\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div> \n\tTo be fair, I\u2019m not concerned. Since a teenage Abrams began posting rough cuts of songs she\u2019d recorded in her Pacific Palisades bedroom, she\u2019s made a career out of plying her insecurity to great artistic effect. Her first LP, 2023\u2019s Good Riddance<\/em> \u2014 written on the heels of her breakup with producer Blake Slatkin and earning her a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, as well as an opening-act spot on 49 dates of Taylor Swift<\/a>\u2019s Eras Tour \u2014 could fairly neatly be summed up as: It\u2019s bad that you love me (what with me being so emotionally messy and avoidant and insecure and self-sabotaging and all).\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tHer 2024 follow-up, The Secret of Us,<\/em> which she has said was written in the throes of \u201ca big crush\u201d she felt at the time \u201cwas unrequited\u201d (it likely wasn\u2019t; see above re: Mescal) pretty solidly sends the message: It\u2019s bad that I love you (proof of me, again, being so emotionally messy and avoidant and insecure and self-sabotaging and all). Halfway through our painting session, Abrams (who already has not one, but two songs with \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d in the title) will drop the announcement of her third LP, Daughter from Hell,<\/a><\/em> a sonically bigger, more varied offering in which, she tells me, she \u201cmines deeper\u201d all that emotional messiness, avoidance, etc., this time going all the way back to her childhood. Many of the arena tour dates behind the album will go on to sell out in minutes.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd soon, she\u2019ll be out in the world promoting Daughter from Hell<\/a> <\/em>exactly like a daughter from hell wouldn\u2019t, charmingly braising leeks on YouTube, playing the courteous guest on the Table Manners<\/em> podcast (\u201cCan I help at all?\u201d) and graciously telling The New York Times<\/em> that of course she understands why she, the daughter of acclaimed filmmaker J.J. Abrams and Hollywood producer Katie McGrath, deserves the nepo-baby label: \u201cI had a safety net, and that allowed me the ability to experiment and to concentrate, and I had the gift of time to dedicate to doing this thing I love.\u2026\u2009When I see people pointing that out, it\u2019s like, I get it, hardcore.\u201d Likewise, in the video for the \u201cLook at My Life\u201d single, she\u2019ll belie her daughter-from-hell bona fides by starting a dumpster fire, but then putting it out<\/em>. \u201cIf there\u2019s anybody I want to go get a martini with, it\u2019s my mom,\u201d she tells me now, sweetly, explaining that they spent the previous day, which just so happened to be Mother\u2019s Day, together in New York. \u201cI want to be as much like her as I can be. I FaceTime her six times a day.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tAll of which is to say that the emotional \u201cmetabolizing\u201d Abrams says her songwriting allows her to do seems to be working pretty damn well. And as her music has grown in scope from whispery bedroom ballads to ballsy anthems that fill arenas, it has also grown in perspective, in its ability to take what emotionally ails her and do a clear-eyed processing of it in measured, melodic time. A daughter from hell maybe wouldn\u2019t even realize that she was one, much less have the perspective to write an album that functions in some ways as a sonic apology tour. \u201cI was really careful to try to have a better understanding of being both the protagonist and the antagonist in each song,\u201d Abrams says.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tSo it\u2019s tempting, isn\u2019t it, to say that this is the moment of true self-actualization? That Abrams has put all of her youthful insecurities behind her and finally embraced the sum of her parts? That this is both a departure and an arrival?<\/p>\n \n\tBut now, over her easel, Abrams pushes back on such a redemptive narrative, on the easy notion that she\u2019s reached any sort of denouement. \u201cIn previous interviews or conversations I\u2019ve had around my other albums, I know I have said exactly that, like, \u2018Now I\u2019m here, and I\u2019ve arrived!