A Circular Storytelling Journey by Gracie Abrams

Theo Lopez

After three years of building a professional career in the industry, Gracie Abrams describes her style and shows why she deserves to be on the cover.

Gracie’s Ballad Beginning

In 2019 Gracie made her first release of an original composition which since then has not fallen behind the rest of her songs, making her start in the music industry a unified structure that is growing together as a single piece. This is not a secret but a personal component that Gracie Abrams had with her since her childhood, the importance of personal feelings immortalized in a journal she started to write when she was 8 years old.

With her first release, Mean It, Abrams was not looking for it to be a pop hit with trap base or a hip hop influences as many new up and coming artists would do, but she decided to make her first step on the arena with a ballad, filled with feeling and content. Minor was released in July of 2020 and for the first time we can see Gracie as an artist that has been and is developing a style that, as she claims, is thanks to the importance of witting a journal in her life.

Gracie Abrams centered in the Image
Gracie Abrams via Highlark.com

A Personal Journal Filled with Masterpieces

In an interview with Eleanor Lee, Gracie describes her quarantine process pushed her to start therapy. At this same time she was finishing her EP after several long months of work. The main topic of Minor is the end of her sentimental relationship. All to claim how important it is to take care of mental health and being aware of what problems or blessings we have in our life.

Her personal journal is mentioned many times during the interview during her interview with Eleanor Lee. This fact helps her audience be aware of two things. First, that every song (especially this first EP) was a meditated work over years of composing feelings into verses. Secondly, we know how important writing is for Gracie as a person and as an artist, two worlds that she states are closely related.

After dealing with anxiety and OCD that stopped her creative process, Gracie states “I write songs as I journal” and that is why she is so emotive.  She truly owns each song, each time I jump at the stage I feel secure because I know those lyrics are mine, and they are true; she describes. Something unusual about the EP, Minor is the complex composition of verses and rhymes. Songs with long sentences that juxtapose themselves with the next creating a puzzle that is closer to a feeling that most music produced today.

A Poet in the Music Industry

As a growing adult Gracie stepped into the music industry with bravery, the lack of female producers and female representation was one of the first topics she felt trapped by. A topic she will probably give her opinion in the future in the shape of songs. She encourages young artists to create, “even when I don’t want to write, I do, because I know it’s the best thing.”  In a time where minorities and women are establishing their rights and demands to be seen, Gracie validates the feelings of frustration many feel and want to express.

In her style, there are some tools that contribute to Gracie’s music and journey as a person that (as we have heard) thinks and rationalizes about her feelings.

“I know you mean it”, “Everywhere I go leads me back…”, and others are the lines Gracie repeats like a prayer in her songs. This can be seen in her first release and is carried through her EP. These loops bring feelings of sentiments that roll over to start again. Trapping her in the breakup of her relationship, so painful that she dedicated an album to the healing process. “Got a lot to work through” in Long Sleeves is a phrase that could define the EP.  It is hard not to believe that as her songs, Gracie’s career will be a circle of repetition (in the best sense of the word) as an author. With a signature that changes the story but stays loyal to Author (something Gracie claims to do even with her playlists).

We can believe Gracie Abrams just closed one of her small circles, as we see her slowly going away from her breakup story and begin to explore new feelings in Feels Like. Feelings that are only hers, and not shared with someone else. As a young artist we can expect Gracie to be a woman who will discover her world and create as many verses as feelings we can suffer and enjoy as human beings. The next poet.