The Stunning Transformation Of Gracie Abrams

Gracie Abrams has been ready for stardom for a long, long time. She's been a songwriter since she was little, and she wasn't much older when she started putting her music online. Her career has steadily risen over the years, taking her from underground Soundcloud artist to chart-topping pop star. The whole time, she's had her eye on the future. "For me, longevity is the goal," she told ELLE in May 2024. "Only recently have I started to figure out what I really love about doing this and how to do it in a way that feels like I'm doing it for myself, and not through the lens of what other people might expect."

At the same time, on some levels, Abrams' path has been exactly what you might expect, considering she's the daughter of a Hollywood heavyweight. As she's become famous, Abrams has had to reckon with her place in the industry, examining her privilege while also nurturing a talent that helped prove she deserves a shot at stardom in her own right. This is the stunning transformation of Gracie Abrams.

In June 2024, a viral post on X (formerly Twitter) sounded surprised that people considered Gracie Abrams a "nepo baby." (That is: a beneficiary of nepotism, someone whose family connections in entertainment likely opened some doors.) The person wrote, "there is literally no way you knew JJ Abrams before Gracie unless ur like 50 like be for real." Commenters were quick to point out that her father, director J.J. Abrams, is indeed quite famous. He's the man behind "Star Trek" and "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," not to mention the creator of multiple iconic television shows like "Alias," "Felicity," and "Lost."

Thanks to her dad's career, Gracie grew up in Los Angeles, and she's glad she did. "As a kid, when you are unable to drive, it actually makes it feel like this very small bubble ... I appreciated that," she told W Magazine, noting she also lucked out because she loves the ocean. "It kind of demystified Los Angeles," she added. "People say L.A. is this, like, really sexy place ... Sometimes it's great. Other times, it feels very isolating."

Gracie acknowledges that her dad's fame helped her decide on her path. "I feel like I've been lucky," she told iHeartRadio Canada. "It's undeniable that there is like, a privilege in having even grown up around the knowledge of what the entertainment world looks like."

Speaking with iHeartRadio Canada, Gracie Abrams noted some similarities between her own songwriting career and her father's filmmaking one. She was particularly grateful her father was a storyteller, because that's what she tries to do in her songwriting. "I think that having that in my childhood solidified my love and appreciation for storytelling and narrative, and probably definitely influenced the fact that I did it all the time," she said.

Abrams began writing songs when she was just 8 years old, having been inspired by a schoolteacher to start a journal. "My third grade teacher Amy, who I adored, encouraged us to journal and got us these tiny, little palm-sized flimsy pocket journals," Abrams recalled in an interview with Vogue. "She totally got me writing in general, and I found that it was my favorite way to spend my time." Soon, Abrams was adding music to back up her journal entries, though it still took a while before she let anyone listen. "I was lucky enough to grow up in a house with a piano," she said. "But I always stopped writing on the piano whenever I heard footsteps because it wasn't for anyone but myself."

That love of journaling has continued through to today, as Abrams explained to Hunger. "It's kind of at the core of what I do now, writing my deepest, darkest feelings down on paper," she said. "And then they leave my journal."

In 2018, Gracie Abrams entered her freshman year at Barnard College. That September, she posted an excited dorm-room selfie to her Instagram, captioning it, "fiRsT dAy oF cLaSsEs" alongside yellow and pink heart emojis. Barnard is an all-women's college, and Abrams enjoyed the dynamic that created. "I've personally found that you're removing a factor that is so real when you grow up as a girl — these social dynamics where there's a certain sexism," she told Vanity Fair. Because there were no guys around, she didn't have to be nervous in class. "I felt zero fear or hesitation to raise my hand every single time I had a thought about anything."

By this point, Abrams had been sharing songs online for several years, and after her first year of college, she decided not to continue with school. "I still love it, and I didn't drop out," she clarified to The Circle Sessions. "I'm on a leave of absence, technically, so I will be going back someday." Still, though, she feels that it was definitely the right move. "The decision just came from a place of being really curious about what could happen." Soon, she would find out.

As Gracie Abrams began to focus more intently on developing her music career, she began to look to other artists for inspiration. One such source, she told Harper's Bazaar, was fellow singer-songwriter Phoebe Bridgers. Abrams, it seems, was a very early fan of the "Halloween" songstress. "I've been obsessed with Phoebe since I was 11 years old," she bragged in 2022. "I found her on SoundCloud over a decade ago."