\u2019\u2009\u201d But it wasn\u2019t true then, she says, not really. And it isn\u2019t true now. If anything, the album is an exploration of an \u201cin-between quality,\u201d she tells me. \u201cThe theme to me is trying to paint an accurate picture of all of these different versions of who you are in this decade when you are sort of one foot in a past life and one foot in the future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tShe studies the canvas in front of her. \u201cIt\u2019s weird to become an adult, you know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOH, BUT I DO. I do know what she means. It is<\/em> weird becoming an adult. And few songwriters have made both the universal and the particular emotional messiness of becoming a Gen Z adult so poetic. So dramatic. So very much like they\u2019d simply opened up their dog-eared journal and let us all peruse. Yes, Abrams started out writing from her bedroom in a mansion with views of the Pacific Ocean and neighbors like Steven Spielberg and Adam Levine. But she was still writing from her bedroom, in her childhood home, and about curfews and traffic and parents waiting by the door. Yes, she had a supremely Instagram\u00admable face, but she also had doubts and hang-ups and a knack for witty self-deprecation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tAnd think about it: Swift basically had deity status by then. Olivia Rodrigo<\/a> skews a bit punk. Phoebe Bridgers \u2014 who Abrams refers to as \u201ca real poet\u201d \u2014 trends a little darker and more unsettling. But Abrams\u2019 lyrics could cut to the quick and somehow still get home in time for dinner. She gave teenage angst a soft and dulcet landing, made her anxieties amiable and accessible.<\/p>\n \n\tTake the way she was as a kid, complex and conflicted but so relatably so: \u201cKind of shy, but kind of proud also,\u201d as she puts it; frequently embarrassed; vaguely emo and \u201cbedroom-dwelling\u201d but also \u201cambitious socially\u201d; impulsive and thrill-seeking but \u201cmore afraid than not \u2014 and that was a complicated thing to contend with.\u201d She attended a crunchy L.A. school where weirdness had a currency, knowing she was weird but maybe not weird enough. \u201cTheir whole motto was \u2018Celebrate differences,\u2019\u2009\u201d she says. \u201cJust on a formative level, what a fucking gift that is, but in my mind, I felt like one of the less-brave kids within that bubble. I think I was quite judgmental \u2014 of myself. I don\u2019t think I had the ears on for words of affirmation at all.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s Weird to Become an Adult, You Know What I Mean?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tIn her high school years, sure, she did some things that would alarm a careful parent, which she says hers were (\u201cnot helicopter parents; also never hands off the wheel\u201d). She\u2019d sneak out, sneak around. She had the earliest curfew of anyone she knew, but with all L.A. had on offer, she didn\u2019t need much time to make questionable choices: \u201cIt\u2019d be like, \u2018OK, I have to be home at 10 p.m. Crunch time. What does raspberry vodka taste like after being on a mechanical bull?\u2019 I\u2019d come home soooo<\/em> sick.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOther times, she\u2019d just stay in, headphones on, scribbling away in her journal and maybe, surreptitiously, getting a little high. \u201cI think I liked weed because it helped numb a handful of different feelings that I didn\u2019t want to pay attention to, acutely,\u201d she says. Looking back, she can see how hellish her vibe might have been for her parents: \u201cI do know [they] probably had concern around my energy, because why would I be that way if not stoned or depressed or super anxious?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSongwriting, famously, became the place she put all of her complicated emotions, a sort of exorcism. She started banging on a \u201cshitty little kid\u2019s drum kit\u201d her dad had left in the garage, picking melodies out on the family piano, journaling phrases that sometimes morphed into lyrics. \u201cI do think words are like spells. They\u2019re witchy,\u201d she says approvingly. The first time she did a solo musical performance was for a school assembly in the fifth grade. She\u2019d planned to do a soccer trick when it was her turn to show a skill, but McGrath intervened. \u201cMy mom, who is the least stage-parent type \u2014 truly \u2014 that I\u2019ve ever met, was like, \u2018That\u2019s not honest. The thing you love to do is play music, and you\u2019re taking the easy road if you don\u2019t tell the truth about yourself.\u2019\u2009\u201d Abrams cried, terrified, through her entire rendition of Christina Agui\u00adlera\u2019s \u201cBeautiful,\u201d trying to hide behind the upright piano. \u201cFriends of mine that I went to school with then have been like, \u2018Remember when that happened? Now, you don\u2019t cry when you play!\u2019\u2009\u201d She did not perform solo in public again until she was being paid to do so.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd once she was being paid to do so (an experience she has referred to as \u201cexposure therapy\u201d), she basically didn\u2019t stop for four years straight. At 22, she was opening for Olivia Rodrigo on her Sour<\/em> tour. By 25, she was headlining Red Rocks and Madison Square Garden, having navigated her early twenties from the back of a tour bus and in front of \u00admillions of eyes \u2014 and having amassed a fanbase who\u2019d somehow seen something of themselves in the shy girl posting sullen, silky siren songs. \u201cI think it was inspiring for me when I was young to watch videos with people who were just writing songs in their bedroom,\u201d says Rodrigo, who came across Abrams on Instagram when they were both in their teens and Sour<\/em> was still mostly unwritten. \u201cIt kind of made me feel like, \u2018Oh, I can do that too.