Somewhere on Gracie Abrams' cam is a video of Taylor Swift in the pop superstar's Tribeca kitchen, frantically putting out a fire that threatened to destroy her center island.
Behind the lens, the 24-year-old singer-songwriter laughs and cries as her childhood hero works fearlessly to save them from danger. They had both heard the candle falling in the distance earlier that night, but Swift had assured Abrams that it was probably one of her cats knocking. It's well past 6am, after a night of dinner and drinks – heavy on that second thing – when the fire finally goes out.
“He was a legend — I don't know how at this time or in our state he knew what to do,” Abrams says. Advertising sign six months later via Zoom. “We both had a crazy cough from the fire extinguisher fumes for weeks.”
The pair had just finished writing “Us,” the California native's 13-track second studio album. Our secret – due out this Friday (June 21) — when the fiasco occurred. Before that, they had spent the night previewing songs from Abrams and the 34-year-old hitmaker's new record. Department of Tormented Poets for each other before a project is even announced. Abrams recalls singing and dancing “like theater kids” in “But Daddy I Love Him” and lying on the floor in disbelief after hearing “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”, after which they began listening to instrumentals made by their mutual collaborator and friend Aaron Dessner.
“Something caught our ear at the same time very hard and fast,” says Abrams. “So we ran to the piano and started writing this song…I imagined something like this as a kid.”
“Us” ended up being the ribbon that tied the material Abrams dreamed up with Dessner at his famed Long Pond Studios last year after he spent the summer on Swift's Eras tour, a role he'll reprise on select dates up north. America later this fall. Shortly after their near-deaths, the two women headed upstairs to record the duet with the 48-year-old National founder, who recalled: “It was so much fun watching Gracie and Taylor's chemistry bounce off each other , Gracie. in absolute wonder and awe watching how Taylor records and produces her vocal performances and how she builds the world.”
“Taylor is great at putting together a whole story,” Dessner continues over Zoom, the wood paneling of Long Pond's interior making up his backdrop. “[That song] he just brought everything [about Gracie’s album] into focus in a beautiful way.”
Even without Swift's name in the credits, Our secret is easily Abrams' friendliest project to date. While still filled with acoustic guitars and Dessner's signature woodiness, the project is sharper, hookier and more extroverted than ever, with light synths and the occasional ghost of a dance beat injecting new adrenaline into its DNA. The sound is best exemplified by Abrams' latest single “Close to You,” which was released earlier this month and is already shaping up to be her biggest hit yet.
Abrams didn't set out to write a new album so soon after her debut Good riddance dropped in February 2023, peaking at No. 52 on the Billboard 200 — much less one that sounds so distinctly different from her previous work. But the songs continued to come to her as intuitively as they did that spontaneous night in New York, many of them about unrequited love so strong it “felt like a disease,” she says.
“I didn't even think we were making it [an album], and neither did Gracie,” says Dessner. “The first song we made is 'Gave You I Gave You I.' That immediately created a very different palette and soundscape and it just evolved from there.”
“We just had fun realizing that we can do things that sound completely different,” Abrams adds. “It was a license, this album, to try whatever the fk we want.”
This time, the duo – who first collaborated on Abrams' 2021 EP That's how it feels — also co-signed the singer's best friend since she was 10, Audrey Hobert. Abrams and Hobert have technically been working together since they were in high school, writing and directing Video Star movies together, but the tracks Our secret co-written by Hobert, marking her first foray into songwriting.
The friendship duo's closeness allowed Abrams to be more vulnerable than she could ever be with any other partner, and Hobert even stars as the main character in the bittersweet lyrics of “Good Luck Charlie,” the former saying that is about observing a relationship. ending between two friends and “having a lot of love for both people… half mourning it and half wishing well for all involved.” (The title, he clarifies, is completely unrelated to the Disney Channel show of the same name — “I wasn't a Disney kid growing up… I feel like I missed out.)
“I trust her with my life and she knows me so well,” Abrams says of her friend. “There was no pretense.”
Plus, after hitting the road with Swift, Abrams realized she was ready to perform music that had a little more presence in the stadiums she was warming up to, which she hopes to translate into her own. tour” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”>headline tour theater-sized venues across the U.S. beginning September 5 in Portland. That's why you'll hear her live it up properly for the first time in several places on The Secret of Us, as teased on the single “Risk,” out May 1st.
“I think it's time,” she says of improving her vocal skills. “I wasn't a singer. I was a writer and no one else would sing my songs when I was young. I used to sing my songs to myself in my room, so it didn't take much projection. I could be very quiet and curled up in a ball. Being on stage is a different game.”
But as her star has risen with the Eras exhibition and the rest Good riddance hype – and as naysayers have finally moved on from declaring her 'nepo baby' status as the daughter of director JJ Abrams – her songs have drawn some criticism, even though her crackling alto is what they love more her fans.
“There are singers worth shouting about [for their skills], and it's not me,” Abrams admits. “I like to sing a lot, because I like to sing things that I write. It's an extension of writing for me, so I'm always trying to improve that skill. But I wouldn't drive with “I'm a singer.” I'd say, 'I'm a writer.'”
Abrams and Dessner are already working on the former's next project — “We don't know what it is yet,” he says, “but we're making a bunch of new music that's already very different from this album.” However, it feels like its style and subject matter Our secret is fully suggestive of her current state of mind, unlike previous works that seemed to 'revisit old wounds' to perform live.
“It can feel like this funny ghost,” Abrams adds. “And with Our secret, feels very timely. That's how I am.”
If there's one exception, though, it's “Close to You,” which Abrams first recorded seven years ago with producer Sam de Jong before scrapping it, feeling unprepared to embrace such a distinctly pop sound. That didn't stop fans from obsessing over a seconds-long clip of the track that Abrams uploaded online last decade, and she's been getting near-daily requests — plus some gentle pressure from her team at Interscope — to release it ever since.
With Our secret Being as folky as it is, “Close to You” finally has a home that makes sense. It appears at the end of the track listing and serves as the second single, with Abrams officially dropping it to fans on June 7. (For those wondering whether another cast-off, the deeply Swiftian “In Between,” will get the same second-life treatment, Abrams teases that it “looks like a luxury situation.”)
Her label's patience paid off, with the track debuting at No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week, her first solo entry on the chart. It follows her appearance on the remix of Noah Kahan's “Everywhere, Everything”. Stick Season anthem, peaking at No. 79 in December.
“Gracie is truly one of those artist growth stories, building such a dedicated fan base each time and never wanting to skip a step,” says Sam Riback, IGA president and head of Pop/Rock A&R. Advertising sign via email. “It was her connection with her fans, built over a long period of time, that was really unique and special about her arrival on the mainstream scene. It's that bond between Gracie and her fans that will propel her to the top and keep her there.”
If Our secret makes a statement as big as Abrams and her team hope it does, then the “peak” is definitely in store. Ever since he first spoke Advertising sign Less than a year and a half ago, the star nearly doubled her Spotify listeners (15 million+), picked up her first Grammy nomination, and held her biggest tour of all time.
On a more personal front, Abrams says she's also more sure of herself — as a person and an artist — than ever. “I just know that I trust myself solo,” he says. “This album meant so much to me because it supported me through a period of transition. I learned how I like to spend my time, what works for me and what doesn't in relationships, how having friends is ultimately the priority for me. I don't need to know who I want to wake up to every day, but I do know that I want to be there for every chapter of my friends' lives.”
“I'm learning every five seconds,” Abrams adds. “We'll have to find out what this all turns into, but today it's me.”
Gracie Abrams
Courtesy photo
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/gracie-abrams-taylor-swift-us-collab-new-album-1235711614/