It wasn't just Bridgers' music that inspired Abrams, especially as she began to develop her own style, incorporating a lot of menswear. "She was one of my first style influences," Abrams said. "She was wearing suits a long time ago, and I loved that immediately. ... Everything feels like it's tailored perfectly and really clean, but she makes it fun when she wants to."

Furthermore, in addition to her music and her style, Abrams found herself trying to emulate Bridgers' attitude toward her career, which includes performing in a band called boygenius and heading up her own record label. "I look at Phoebe as one of the artists that seems like she's doing herself all the time, and it works," Abrams told Harper's Bazaar. "It's really inspiring, because as young women in any industry, there are expectations or standards for success or certain ways to get people's attention. And she was just like, 'F*** that.'"

As soon as Gracie Abrams began concentrating full-time on her music, she began to pick up some pretty famous fans. Back in 2018, Lorde praised her songwriting ability, and the two connected over Instagram after Lorde commented, "Send me this mp3" on one of her songs. "The thing that has been the coolest part about social media is that I get to connect with complete strangers from different parts of the universes ... It's just been nice to talk to real people," Abrams told The Cut. "Even if it's not in person."

By 2022, Olivia Rodrigo had taken notice, and she brought Abrams along on The Sour Tour. They interviewed one another for Interview Magazine, excited about the summer they were about to spend on tour. In the article, Rodrigo revealed she'd been a fan of Abrams for a while. "I was absolutely obsessed," she said. "If you look through my bookmarked posts on Instagram when I was 15 or 16, it was all your songs. I was so inspired by them." It turned out the feeling was mutual. "First of all, I did the same thing with your stuff," Abrams said. "My introduction to you was through your videos, your clips, and your covers. But your originals blew my mind."

Rodrigo praised Abrams' songwriting in particular, shouting out her specificity. When Abrams tried to return the compliment, the "drivers license" singer insisted, "No. I only learned it from you." High praise indeed!

As Gracie Abrams' career took off, she went from writing and performing songs in her bedroom to singing them on some of the biggest stages in the world. That meant, instead of being able to hide behind her laptop camera, Abrams was seeing thousands of fans staring at her as she sang. That led to some pretty intense stage fright, which Abrams has been open about over the years. "The second show that I ever played was a festival," she told Indie Witches in 2021, "so it was a funny weekend to go from avoiding performing for 22 years cause I was so anxious about it, to doing a festival."

After dropping several well-received EPs, Abrams launched her first album "Good Riddance" in 2023. Many of the lyrics are about separation anxiety, dealing with the fear that leaving home to go off on tour would make her less close to her family. When she set out on a headlining tour to support the album, she had to learn ways to feel less anxious. Speaking with Teen Vogue, she explained touring actually helped. " A lot of what got me through those habits was going on tour, and realizing how you have to be okay with rolling with the punches," she said. "Otherwise, everything is going to feel deeply terrifying, and maybe an inconvenience, and there's so much you can't control."

Thanks to Gracie Abrams' critically acclaimed music and her touring slots, she quickly amassed a sizable fanbase. The young singer soon decided she wanted to use that platform for good. In 2022, Abrams joined a number of other artists who spoke out against the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. In a statement to Rolling Stone, she discussed her reaction to the news. "Once the shock settled, it turned into rage," Abrams said. "The idea that a government is regulating healthcare decisions that should be made exclusively between a person and their healthcare provider is not only backwards-facing, it's predatory in the way in which it will first and specifically harm the people who need it the most."

Abrams released limited-edition merch and donated the proceeds to abortion rights charities, telling her fans, "The most important thing is to listen to experts: Doctors, lawyers, and activists, especially those who have been on the front lines for decades." She added, "What I can do right now is use my platform to amplify the experts in this moment."

The "Where do we go now?" singer has also spoken about how her activism informs her songwriting. She told L'Officiel, "I can't separate my music from my opinions. It's a whole that reflects my way of thinking. You shouldn't be afraid to talk about what you believe in."

Throughout much of her early career, Gracie Abrams was in a long-term relationship with producer Blake Slatkin, who worked on most of her music. After they broke up, however, Abrams found herself writing songs about the person who once helped her craft her tunes. She told Riff Magazine in 2021 that this led to an awkward situation when she decided she wanted Slatkin to work on the music after all, even though it was about him. "He and I have been together for five years now, and we broke up in the middle of that," she said, revealing the music actually made them rekindle their relationship. "Our history, is what I'm saying, was strong enough to bear the weight of a creative process like this."

