Gracie Abrams Has a Lot to Be Happy About, Actually

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Gracie Abrams, a standout of the sad-girl genre, is feeling lighter these days. It’s been more than a year since the 24-year-old singer-songwriter released Good Riddance, her vulnerable, self-lacerating debut album. The whirlwind months that followed included a 37-city headline tour that sold out in under an hour, a series of acoustic shows with producer and collaborator Aaron Dessner, and a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. In between, the Los Angeles native retreated to Dessner’s Long Pond Studio to work on new music that, she says, feels more joyful and intended to be performed live. Her single, “Risk,” is out today ahead of the full album, The Secret of Us, dropping June 21. “I’m so glad Good Riddance is what it is, and it feels like the foundation for me,” she says. “But I am looking forward to playing this new stuff, because I find myself singing it in the shower mindlessly. And I am not really a singing-in-the-shower person, but I like that that’s how it feels in my body.”

Abrams, who was an opening act for Taylor Swift on select dates of The Eras Tour in 2023, will rejoin the tour when it returns to North America this fall. It’s a surreal development for a fan who has “every single one of her songs liked in my Spotify,” she says—along with influences that range from Sharon Van Etten, Sade, and Billie Holiday to Olivia Dean, Lady Gaga, and Wet Leg. “I feel like women are kind of running it right now, and I’m obsessed with that being true,” she says. “There’s so much flexibility for artists to tap into whatever they’re feeling and then, as a result, find people who are aligned with that sound or that emotion. That just comes from the women who were brave enough to do it first.”

What was your Grammy experience like?

I genuinely had such a great night there with my mom, sitting with the other nominees in my category. It felt like a rare experience to be around so many writers and artists, who were equally in awe and shock at the fact that we were all in that room. And meeting Joni Mitchell is maybe the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I had tears in my eyes and kept internalizing, “Don’t cry in front of this woman. She doesn’t need that.” I said thank you for everything. I was just like, “Your work has paved every single way through for me, for everyone else.” I blacked out, but hopefully it cut through. I have “River” in her handwriting style tattooed on my arm. That song means so much to me, because it was my mom’s favorite holiday song growing up. I learned how to play it on piano, and I’d play it every Christmas.

There’s that other element to “River”: “I’m selfish and I’m sad.” Those kinds of intrusive thoughts are a theme in your work, too. Why do you think you’re so hard on yourself?

I think that until recently, that’s also the way that I’ve felt about myself. We’re in this time when there’s so much exposure to everything, and we’re seeing the very glorified lives of other people. For people in general, but maybe young people especially, you’re constantly able to compare yourself and judge your actions and your choices. A lot of that showed up in Good Riddance, because that’s totally how my brain was working at the time. It’s been a nice relief, I suppose, to have more grace with myself and with others. Historically, my mind has gone to judgment quickly. I don’t know why that is, but I definitely let go of that mode of thinking a lot in the past two years, and everything has felt better. So writing has been a nice place for me to also track my personal growth.

You have a great lyric from your song “The Bottom”: “Gonna regret being too honest.” Do you ever have those regrets?

I don’t regret putting things out there because of the community that I’ve seen form around the music. I always feel like that’s the bigger purpose. However, I regret putting things out without having personal conversations first—doing the right, hard thing in situations like that when you have any kind of public-facing identity. How do you be sensitive to the full picture? I’m like everyone else, just learning as I go.

What can we expect from the next album?

The energy of the music that I’ve been making this year has felt like when you run home to tell your best friend every detail of your night. There’s almost a satirical, dramatic element to the music this time around—not that I wasn’t obscenely, obscenely dramatic in the past, but I was laughing while writing these songs. I hope that energy is felt when they belong to everyone else.

What’s your working relationship with Aaron Dessner like?

It’s actually a joke, what I feel like I have added to his plate on a daily basis. I lean on Aaron as a mentor, not just in our songwriting and producing, but in life in general. He’s built a life outside of his touring and producing career. You can’t survive on a roller-coaster forever. You can’t eat the cotton candy for every meal. It feels hard to come by in the music industry the way that Aaron has done it, where you don’t need to live in the white-hot center of the noise to do this for a living. For me, longevity is the goal. Only recently have I started to figure out what I really love about doing this and how to do it in a way that feels like I’m doing it for myself, and not through the lens of what other people might expect.

Did being on The Eras Tour shows teach you anything about what you want from your own career?

Being in Taylor’s orbit for the summer completely altered every single thing for me. It informed so much about how I went about writing this next album. She makes everyone feel seen and heard, and she also at different points in the shows makes it feel like an intimate venue despite the fact that there are 80,000 or 100,000 people sharing the space. That’s what I want so badly, because the joy is infectious. It taught me so much, being able to watch the way that she shows up for everyone that she loves and has a beautiful life and is as generous and giving as she is and kills it every single time. She was building community not only in the crowd but also backstage. It felt like a full city of people every weekend at these stadiums behind the scenes, making it all come to life. And obviously that all comes from the top, and Taylor is the most excellent person and the most excellent boss.

There’s a community with the audience that’s evident at your shows. They know you, but it also seems like you know them. Is that a two-way relationship for you?

They are so generously committed to leaning into the shows and being as vulnerable with me as I have been with them—[by] releasing these songs and saying things that I haven’t necessarily even said out loud before. It’s like we’re dueting everything. Sometimes they’re far louder than we are, and that in and of itself is a pretty rad thing. I also do know a bunch of them, because I’ve seen their faces dozens of times. One of the few reasons I appreciate social media is the ability to connect when we’re not in the same place. And this weird thing that they’ve given me, on top of all the other support, is to be in a new city, or away from home for a long time, and anytime I see one of them, they create this space that does feel like a home away from home.

Does it ever feel like a lot to have these big emotions coming at you from your fans?

I care so much about them, and all I want is for them to be safe and happy and healthy. There have definitely been times when there’s a lot of heavy personal information shared, and all I can hope to do in those moments is show up for them the best way that I can, which I think is giving them the best show I possibly can. I know the importance of a live show. There have been a handful of shows that I think about frequently that were real touchstones in my life. I hope to give them everything I have when I’m lucky enough to be on an elevated surface.

Hair by E Williams for Kérastase; makeup by Alexandra French for Maybelline; manicure by Karen Jimenez for Chanel Le Vernis; set design by Carlos Lopez; produced by The Production Partners.

A version of this story appears in the May 2024 issue of ELLE.

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