How Gracie Abrams turned her troubles into one of the best debut albums of 2023

by Waiss David Aramesh

When the pandemic brought the world to a standstill in March 2020, millions of people suddenly had to cope with a great deal of time at home. Some baked bread. Others took up pottery. And on a very early Friday morning, singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams got high, delved into Taylor Swift’s discography and fired off a hit tweet: “I know places by taylor swift makes me feel like i’m being hunted down in the.” purge”.

“That was one of about a dozen tweets where I explained my feelings about their music in this condition,” says Abrams, laughing. Other tweets she sent out during this promotion suggest that “Innocent” is Swift’s best song and “Mine” makes Abrams want dungarees.

The 23-year-old will have dozens of opportunities this summer to see the artist who shaped her — but not as a fan. Abrams will perform for her heroine on 30 dates of Swift’s The Eras tour at stadiums across the United States, as a support act. “It feels like the most ridiculous masterclass known to man,” says Abrams. “I will learn so much just by keeping my head clear and listening and watching her do what she was brought here to do.”

Abrams is the melancholy writer of Gen Z and one of the hottest young artists in popular music. Her debut album Good Riddance, out February 24, shows that she really has mastered autobiographical songwriting. She’s not the only pop star to write lovesick confessions in her bedroom, but she captures the guilt and doubts of young, failed love in her music better than most of her peers. “I miss you, I’m sorry,” a hit with over 100 million streams on Spotify, is both a farewell to a lover and an argument to the contrary: “You said ‘Forever’, in the end I disagree fought/Please be honest/Is it better for us?”

“Gracie’s lyrics are a mix of fragility and introspection that I can relate to,” Swift tells ROLLING STONE. “They make me feel like maybe she and I started writing songs for the same reason. Just to try to understand our feelings. My favorite writers are the ones that I never have to wonder why they wrote that particular song because it just feels like they had to do it – like a confession or a catharsis. At times it feels like she’s on the brink of tears or laughter as she sings, and we all sit in a circle on the floor and listen as the story unfolds.”

On a warm, overcast January day, Abrams and I are seated at a beige table at a Hollywood diner she frequents, hours before the release of her new single “Where Do We Go Now?” Abrams grew up in Los Angeles. For her, it’s “an industrial city” and her family’s roots are very strong: her father is filmmaker JJ Abrams and her mother, Katie McGrath, is a producer and co-CEO of JJ’s production company.

Abrams wrote his first songs at the age of eight. Writing was a comfort to her. Performing in front of other people wasn’t. “I wasn’t like a little kid listening to music on the radio and pretending to be performing,” says Abrams. “I never wanted to be on stage.”

In 2019, she took a break from teaching at New York’s Barnard College to focus on music. She signed to Interscope and released “Mean It” that fall, whose smooth vocals, stirring chorus, and vulnerable narration became trendsetting.

Abrams says signing the record deal made her feel like an imposter because Interscope had one expectation of her and she wasn’t sure she could live up to it: playing live. “And then Covid came, I was able to do gigs on Zoom … literally in my bedroom, exactly the same thing I would do on Instagram — but I would see little people in squares,” Abrams says, referring to the original snippets that she uploaded to Instagram as a teenager from her bed, the piano, or a backyard. “It was a stepping stone for me and I can’t tell you how much I needed it.”

“Good Riddance” began to take shape when music producer Aaron Dessner invited the musician to his Long Pond studio in New York’s Hudson Valley. She’d just been through a breakup when Abrams began work on the album, and the feelings on “Good Riddance” were raw. The album’s opener, “Best”, was the most difficult to write. The lyrics don’t sugarcoat anything and dig deeper with each verse when Abrams admits she wasn’t at her best in a past relationship.

For Abrams, writing the song felt like “sticking a knife in her stomach.” Announcing the project, she wrote about how “Good Riddance” forced her to be accountable. “I don’t think I’ve always been the most transparent partner,” she says, adding that she struggled with confrontations. “I really wanted to get to a point in my life where I would step into adulthood, where I would be more honest with myself and not fall into the trap of victimhood and be more honest about my shit.”

I ask Abrams what the people she sings about will think. She takes a moment to think about it, and admits she often thought she had to cut a song because of the subject. “I wrote a song and then I was very insecure if someone else knew I wrote it,” she says. “It’s unsettling to think that you could hurt someone over something you wrote.”

Dessner encouraged her to continue with the songs. “Aaron said, ‘You know, all the artists you’ve loved so far have all said, holy shit, can I release this?'” says Abrams. “Honestly, I sat down and just thought about Taylor. She’s had the most public career ever, and she still has the guts to say what she means.” However, she doesn’t know how the people she’s written songs about will react, “but I really love her, so I hope that maybe they believe that.”

At Long Pond, Abrams lived with Dessner, his wife, and their three children. Abrams often worked twelve-hour days, spending time with the Dessner children during breaks. “His kids made me want to be a mom someday, although, to be honest, I never wanted to,” says Abrams with a smile.

Abrams finished recording her debut album on September 7, her 23rd birthday. The Dessner children wrote an original song for her and played it on stringed instruments. “It’s the lead single,” jokes Abrams.

Rising Nepo baby?

Abrams hasn’t missed the online discussion of nepotism — a debate that came to a head on the cover of New York Magazine in December 2022, when it was branded a “nepo up-and-coming baby.” Abrams says she doesn’t take offense at the term and stressed she understands the discussion: “Obviously we can’t control where we’re born into, and there are a million visible and even more invisible benefits of having family members who are in the entertainment industry,” she says. “I know how hard I work. Of course, I also know how much I separate my parents and the talks about my career. But of course you can understand what it looks like from the outside.”

When Abrams got the call that she would open the concerts for Swift, she called her mother. She told her daughter that she sounded like she was shaking. Abrams then texted Swift, who she’d met through Dessner a few years earlier. “I just said, ‘I’m at a loss for words, but I will thank you for the rest of my life.'”

Through Dressner as a mutual friend, Swift and Abrams met when the superstar asked Abrams if she wanted to come to a party. “She texted me out of the blue two years ago. She is one of the brightest lights ever, a writing genius, an artistic genius, an angel from above.”

As she goes through her horror-movie-inspired thoughts on Swift’s “I Know Places,” Abrams and I both agree that the last song on “1989,” “Clean,” might be the album’s best song. Abrams speaks of Swift with great admiration, peppering our conversation with little fun facts. “Did you know that Imogen Heap worked on this song?” Abrams asks me (I didn’t know). “Both are obviously on my wish list for collaborations. When I saw them working together, I thought, ‘Fuuuckkkk’.”

At the diner, Abrams doesn’t order anything, instead waving her Cartier ring around while talking about love, The Lion King, and Long Pond. She’s nervous – the good kind that springs up when the single is just hours away and the debut album isn’t long in coming. “I definitely bit my nails more this week than I’ve ever done,” Abrams admits, saying she’s finally coming to terms with the fact that her music will exist in more places than just her phone and journal.

Abrams is spending her time rehearsing these days – after touring with Swift, she’ll be playing her album on her own “Good Riddance” tour. “I feel more grateful than ever for what songwriting has given me as a person outside of music,” says Abrams. “I grew up using it as a tool to process shit, but… having done it and ending something… I felt like I had just done the grieving work, what was missing was really letting go.”

Translated from the American, first published on rollingstone.com

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