Gracie Abrams Talks Working With ‘Badass Women,’ Why Online Haters Are ‘Boring As Hell’ & What She Learned About Touring From Taylor Swift

At the beginning of the year, Gracie Abrams found herself in a rare bind. For one of the first times in her life, she says, “I felt like I had nothing to say.”

The 25-year-old musician had scheduled a week to spend at Long Pond Studio working on new music with her longtime collaborator, Aaron Dessner, when she realized that she was at a loss for inspiration — a frustrating position for Abrams, who isn’t just one of Gen Z’s most prolific songwriters, but has also been writing songs since she was a kid. “I was actually quite aggravated with myself that I had booked that time,” she says now, months later. “I went into it being like, ‘Oh, I’m going to waste Aaron’s time.’ I felt a little bit disconnected from myself.”

It’s understandable why Abrams might have felt at loose ends. After releasing her second album, the Dessner-produced The Secret of Us, last June, she went from the cusp of main-pop-girl status to bona fide stardom and has careened ever since on a career-affirming thrill ride that refuses to slow down. The witty, self-effacing album full of catchy acoustic anthems and searing appraisals of romantic disappointments debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and Abrams’ momentum only snowballed that fall when its deluxe version produced her first top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit, “That’s So True,” a snarky post-breakup kiss-off that became inescapable on TikTok. She has also been traveling basically nonstop for years, piggybacking a catalytic stint opening for Taylor Swift — her childhood hero — on The Eras Tour with her own sold-out fall run of U.S. theaters; she’ll play North American arenas this summer, including two nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden.

Add to that list a second Grammy nomination (best pop duo performance for “us.,” her duet with Swift), her first turn as Saturday Night Live musical guest and the monthlong run of arena dates she wrapped in Europe just days before our conversation, and we’re almost caught up with everything Abrams has accomplished over the past 10 months. On this March evening, she’s poised and seemingly at ease with the nonstop nature of her life lately as we talk beside a vintage-looking piano tucked inside Ella’s Lounge at the Brooklyn Paramount, where in a few hours, she and Dessner will play an acoustic charity show supporting World Central Kitchen at what is now, for her, an exceedingly rare small-venue stop. But she admits the pressure does occasionally get to her, as it did during that bout of writer’s block over the new year.

“ ‘That’s So True’ was the first song I’ve had that did what it did,” she explains, a cup of tea steeping nearby to help combat a sinus infection lingering from the tour. “Every time I sat down to try to write something, I felt a little sick. I was thinking, like, ‘How do I do something that will beat it?’

“There are more people [than ever] telling you what’s going on charts-wise, radio-wise, streaming numbers, whatever,” she says. “That can start to be internalized, and I actually really hate how that feels.”

Since she signed to Interscope Records in 2019, Abrams and her team have strategically built up to this moment. Constantly releasing music and touring, her crowd sizes have ballooned as each project has performed better than the last; after a couple of EPs, she earned her first Billboard 200 entry in 2023 with debut album Good Riddance, also produced by Dessner, peaking at No. 52. Her rapid ascent since is comparable to those of fellow 2024 breakouts Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan — though Abrams is hesitant to see herself as their peer. “When I think about both of their rises, it’s like, boom,” she says, her eyes widening. “I feel like I’ve almost slipped under the radar a little bit [in comparison].”

But to the extent that may be true, it’s only because of how steadily she has grown over the past several years. “This is obviously her big breakout moment, but there was no skipping of steps or taking shortcuts,” Interscope Capitol chairman/CEO John Janick tells Billboard. “She never wanted to rush anything — she really cared and wanted to make sure people heard her music in the right way and really connected with it. We’re all just trying to figure out how to continue to make the train move.”

Right now, that means simply trying to keep up with how fast things are happening. Backstage at the Paramount, where much of Abrams’ team is gathered to support her tonight, Interscope Geffen A&M (IGA) vp of pop/rock marketing Hannah Gold explains that they meet “every Tuesday without fail” to discuss how they can best pounce on opportunities, like when the star’s live Vevo performance of Secret of Us single “I Love You, I’m Sorry” started going viral in October. They immediately clocked the trend and released the recording on streaming services, which boosted the studio version of the track to a new Hot 100 peak of No. 19 shortly after. “It’s kind of like the war room where we’re like, ‘OK, what are the things that we can do to help this spark that’s happening organically?’ ” she says.

