Gracie Abrams Takes Her Sad-Girl Pop to the Next Level

During the last 4 years, Gracie Abrams has skyrocketed to the highest of each unhappy woman summer time playlist. Her EP This Is What It Feels Like and final 12 months’s debut album Good Riddance helped put her on the map whereas laying the groundwork for a fruitful collaborative relationship with Aaron Dessner. After a summer time spent opening for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and notching a Finest New Artist Grammy nomination on her belt, Abrams’ songwriting is extra evocative and grown up than ever, as heard on sophomore album The Secret of Us.

The folky-pop LP is a correct showcase of Abrams’ songwriting, sharpening up a number of the clichés and adolescent metaphors from her debut. The songs are a fancy image of a relationship gone bitter, stuffed with heartbreak songs that seize the messiness of courting in your early twenties. Alongside Dessner, Abrams co-wrote a number of of the songs together with her finest good friend Audrey Hobert. Most of the lyrics really feel as very similar to an open letter to an ex because it does a textual content relaying your deepest, darkest secrets and techniques to your closest confidant in the midst of a sleepless evening.

The Secret of Us opens with the plucky monitor “Felt Good About You,” a tune which may as effectively be the thesis assertion of the album: “Felt good about you until I didn’t/Fell onerous then I misplaced your curiosity,” she sings midway by the tune. Together with lead single “Threat,” the opening of the LP makes a superb case for Abrams’ pop sensibilities, turning her typically intimate, subdued sound into one thing extra catchy, melodic and bubbly.

Nonetheless, Abrams musical consolation zone is when she’s at her most devastating and brooding. “Blowing Smoke” finds her incapable of erasing the picture of an ex with a brand new girlfriend, spiraling out about how fairly and funky she may be. Her duet with Taylor Swift delivers as effectively, particularly since it is rather aptly Observe 5 on the album. (All Swiftie students know {that a} Observe 5 on a Swift album is often probably the most emotionally devastating). “Us.” sounds a bit like Swift’s Massive Crimson Machine collaboration Renegade as Abrams sings about “Babylon lovers” and asks “Do you remorse the key of us?” Swift herself is sort of a heartbreak information to her trustworthy scholar, providing just a few reflective traces as Abrams recovers from an older paramour.

Because the album progresses, it’s clear that the extra bubbly-sad aspect of Abrams’s music is her subsequent degree price exploring. Moments like “Robust Love,” a Noah Kahan-esque ditty that has the singer selecting her pals over chasing “random males” has the kind of dynamic sonic vitality that Abrams may thrive in exploring extra. No surprise followers had been begging her to launch “Near You” for years, the album’s closing monitor which she previewed on Instagram manner again in 2017. For a while, Abrams made clear that she wouldn’t be releasing it because it didn’t match her present sound, however the synth-pop increase is proof that not solely may she have a tune of the summer time contender on her fingers but in addition obtain one of the best of each musical worlds, very similar to her very well-known mentor has. Regardless, The Secret of Us proves Abrams is setting the tone for a really lengthy profession and that she’s not in any hazard of dropping her prime placement on any unhappy woman summer time playlist for an extended, very long time.

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