Gracie Abrams Can’t Believe It Either

Gracie Abrams is in the middle of telling me about the new music she’s writing when a thought stumps her. She pulls out her phone to Google the answer: When did her chart-topping second album, The Secret of Us, actually drop this year?

“We started making new stuff the same week that we finished [that album]. Or actually, no, even earlier. When did the album come out?” she says, before trying to guess the release date: Top of the year? April? “What month are we in? December. When the f*ck did that album come out?” The page finally loads. “June 21st! Holy sh*t! I am losing my mind, if you cannot tell. Time isn’t as real as it once was.”

That about sums up the story of Abrams’ life lately. In just a few months, she’s graduated from certified next-big-thing to actual big thing, thanks to her skillful songcraft and some excellent timing. After releasing two albums — 2023’s Good Riddance and then Secret, which got a deluxe edition in October — the 25-year-old scored a true star-making hit with “That’s So True,” a begrudging farewell to an ex that’s been inescapable whether you’re swiping through TikTok or flipping through the radio.

It helped that, along the way, she’s opened for two of the most powerful women in the world: Vice President Kamala Harris, who recruited Abrams to rev up Gen Z with a campaign rally performance in Wisconsin this October; and, most crucially, Taylor Swift, who tapped Abrams to open for 49 shows of the Eras Tour and made a rare guest appearance on The Secret of Us track “Us” — the dean of confessional songwriting teaming up with her brightest pupil.

She’s even managed the rare feat of transcending her nepo-baby status — her dad is sci-fi director J.J. Abrams, her mother is production executive Katie McGrath — and flipping it back onto her parents. At a recent show in New York, I watched fans approach her father to take selfies, not because he made Star Trek and Star Wars movies, but because he’s Gracie’s dad. (As one fan jokingly put it: “There is literally no way you knew JJ Abrams before Gracie unless ur like 50 like be for real.”)

“They’re like, ‘What in the world?’” Abrams says of her parents’ reaction to her fame. “But it’s really sweet.” And she has a new appreciation for her mom — “The toughest person I know, and not a softie” — after watching her interact with Abrams’ growing army of young listeners. “The way that she treats people is how I want to treat people, and for me to see her be that way towards this community that cares so much about the music…” she says, her voice trailing off. “Her support and encouragement of my writing my whole life is the reason that I’m doing any of this now.”

“Every time I’ve opened for Taylor, I watch and learn. I learned from her every time we have a conversation about the weather, even.”

Abrams is telling me all this over breakfast in New York City, where she’s days away from making her musical debut on Saturday Night Live. She arrives punctually at Buvette in the West Village, dressed in a striped shirt and navy trousers, a black fur hat covering the hair that launched a thousand bobs. She arrives alone, coming from her mom’s nearby apartment, where she’ll be staying for the next few weeks. She seems remarkably calm and collected given the circumstances. Less than 36 hours ago, Abrams was on stage in front of 60,000 people in Vancouver, wearing a $75 thrifted wedding dress, performing for the final night of the Eras Tour.

“Everyone had been crying all day. It felt like the last day of school backstage,” she says, sipping an oat milk cappuccino. “Everyone was walking around with their [Eras Tour] books, signing each other’s books. We were all walking around with Sharpies.”

Like most Swifties, Abrams is moving through the stages of grief over the end of the tour. “I watched the live streams on shows that I wasn’t at,” she says. “I’m feeling emotional and grateful and in a state of shock that we don’t, as a global community, get to experience that source of light anymore.” And she’s especially appreciative of how being in Swift’s orbit offers a kind of pop-star boot camp as she enters a new stratosphere of success. “I was just soaking up every moment of her show, too. I’ve basically been studying it for a year-and-a-half. Every time I’ve opened for her, I watch and learn. I learned from her every time we have a conversation about the weather, even.”

“It feels way easier to be alone in New York. And I love being alone.”

When Abrams first started on the Eras Tour, two Taylor’s Version albums were just Easter eggs, the Poets had yet to be Tortured and “Tolerate It” was still on the set list; Abrams herself was fresh off the release of her debut album. By the time she rejoined the tour this past October, “That’s So True,” had just come out, and she could feel the way her life was changing in the vibrations of the stadium.