\u2019 You know what I mean? You don\u2019t need some big fancy setup or some fancy studio to do something that inspires you. She had a really distinctive sound and a distinctive style of writing.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tAnd since those bedroom days, of course Abrams has grown profoundly. Of course she\u2019s learned so much. When her The Secret of Us<\/em> tour ended last August; when her nervous system had a chance to reregulate; when she was no longer making her meals on the bus\u2019 George Foreman grill, no longer waking up at 4 p.m., playing a show, and then staying up all night hopped up on adrenaline; when she could begin to hear her own internal voice again\u2009\u2026\u2009when all of that happened, well, she figured she\u2019d have Something Big to Say. She thought she\u2019d switch things up, write a concept album, reinvent herself to some degree.<\/p>\n \n\tThen she got in the room with her closest collaborator, the National\u2019s Aaron Dessner, and something else happened instead. \u201cGracie hadn\u2019t played a show yet when we first started working together,\u201d says Dessner, who produced both Good Riddance<\/em> <\/a>and The Secret of Us<\/a><\/em><\/em>. \u201cShe\u2019s been through a lot personally in that time, through breakups and through all kinds of challenges, so she\u2019s been grappling with where her life is.\u2026 Some of these songs go to places that I think she didn\u2019t even realize were inside of her. I don\u2019t think she\u2019s thinking to herself, \u2018I want to write a song that\u2019s an apology to my mom.\u2019 It just comes out.\u201d Abrams credits Dessner with this emotional conjuring. \u201cAs soon as I got back into the studio with Aaron, his effect on me has always been one of tapping into shit that I, for whatever reason, in a room without him, am not easily able to access,\u201d she explains. \u201cIt\u2019s like a therapy session every time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThey worked as they had for the past six years: Dessner finding a melody, a beat, a hook on the guitar or keys, and Abrams waiting for inspiration to strike, waiting for \u201cthat kind of drug-like feeling of \u2018It\u2019s happening.\u2019\u2009\u201d Between writing sessions in Manhattan and London, and at Dessner\u2019s Long Pond Studio in upstate New York, she quickly abandoned the idea of a concept album. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018That\u2019s just a dishonest approach,\u2019\u2009\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d look silly as fuck trying to switch it up really hard in order to get people to care.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAt Long Pond, Abrams could sense the passage of time in a way that felt pure and embodied. She\u2019d known Dessner\u2019s children when they were so little, when she\u2019d go with them to splash in the creek or kick a soccer ball around the yard. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten to watch them grow up,\u201d she says. \u201cNow, Ingrid will come into the studio with her teenage friends, and I\u2019ll be like, \u2018Do you think this is cool? Do you like this?\u2019\u2009\u201d It all made her think about the stages of her own life, about where she\u2019d been and where she was now rather than where she was theoretically going. Dessner encouraged her to linger there, to be OK with the in-between, to see it as a safe place. \u201cIt\u2019s like the pendulum for me will swing hard, and sometimes that\u2019s what freaks me out,\u201d Abrams says of her emotional highs and lows. Dessner told her she could just stay put.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShe seems to be so high-functioning, but she also lives in a pattern of breakdowns,\u201d he says, pulling a lyric from \u201cHit the Wall.\u201d \u201cBut she\u2019s able to express it. While she struggles and has self-doubt, there\u2019s also just this tremendous depth to her as a human being and as an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cI want to be as much like [my mom] as I can be. I FaceTime her six times a day.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tThere was also, they realized, new depth and range to the type of music they were creating. Abrams\u2019 last tour had started in theaters and ended in arenas; she went into the process of making the album knowing she wanted it to have a bigger and more-produced sound, one that would fit the scale of the venues where she was performing: \u201cI think, selfishly, touring the last album, there were types of songs that I wanted to play that I hadn\u2019t written yet, so the sound design was in part due to imagining what I would have a really good time performing.