They eventually went their separate ways for good, and she processed the finality of the breakup on her debut album, "Good Riddance." This time, she worked on the songs with Aaron Dessner, the frontman of The National who has also become a favorite producer of none other than Taylor Swift. In an interview with The Forty-Five, Abrams explained that writing music helped her heal. "Songwriting is a place where you can explore outcomes before anything's actually happened yet," she said. "You can write from the perspective of five months down the line, and maybe get some clarity on your current feelings, in a weird way, like a fortune teller."

In 2023, Gracie Abrams joined Taylor Swift's Eras Tour as one of the opening acts. Along with Phoebe Bridgers, Swift was a major influence on Abrams' love of songwriting, so she was especially excited to be joining the "You're On Your Own Kid" singer on the road.

Speaking with Teen Vogue after her first tour stop, she gushed, "There was this anticipatory excitement that was so palpable. It was crazy to be making sounds ... out of my mouth ... in front of a room that size ... about anything." Instead, Abrams had to concentrate on performing, looking to the closest members of the audience for reassurance. "Otherwise I think I would only be able to think about how I'm playing on the same stage as my favorite artist in the world, and she's granting me that opportunity, and how did life get from being 10 years old and crying to her music in my room to being on this stage and celebrating her career in this way?"

Abrams told the outlet that joining the tour made her understand the concept of fandom in a new way, admiring the way Swift's music has been able to connect with many people for many reasons. "I can't begin to express how immediately moved I was," she said, "and really energized at the idea of maybe one day being able to make spaces that scale feel as intimate as she can."

Though Gracie Abrams initially won many of her fans online thanks to the songs she put on Soundcloud and Instagram, she's since reevaluated the amount of time she spends on social media. In an interview with Refinery29, Abrams spoke about social media like an addiction, noting it took work to break. Abrams used to spend a lot of her time reading comments and thinking about fan response to her career, but she has since decided that this isn't healthy. "I feel like often we feel like we're at the mercy of our phones. I just am not interested in being so available right now," she said. "As you get older, [you get] smarter and more thoughtful about things. What I am grateful for right now is that social media isn't the first place that I go when I'm having feelings about anything." 

Talking with Teen Vogue, Abrams reflected that examining her relationship to online spaces has been an exercise in boundary-setting. She ruminated, "It's just working on boundaries, and self-preservation and protection. I think it's obviously an abnormal, pretty unnatural thing to be available to so many strangers, in the way that you are, when you choose to share your feelings through music." Thankfully, Abrams has some advice for what to do instead. "I don't necessarily know that it's a healthy way to spend your time, reading that s*** ... Better to read a poem, every time," she said.

After many years in the music industry, The Recording Academy finally took notice after Gracie Abrams released her debut album, "Good Riddance." Thanks in part to the success of that record, Abrams was nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammys ceremony that took place in early 2024. She told Rolling Stone that the honor was a surprise, insisting she was super casual when she heard the news. "I was in bed with my heating pad on and then my stomach kind of dropped when the Best New Artist category came up," she recalled. "And then very, very luckily, I mean my name was the first one that they called out, and it was just gasping and then my body was kind of shaking and I have not been in much control since then."

She didn't ultimately win the award — it went to Victoria Monét — Abrams didn't much mind. She had a great time at the ceremony anyway, because she met yet another of her songwriting idols: Joni Mitchell. In an interview with ELLE about the special moment, Abrams gushed that she'd been very emotional. "Meeting Joni Mitchell is maybe the best thing that's ever happened to me," she said. "I had tears in my eyes and kept internalizing, 'Don't cry in front of this woman. She doesn't need that.'" 

In the summer of 2024, Gracie Abrams followed up the previous year's "Good Riddance" with her second album, "The Secret Of Us." Whereas her previous record only debuted at #52 on the Top 200, she was much more successful this time around, likely due in no small part thanks to her connection to one of the biggest artists in the world. In fact, that artist's album "The Tortured Poets Department" was the only one to notch a higher position on the chart, as "The Secret of Us" debuted at #2. Billboard also announced that Abrams managed to have the #1 album on the Top Album Sales chart, moving 89,000 units.

Abrams' album may have received a streaming boost from the fact that there was a Taylor Swift collaboration on the tracklist. She told Billboard that the song, called "Us," was written in a fit of inspiration. "Something caught our ear at the same time very hard and fast. So we ran to the piano and started writing this song," she explained. "I used to fantasize about that kind of a thing as a kid."