“It’s funny to see what one song can do for engagement. In your head, you’re like, ‘Of course.’ But it’s crazy when you get to see that week-by-week in a stadium,” she says. “It was really wild. It felt different, for sure. There is something really psychotic about being able to hear voices in the stadium singing sh*t back at you. It’s like, ‘What the f*ck?’”

“That’s So True” becoming Abrams’ biggest hit to date is both a plot twist and a no-brainer. She started writing it last year but didn’t feel strongly about finishing it in time to put on The Secret of Us’ standard edition. Yet the song’s brash, self-aware lyrics are peak Abrams, embodying everything fans love about her. Since her first EP in 2020, she’s been packing emotional wallops into the tight confines of a three-minute pop song, with the easy intimacy of that friend who sends two-minute-long voice notes. Even as Abrams barrels from one feeling right into the next, her moments of mess have an enviable cleverness to them. Just listen to the second verse of “That’s So True,” where she manages to be both cheeky and snarling as she sifts through resentment for an ex who’s moved on (and herself for not doing the same): “What’d she do to get you off?/ Taking off your shirt, I did that once/ Or twice/ No, I know, I know I’ll f*ck off/ But I think I like her, she’s so fun/ Wait, I think I hate her, I’m not that evolved.”

Audrey Hobert, Abrams’ best friend and frequent writing partner, has an idea of why Abrams’ songs are so sticky, even when they’re full of unconventional choices. “She taught me about something called mouthfeel, which is when you see if words feel good all strung together, and I’ve never forgotten it,” she says. “She’s hilarious and smart and fast and fun, just like she is when we’re not writing.”

“That’s So True” went viral before it even came out: A snippet of Abrams playing the song acoustically with Hobert made the rounds on TikTok so quickly that Abrams added it to the set list of her headlining tour this fall. By the time she played two nights at Radio City Music Hall in New York — still days away from release — 90% of the crowd knew all the words, and even reenacted the lasso dance move Hobert made in the original video. (Hobert, who is also her roommate, is working on music of her own: “She is brilliant and deserves all of the ears and eyes,” Abrams teases. “The music she’s making right now is my favorite sh*t ever. You’ll love it.”)

“I feel really lucky that 95% of my interactions with strangers are not with creepy dudes.”

“It’s such an angsty, sarcastic song,” Abrams says of the hit, which she finished this spring at New York’s Electric Lady Studios with producer Aaron Dessner. “Audrey and I were drunk on the roof, writing it in tears, laughing. The initial lyrics were way gnarlier.” (“You don’t wanna know the first-draft lyrics,” Hobert tells me.) But there’s still plenty of bite in the bridge, a rushed, panicking confession that became a TikTok prompt for everyone from Kelsea Ballerini (“I was like, ‘Oh my God, you know who I am?’”) to @grandadfrankk (a charming Irish septuagenarian with 7.7 million followers). In November, it became her first top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Also fueling the song’s rise: a new interest in Abrams’ growing celebrité, particularly her relationship with actor Paul Mescal, with whom she has been snapped by paparazzi several times over the last six months. (Mescal was also in attendance at the same New York show, and the pair were seen arriving hand in hand at this weekend’s SNL after-party.) Abrams keeps it brief when I ask how she’s found navigating personal relationships under this new public microscope. “That has nothing to do with me,” she says, straight-faced. “It doesn’t affect me.”

Recently, Abrams got her own place in New York and is making the East Coast her home base. “Everything is more generative for me in New York. It feels way easier to be alone here. And I love being alone,” she says. Anonymity in the city is also a little easier to come by. “I’ve definitely noticed a change [in people noticing me], and at the same time, my life day-to-day doesn’t look different. I feel really lucky that 95% of my interactions with strangers are not with creepy dudes, for example, but young women or girls who are super emotional like I am and are able to express that. I appreciate that so much, and so I think that that is incredibly lucky.”

