Mckenna Grace Works Through Her 'Heartbreak Era' on Debut EP: 'It's Scary Releasing Music That's So Personal'

Matt Kallish Mckenna Grace

"I play so many characters, but I feel like music is just more of a personal thing for me," Mckenna Grace says about adding singing and songwriting to her already-extensive resume.

At only 16, the Grapevine, Texas, native has already amassed over 60 big-and-small screen credits since making her acting debut in 2013. But now the Ghostbusters: Afterlife star is ready to show a new side to her with the release of her first EP. Titled Bittersweet 16, the eight-track collection documents the countless insecurities and frustrations felt by all adolescents, especially those who have spent the last three years managing the effects of a global pandemic.

Grace has "been a really musical person my whole life," but admits to PEOPLE that being quarantined in her bedroom with COVID-19 early in 2020 led her to seriously develop her skills as a songwriter.

Gus Black Mckenna Grace

"I had the Conan Gray album Kid Crow and I put it on my record player and listened to it over and over and over again," she reflects "At the time I didn't know how to play guitar and so I would sit with my ukulele and just write little tunes. I have two notebooks just full of stuff from that time."

Grace quickly discovered that her "therapy is songwriting" and began using it as an outlet for all her feelings, good and bad. "I didn't really have a lot of life experiences at the time and I was just writing about how I felt," she says about starting to craft the angsty pop-rock tunes. "I had never even been on a date or anything, and then I wrote all these breakup songs that were just about relationships in my life or situations that I went through."

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She views the EP as a "little time capsule" and finds herself relating more to the lyrics now that she's a bit older, adding, "I'll write something that relates to how I'm feeling so long ago and then all of a sudden I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, this makes so much more sense to my life now!'"

Grace calls herself a very "non-confrontational person" and has been able to use music as a way "to express emotions or be angry or say things that I would never say to anyone." She cites Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey as major influences because "they're incredible storytellers" and she similarly wants to focus on creating relatable visuals with her lyrics.

"It's way different than hiding behind a script or character," reveals the actress, who scored a Primetime Emmy Award nomination in 2021 for her work on The Handmaid's Tale. "All my songs have elements of my life because I don't want to write a song and sing it if it didn't happen... all of my songs are very specific and true to me."

While most of her songs document the demise of young love, Grace points out that the content of her music is based on a collection of occurrences in her life. "It's just situations that happened that I've kind of molded into breakup songs because I find that not all breakups have to be a relationship," noting that she wouldn't use the term 'first love' to describe the subject matter. "I've definitely written things about people I've liked, but it's also about things that I went through with family and friends. I just changed them to be more like a breakup song because I love writing breakup songs."

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"I have a problem," she jokes about her penchant for heartbreak anthems, making it clear she may be heading in a new direction. "I've gotten a bit more confident in my writing and my mom's like, 'Yes, we're finally out of the heartbreak era!'"

In the meantime, Grace is still getting used to having people hear the songs she's written about them, something she has done personally. "I'm like, 'Hey, I wrote a song about you today, do you want to hear it?'" she says through a fit of embarrassed laughter. "I feel like I do that if it's a nice song."

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There are nerves that people will hear songs and think they're about them, especially when they've been written so long ago. "I'm always so scared this sounds like it's about something that's happening right now and I hope that this person doesn't think that this is about them," she says. "What if people are mad at me; luckily, I've never really had that type of experience."

That's not to say some songs didn't go through rewrites as Grace developed this EP. "I have completely changed lyrics in my songs because I'm like, 'Wow, I can't release that because that is the type of specific that people will know... people are detectives," she confesses. "But at the same time, I will write songs and I'll be like, 'Wow, I don't know I've never like said this stuff before and I don't know if I'm wanting to release this,' but it ends up meaning a lot to write and to get out there."

Grace adds that "there are lines that I probably won't cross" when it comes to remaining honest with her songwriting, but is aware she may feel differently as she gets older. "A year from now, maybe I'll be more open with my feelings, so it's ever-changing."

While she continues to write music, Grace isn't letting go of her "biggest passion" of acting. In fact, she is just days away from starting production on the latest Ghostbusters sequel. "Any day that I'm not doing something with acting, I'm doing something with music," she says about balancing the two. "My friends are like, 'Oh my God, you're in the studio like every single day,' and I'm like, 'I know.' I just have no chill because I love both music and acting so much that every day I'm probably doing one or the other."