundas.

“It was really cool.” Opened six years ago, the Liberty Science Center’s planetarium — which the center’s president and CEO Paul Hoffman notes is “the largest and most technologically advanced planetarium not just in the country but the whole Western Hemisphere” — offers particularly great visual potential to musicians.

As Hoffman says, “in terms of resolution, it’s like watching the best HD TV, but on a screen more than 90 feet across.” Artists of all sorts can take advantage of the capabilities of a planetarium — Hoffman and Bundas have worked with many cover bands, not just well-known stars like Bridgers and Yachty.

But a show like Bridgers’, with custom astrophotography, or Yachty’s, with custom animation, can take “months and months and months of time” (astrophotography, for one thing, is very weather-dependent).

Following Bridgers’ Jersey City shows, Hoffman and Bundas spoke to Billboard about what they took to put on — and why more artists should see their local planetariums as an ideal music venue.

How did your planetarium get into working with musicians? Paul Hoffman: Our day job is getting astronomy and space science across [to visitors] at a time when discoveries and public interest are peaking.

The kinds of images we’re getting from both ground and space-based telescopes are incredible.