“I’ve seen people be cruel towards new listeners, which is a bummer and such a shame because it’s not remotely how I feel.”

She references a Maggie Rogers interview clip that’s made the rounds online, in which the singer-songwriter talks about how easily everyone can become a public figure in the age of TikTok. “And of course there are different levels and this spectrum is wide,” Abrams says, “but I do agree with what she said about the month you release an album, you get a lot more interaction with strangers in the street, but then six months later, things are quieter. People’s attention spans are short, and that’s all real and true.”

The videos about Abrams that I encounter on my own feeds are relatively wholesome: Fans are dissecting her lyrics, not her love life (and, sure, a few are begging for her ab routine). “I’m glad that that’s what it feels like,” Abrams says. “I don’t really feel very engaged with my algorithm. I’m lucky that I don’t get my own sh*t on it. The videos that I interact with are about people that live in the middle of nowhere by themselves, or I get a lot of pregnancy announcements from strangers to their friends and family. I get a lot of wild animals and sh*t. So I don’t feel like I’m seeing a lot of myself, which I like.”

Next year, we’ll all be seeing a lot of Abrams. The day before we meet, Abrams announced a new tour that features some of her biggest headlining shows to date, including multiple nights at arenas like New York City’s iconic Madison Square Garden. “When I think about playing bigger rooms, I think of the Eras Tour as this endless well of information for me,” she says. “I felt like I was at school for this job. I used to be freaked out about the concept of not playing in a 100-cap room. It’s been a minute since I felt freaked out. If anything, you get to say hi to more people in bigger rooms.”

Fans have taken note of her habit of frequently waving to members of the crowd throughout her shows, as if she invited them personally. (“Gracie waved at me” videos are a TikTok genre unto themselves.) Why does she do it? “I’m in a room with other people. They’re waving at me, and I want to say what’s up back,” she says plainly, as if to underscore that it’s not a bit — just a way of making even a big room feel a little bit smaller.

Lately, she’s been thinking about the way her fan base has adjusted to an influx of new members. “I’ve seen some sh*t online recently that has made me…” she says, pausing to collect her thoughts. “I understand the whole concept of wanting to gatekeep small artists and feeling like you are responsible for finding somebody in their primary stages of development and then being responsible as well for helping share them with the world.

“But I’ve also seen, on the flip side, people be kind of judgmental or cruel towards new listeners,” she adds. “I think that’s such a bummer and such a shame, to be honest, because it’s not remotely how I feel about it. I’m like, ‘Everyone, f*cking get in here! Come! Be a part of this community!’ It is generally really f*cking kind. Seeing some of that sh*t, I’m like, ‘Come on — chill.’”

Following our breakfast, Abrams is headed to Saturday Night Live’s famed Studio 8H for her first visit this week. “For some reason, booking the Eras Tour and booking SNL exist in the same part of my brain where I didn’t know that chemicals in my head could release like that,” she says. “It’s such a privilege, an honor to do it. And also Chris Rock hosting is so f*cking nuts! I feel like I somehow cheated the system into being there for his show.” (She made at least one new fan with her performances: Barbra Streisand, who praised her on Instagram.)

After a few Jingle Ball dates, a time-honored tradition for ascendant pop stars, she’s done for the year; she’ll do Christmas in New York with her family and take a trip for New Year’s before landing in London for the first half of January. “I spent so much time there over the past few years, and a lot over this year,” she says, then adds quickly — lest you jump to any geographical conclusions about her personal life — “I’ll be just chilling. I’ll be writing. I’ll be writing a lot.”

And as for that new music? She’s been plugging away with Dessner at Electric Lady Studios and thinks a record could very well be out by the end of 2025. “I am inspired by Taylor in a million ways, but especially by the pace with which she puts things out into the world,” Abrams says. “There’s less pressure the more you release — that’s how I consider it for myself. I want to just keep it coming while I’m in this period of writing as frequently as I am. I think it would be a waste to not be open.”

Top Image Credits: LÙCHEN dress, CHANEL Fine Jewelry earrings and rings