But while her label is tuned into all that’s buzzing around her, Abrams’ strategy for staying above water is entirely the opposite. She has learned to spend as little time as possible scrolling social media, where everything from her signature bob and chiseled abs to her rumored romance with actor Paul Mescal have become lightning rods for discourse, and incessant stan wars are fueled by people picking apart her music and pitting her against her peers. As Abrams sees it, as long as she doesn’t look at the hate, “It doesn’t exist.

“I can know that 10 people a day are having that conversation on Twitter — that’s cool for them,” she continues, shrugging. “I’m just going to mind my own business, really. I feel like any time I’ve slipped into paying too much attention to that, I’m less present in my life, I’m less available for people I know and love. It’s not good for me as a person, it’s not good for the art that I want to make. It’s boring as hell.”

Ignoring her own inner voices is harder. She eventually pushed through with Dessner at Long Pond and emerged with a handful of songs that are the foundation for her next project — likely a new album, she thinks, though she has considered dividing the material into EPs. But making sure she’s not psyching herself out as her career takes flight is a continual challenge.

“I’ve just been trying to take the pressure off myself to have to reinvent,” she says. “I hope that I don’t get in my own way so much.”

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It’s two hours until showtime, and there are so. Many. Bows. These accessories, part of the unofficial Gracie fan uniform, adorn the heads of both girls so young they have to hold a parent’s hand as they cross Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn and young women old enough to grab drinks at the bar before taking their seats at the venue.

Though smaller than usual, the gathering here offers a sample-size glance at the types of crowds Abrams has been drawing. Many of the fans are newbies who caught on to her after her recent career spike, like 7-year-old Ara, who discovered her on Spotify just months ago but is now Abrams-obsessed. To prove it, she and best friend Mazzy passionately perform the bridge of lead Secret of Us single “Risk” for me and reveal that, inspired by their new idol, they’ve started writing songs together.

But there are also O.G. fans like 18-year-old Ariana, who tells me she has adored Abrams since she first heard enduring fan-favorite deep cut “21” and saw her back in 2022 at the Bowery Ballroom. She says that watching her favorite musician’s explosion over the past few months — after previously thinking of Abrams as “my little underground artist” — has felt “insane,” her bow rippling as she shakes her head incredulously.

It’s crazy to Abrams, too. Growing up in Los Angeles, she didn’t have grandiose pop star ambitions. As a studious, introverted kid, she simply found songwriting therapeutic — “It was what made me feel like I could, like, bear everything,” she says — and took inspiration from Swift and Joni Mitchell, whom she recalls listening to on car rides to school with her mother. The daughter of director J.J. Abrams and production executive Katie McGrath, she spent the first couple years of her career fielding questions about being a so-called “nepo baby”; now, she has arguably surpassed her dad’s level of fame (well, at least in the eyes of Gen Z).

When Interscope first expressed interest in her as a teenager, it had nothing to do with Abrams’ Hollywood pedigree. “She’s done this on her own without taking any of the shortcuts,” Janick says, remarking that he still hasn’t even met the singer’s parents. “It was purely signing her based on how she was as a person and a songwriter. That’s what we were interested in.”

The label was drawn in by Abrams’ honest, evocative pen, which she started showcasing in high school by using Instagram as an “impulsive diary” to upload song snippets and bond with the ever-growing base of followers who related to her lyrics. She says she was wary at first about involving a third party in her relationship with those fans — because “it did feel so personal from the jump” — but Interscope was willing from the beginning to make sure doing right by her listeners informed every decision. After spending a year studying international relations at Barnard College, she eventually felt comfortable signing with the label.

“I mean this in the greatest way possible: I don’t think it feels like there’s a major label running things,” she tells me backstage before she is whisked away to get ready. “Everything — and I hope that the fans feel this way, too — feels as connected as it did six years ago.”

That bond is on full display tonight as Abrams takes the stage in Brooklyn, where she stops to chat with audience members and reciprocate screamed “I love you’s” between almost every song. Four separate times, she and Dessner are interrupted by a different fan shouting to say that it’s their birthday today; each time, she gasps ­sincerely and offers felicitations.

“The way she respects her fans, herself and her craft are an inspiration to me,” Noah Kahan, who tapped Abrams for his “Everywhere, Everything” remix in 2023, tells Billboard. “And a reminder that you can live a crazy and unfamiliar life and still remain true to who you are.”

