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For Gracie Abrams, writing songs is a matter of stripping away all artifice and getting to the raw truth of her experience: her desires and infatuations, missteps and small triumphs. In the making of her debut album Good Riddance, the 23-year-old artist deliberately slipped into a secluded creative environment for the sake of magnifying her music’s lived-in intimacy—a carefully honed quality that’s won her a devoted following and recently led to such milestones as opening for Taylor Swift on her blockbuster Eras Tour. Created in close collaboration with The National’s Aaron Dessner (her sole producer/co-writer on the album), Good Riddance ultimately documents a particularly painful and transformative period in Abrams’s life, imbuing every track with an unvarnished honesty that’s equal parts captivating and cathartic.
“All of these songs are so explicit in terms of saying exactly what I was feeling at the time, to the point that it scares me—it definitely makes my stomach hurt to listen back,” says Abrams. “But Aaron has constantly reminded me that all the artists I’ve ever loved have asked themselves that same question of, ‘Is this too much?’ It’s a tough line to walk, but I think anytime you feel something so deeply and you’re able to express that feeling, it means that someone else might find connection in it. And that’s the whole point of writing songs in the first place.”
The follow-up to This Is What It Feels Like (a 2021 project made with the likes of longtime Lorde collaborator Joel Little), Good Riddance came to life in a series of free-flowing sessions at Long Pond Studio (the Hudson Valley homebase for Dessner, whose production discography includes his GRAMMY® -winning work on Taylor Swift’s folklore). “It was like we were creating in a very tiny bubble, which felt like such a safe space to work through what I needed to process in these songs,” says Abrams. A thrilling evolution of the self-recorded songs she first began sharing in her late teens, Good Riddance embodies a spacious yet elaborately detailed form of alt-pop. “As I’ve gotten to know myself better, I’ve gotten the confidence to do what feels right for my music rather than getting caught up in what pop should sound like or what might be working for other young women in the industry,” says Abrams. “Breaking out of L.A. and being in a quieter space, I was able throw all that out the window and end up creating something that doesn’t really feel like anything I’ve done before.”
In many ways a meditation on moving on from a profoundly formative relationship, Good Riddance takes its title from a lyric in the album-opening “Best” (“You fell hard/I thought, ‘Good riddance’”). “That line broke my heart when I wrote it, because of how true it felt—I was both relieved and horrified,” says Abrams. A major creative breakthrough for Abrams, “Where do we go now?” sets its unfettered emotion to an expansive sonic backdrop etched with such elements as lush Mellotron melodies and delicate guitar tones (courtesy of Dessner, who plays everything from Wurlitzer to percussion on the album). “I wrote that song in an odd state of shame about having tried to make something work that clearly wasn’t working anymore,” she says. “It was scary to write, but I also felt so fulfilled by the sound we created and how nothing about it felt forced.” With its heartbeat rhythm and gauzy guitar textures, “I Know It Won’t Work” takes on a glorious momentum as Abrams threads her lyrics with unfiltered confession (e.g., “I’m thinking everything you wish I wasn’t”). “That song is circling the harder questions that come up when something is ending, like fighting between trying to satisfy the other person and doing what you need to in order to honor your truth and not betray how you feel,” she says. And on “Amalie,” Good Riddance shifts into a moment of dreamlike storytelling, each lyric lit in the hazy glow of memory and longing (“She had her hair up/She cried about her obsessions/But she doesn’t know I’d let her/Ruin all my days”). “We recorded that vocal and guitar in one take,” Abrams recalls. “It came from a feeling that was very fragile, and I wanted that fragility to be reflected in the sound instead of weighing it down in any way.”
Over the course of its 12 soul-baring songs, Good Riddance affirms Abrams as a songwriter wholly unafraid of revealing her messiest emotions. Naming Joni Mitchell as an essential influence, Abrams first started penning her own songs at age eight and later made her debut with the 2019 single “Mean It,” quickly earning the admiration of such likeminded artists as Lorde and Billie Eilish. Not long after delivering her debut project minor, she began bringing her spellbinding live show to venues throughout the U.S. and Europe, in addition to playing festivals like Austin City Limits, touring with Olivia Rodrigo, and opening for Phoebe Bridgers. As she gears up to play select dates as support for Taylor Swift, Abrams is also embarking on a North American headlining tour primed to showcase her newly expanded sound. “Making this album has allowed me to explore a completely new path with my band, and I feel excited about the live show in a whole new way,” she points out.
For Abrams, one of the most rewarding aspects of touring lies in the chance to connect with her fans, a close-knit community that’s watched her change and evolve in real time in recent years. “I’m always so amazed by their willingness to open up about their personal experiences—so many people have told me such beautiful, challenging stories, and all I want to do is hug them in response,” she says. “It feels like the emotional energy of my songs is constantly being reciprocated, in a way that allows me to do my job far better because I know I can be completely myself.” And in the writing of Good Riddance, Abrams kept those fans close to her heart as she immersed herself in the sometimes-excruciating work of sharing her truth. “I feel a new responsibility to follow the feeling that I had in creating this album, which was one of total independence from the way I’d previously thought things needed to be done in the music industry,” she notes. “The main goal for me now is to continue to live as honestly as I can, so that I’m fully able to keep on writing that honestly.”
