Gracie Abrams Is Embracing Her Delusions

Gracie Abrams on her new album The Secret of Us, and how she came up with the song in the “theater kid” haze with Taylor Swift.

By Stephanie McNeal

Jun 21, 2024 06:00 AM

In her mind, the album is also much more “extroverted.” The girl in her bedroom is stepping out, evolving, and living, and is older and more experienced. Abrams is particularly excited to perform this album specifically on tour because of everything she learned under the tutelage of Eras and Swift.

“I felt like I was just learning every second of being there on stage, off stage, backstage, the whole thing, watching every single one of the shows that I opened for, it felt as historic as it was,” she explains. “It felt extremely crucial and worthwhile. Few people have the same view that I had to examine it.”

Also, she was amazed to be less anxious than she anticipated her first few performances.

“It was really welcoming, and that’s obviously a testament to Taylor and to her fanbase and the relationship that they’ve built over the years, and I’m one of the fans, so I was like, oh, I feel like I totally belong in this room as someone who’s equally in love with Taylor and her music as everybody else is,” she says.

The tour and her new friendship with Swift brought them together to work together with each other on “us,” their song on The Secret of Us (and it’s a secret, as it’s the only track that was not made available in the media prior to the release of the album). Swift seldom appears on songs for other artists and typically only with close collaborators such as The National, Haim, and Sugarland the country band which she wrote many songs. However, the way Abrams presents her story, the tale about “us” was as organic as it can be.

“We were at dinner and we had a lot of Cosmos,” she smiles. “And we were discussing our lives, and discussing the experiences that inspired our albums. She was working on Tortured Poetry in the moment and I was at the time and we were excited and exuberant about the album. She said, “We need to go back into the house and listen to all the music.”

They returned to Swift’s house at around midnight and sat on her dining room table singing song-for-song according to the way Abrams stated it. Swift was listening to an Secret of Us track, afterwards, Abrams was listening to the Tortured Poets.

“We were theater kids in the kitchen, kind of just performing our songs to each other,” she says.”It was the most memorable night of my life.”

They began playing music that was sent to them from Aaron Dessner, the producer who they worked with on their own projects. It was like something clicked.

“There was this one piece that we both connected to, and we just immediately started writing a song until six in the morning,” she declares. “It could not have been more spontaneous however it was the most enjoyable. It was a bit chaotic, in the best sense with just a few electric conversations which led to the song we extremely love…I am incredibly fortunate that she’s included on this album due to a number of reasons. One of them is that the manner in which song was created was similar to the way all of the songs Audrey and I composed were put together. It was just really having crucial conversations with girls before translating them into a song.”