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tDessner refers to the early music they made together as \u201cmuch more sort of hermetically sealed, where it\u2019s almost like she\u2019s still in her bedroom at home, singing, and we\u2019re crafting a world that she would live in.\u201d Over time, he says, \u201cthis world has expanded and become much bolder and much sharper and kind of Technicolor.\u201d Still, he continues, the emotional core has remained the same. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t really write bad songs. A lot of people, it\u2019s not the case; you write, like, 200 songs to find 12 or something. But with Gracie, she\u2019s just an incredibly strong songwriter.\u2026 Her best work, it\u2019s very subtle in some ways. It\u2019s kind of awkward. Dark. She\u2019s not a narcissist. She doesn\u2019t get so excited by herself. She can be really hard on herself. A lot of the record is an interrogation of the self, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\tA MONTH AFTER OUR painting session, I meet Abrams at Fomo Studio in London\u2019s Camden neighborhood, in an empty rehearsal space upstairs from where her band is preparing for a performance on BBC Radio 1\u2019s Live Lounge.<\/em> The night before, jet-lagged from returning from New York, she\u2019d found herself at her Bechstein piano well past midnight, playing alongside her younger brother, Auggie, who is living with her and Mescal while studying abroad. \u201cHe\u2019s just been teaching himself, and we\u2019ve been playing together a lot,\u201d she says. \u201cHis intuition and his instincts are so off-the-charts impressive to me.\u201d This morning, she\u2019d awoken early \u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t sleep well,\u201d she tells me \u2014 and ventured out for a coffee and a walk around Highbury Fields before the London rain grew torrential, coming down in blustery sheets that made the June morning feel like a fall afternoon. \u201cIt\u2019s very classic,\u201d she says of the weather, settling into a corner of a leather Chesterfield sofa by the window and curling her legs up under her, cozy in a navy hoodie, a Boston Red Sox hat, and baggy track pants with \u201cP.M.\u201d embroidered on the thigh (Mescal\u2019s, she confirms). \u201cWe\u2019re on an emotional journey together right now,\u201d she says by way of greeting.<\/p>\n \n\tShe\u2019s only half-kidding. Two days before, a long profile of Abrams had come out, detailing her prior thoughts about how her \u00adsongwriting might be affected by being in a stable relationship, free of the relational angst that had long been her muse. Now, she stands by what she told that reporter but is flummoxed by the response to it, the many follow-up \u00adarticles touting some version of the headline \u201cGracie Abrams\u2019 Career Threatened by Paul Mescal.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Are we on crack? Like, what the fuck?\u2019\u2009\u201d she says. \u201cThat was my cue to be like, \u2018Oh, remember why you don\u2019t look [at social media]?\u2019\u2009\u201d She sucks in her breath. \u201cRun with it, circus.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tI point out that Abrams, daughter from Hollywood, might have had some idea of how circus-y the circus could be. \u201cIf you\u2019re asking about the public-eye piece, it was very contained,\u201d she says of her early exposure to her parents\u2019 level of fame. \u201cLike, it was fun the handful of times that we visited my dad on set. But regardless of what your parents do, growing up, nothing is less cool than your parents \u2014 so it\u2019s pure rejection of the thing.\u201d She says that she had no idea that her dad worked in TV or film until kids at her elementary school started asking her what happened at the end of a season of Lost<\/em> \u2014 and that, initially, she didn\u2019t even know what they were talking about. Later, she realized how sheltered she\u2019d been when it came to her own cultural currency: \u201cI [grew] up with families whose parents also worked in the entertainment business, who were heat-seeking missiles with their children in a way that could not have been further from the truth for us.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAs naive as she knows it now sounds, Abrams says that posting her early music on social media also felt contained, a way to participate in a supportive but disembodied community. It wasn\u2019t until she got to Barnard College in 2018 for her first and only year (she\u2019s technically still on a leave of absence) that she was recognized by a flesh-and-blood stranger for the first time. Once the pandemic eased and she began performing live, she was shocked \u2014 and touched \u2014 to see so many people singing her lyrics back at her. \u201cAll of this,\u201d she says, \u201chas extended beyond every limitation in my head that day when I signed [with Interscope] \u2014 by miles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\n\n\t\tWatch the video interview below\t<\/h2>\n
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