Abrams has strived to create these types of community spaces with her fans since the beginning of her career, even when they couldn’t gather in person. When the pandemic forced her to cancel her first-ever tour in 2020, she concocted an idea for a series of virtual 100-­capacity gigs — dubbed Minor Bedroom Shows — that were available by city to mimic the course she originally had scheduled, something her team thinks planted the seeds for her booming international demand today. “She was like, ‘I want to route it like a tour,’ ” IGA’s Gold recalls. “ ‘I want the fans in each market to start meeting each other so when they come to see me in real life, they know each other.’ ”

The Zoom shows also helped cultivate an audience that was desperate to see her in real life once she hit the road, something she finally did in September 2021, when she performed for the very first time before 300 people at the Constellation Room in Orange County. Then in 2022, Olivia Rodrigo, an early and vocal champion of Abrams, offered her the first of two crucial supporting gigs in Abrams’ touring career. “She gave me such a shot, opening for her on the SOUR tour,” she says of Rodrigo. “I adore her with my whole heart for forever and ever.”

Rodrigo gushes right back. “Gracie has such a singular voice when it comes to songwriting,” she tells Billboard. “I think it’s rare to be so young and already have developed your very own lane. You can hear a song and instantly know if it’s a Gracie Abrams song even if she wasn’t singing it. That is so special and a real testament to her talent and influence.”

Carole Kinzel and Shirin Nury, Abrams’ agents at CAA, were already planning her 2023 Good Riddance tour when the friendship-beaded opportunity of a lifetime came knocking: an invitation to support Swift on the biggest stadium trek in history. They quickly rerouted some of Abrams’ headlining dates to make it work — “Quite honestly, for an opportunity like that, we would have rearranged just about anything,” Kinzel says — and she spent six months across 2023 and 2024 flourishing under her idol’s wing. Studying Swift every night on the road, Abrams learned to command stadiums that would swallow most artists up while managing to also make them feel intimate. The lessons have come in handy on her Secret of Us tour, where she has made packed arenas feel cozy by performing on a B-stage decorated to look like her bedroom, a callback to her backdrop in those first virtual shows.

Tracking her progression, it’s natural to wonder if Swift-size stadiums are in Abrams’ future as a headliner. Her CAA team thinks they’re in reach — but is that something she wants for herself? “Hell yeah,” Abrams answers without hesitation.

But then she pauses. “I could have never imagined myself admitting to that,” she continues, more slowly. “I think having had the privilege of opening for Taylor in the stadiums that we played, to now have a visual reference and a real sense of what it feels like to be on a stage in that environment… It’s something that I miss and desperately hope to earn over time.”

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A week after the Paramount show, Abrams is still glowing. “It was a sweet little hang,” she says brightly over the phone.

She’s on the opposite coast now, back in her native Los Angeles and in a car on her way to rehearsal for Billboard’s Women in Music, where she’ll perform “I Love You, I’m Sorry” and accept the Songwriter of the Year honor — and, hopefully, catch up with Doechii, whose music Abrams says she’s “quite addicted to” at the moment. (A video from the ceremony will later show the two chopping it up.) She also says she has been streaming Lady Gaga’s MAYHEM nonstop: “When I think about songwriter greats, she has been top of mind recently.”

Moments for her own songwriting seem to come fewer and farther between these days, but Abrams finds them whenever she can. Despite having only three weeks between the end of the Secret of Us tour’s European leg and the Asia run’s April 3 kickoff show in Singapore, she spent a precious free Saturday with Dessner at New York’s Electric Lady Studios before heading to L.A. Abrams says they went in hoping to nail just one particular song, but emerged 12 hours later having worked on “a bunch” of tracks for the next project, which comes together in her head more and more with each scattered studio session.

“Aaron and I are catching each other in these little pockets between hectic times,” she explains. “Every day that I live with the music, things start to become a little clearer. There’s something we’re starting to crack that is making both of us feel energized.”

She also found time recently to reteam with one of her first collaborators. Abrams initially met Benny Blanco when she was dating his then-intern, Blake Slatkin (who produced much of her early work), and first worked with him over five years ago on minor’s title track, which was followed by her appearance on his 2021 song “Unlearn.” For “Call Me When You Break Up,” off Blanco’s new collaborative album with fiancée Selena Gomez, he tapped Abrams to guest — and with a No. 46 Hot 100 peak, the track became her seventh career entry on the chart.

“What’s so cool about her music is that she really tells it how it is, whether it makes her look great or not so great,” Blanco raves on a call. He remembers how she was once “much more shy” in the studio and says he was “blown away” by how quickly and confidently Abrams stacked her own harmonies on “Call Me.”

