do phony deps take "precedence" over regular deps?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  in the latest edition of "managing project with gnu make" from
o'reilly, on p. 14, there is a makefile snippet i had never noticed
before:

$(Program): build_msg (OBJECTS) $(BUILTINS_DEP) ...
        ... regular commands here ...

.PHONY: build_msg
build_msg:
        @printf ... building $(Program) ...

the text reads:

  "Because the printf is in a phony target, the message is printed
immediately before any prerequisites are updated."

really?  does being a phony target move you to the front of the list
for processing, chronologically speaking?  i had never read that
before.  clarification, someone?

rday