“She makes these songs that are huge in stadiums now, yet they also still feel like she’s whispering them into your ear in your bedroom at three in the morning,” he adds, excitedly pointing out that his car just passed a billboard in Manhattan with her face on it. “She’s just a force to be reckoned with.”

The billboard, it happens, was for Hourglass Cosmetics, which just announced Abrams as the face of its new campaign. She’s also a Chanel ambassador; her CAA team carefully curated both deals to bring her more opportunities beyond music — though Kinzel and Nury note that they’re “saying no to a lot” because of how full Abrams’ plate already is. (Abrams also tells me that she has “loads of ambitions” outside of songwriting and touring, but those, for now, are “sacred.” When I ask if she would like to act, she replies politely, “I don’t know what I want to attempt to speak into existence at this point in time,” though she does say she may someday like to compile her poetry and journal musings from years on the road into a book or something similar.)

One thing Abrams definitely saves room for, though, is celebrating the people who’ve helped get her to where she is. The day before our call, she attended She Is the Music’s Women Sharing the Spotlight event highlighting the work of her mostly female team — much of which has been with her since the beginning — and accepted an award on the group’s behalf. “It’s definitely been intentional,” Abrams says of professionally surrounding herself with “badass women.” “I lean on these women. I admire the way that they work. I think all of us are equally invested, and I think that the fact that we get to learn from each other is a really beautiful thing.”

“Gracie is an artist who lives and breathes what she stands for — and she wants women at the table, period,” adds Abrams’ longtime manager, Alex DePersia. “For me, being in this group of women who genuinely support each other is so, so powerful.”

Abrams also feels lucky to have some of the women she has looked up to since she was a tween become mentors she can turn to if she ever needs advice. There’s Lorde, who’s a calming presence just to be around — “She’s like 800 years old inside … whenever we’re together, I feel my nervous system regulate differently” — and of course, Swift. When things start to get overwhelming by way of public scrutiny, Abrams says simply being in the Eras superstar’s orbit helps put things in perspective.

“It’s like, I really don’t have it that bad in terms of invasion of privacy, you know what I mean?” she says. “I feel like I learned a lot from her, obviously, but one of the things that I’ve felt lucky to observe is how extreme it can be [for her]. It helps right-size my own s–t.”

On that front, Abrams says she hasn’t let prying eyes or snapping phone cameras change how she approaches her everyday life or dating. (“That would be so unfortunate,” she says with a laugh.) And, much like Swift, she also continues to write about her relationships in vivid detail, regardless of how many listeners may or may not be dissecting the lyrics for clues about, say, a certain Gladiator II star.

Overall, she seems strikingly well-adjusted to the public pressures of her mounting fame. Maybe it’s because of her upbringing, or the fact that she has been preparing for this moment so gradually for the past six years, but “That’s So True” co-writer Audrey Hobert suggests that her childhood best friend is simply preternaturally suited for greatness.

“She’s completely built for it,” Hobert tells me over Zoom in the middle of unpacking her new L.A. apartment. (The pair previously lived together for two years in the city, writing much of The Secret of Us in their shared digs, but Abrams recently relocated to New York to be closer to work, telling me that “the walking of it all is really good for my brain.”)

“I’ve never watched someone work harder for longer,” Hobert says. “I don’t think anyone should have to go through certain aspects of what this job brings if you’re really good at it and you’re successful, but I would say — you don’t really hear that girl complain. You don’t.

“Even to me, her safe person,” she emphasizes. “She is genuinely grateful at her core. It’s not just something she says.”

For Abrams, it’s a clear creative vision and sense of purpose that sustains her — even in flashes of self-doubt when, for a moment, she can’t quite find the right words. That’s why she says one of her main priorities now is finding ways to stay centered during all the chaos, whether by journaling constantly, daydreaming about “disappearing to the woods” to spend “days and days reading” as soon as her schedule relents or redefining what exactly “topping” herself means: writing a song, perhaps, that makes her feel even more passionate than composing “That’s So True” drunk on the roof of Electric Lady with Hobert did, even if that song never beats it in terms of numbers. Take away all the noise and, from the beginning, it’s always just been about her writing and whom she writes for — and she wants to make sure she’s not missing out on either by moving a “million miles an hour.”

“I think the best use of me as a human being on this planet, at least right now, is trying to use my writing or storytelling to make as many people as possible feel connected to themselves and to this community,” she says.

With conviction coloring her voice, she adds: “That is what I think I’m here for right now.”

This story appears in the April 19, 2025, issue of Billboard.