After spending last summer playing arenas and amphitheaters, Gracie Abrams is ready for her close-up. The 26-year-old singer dropped her third full-length studio album on Friday (July 17), the 16-track Daughter From Hell. Prefaced by the introspective first single, “Hit the Wall” — which peaked at No. 42 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the new collection has been referred to by Abrams as her “favorite music” she’s made to date.
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The follow-up to Abrams’ 2024 Billboard 200 No. 2 LP The Secret of Us once again finds her teaming up with The National guitarist/composer Aaron Dessner, who, along with his twin brother and bandmate Bryce Dessner, helped write and produce “Hit the Wall.” Aaron Dessner is listed as a cowriter on 14 of the album’s 16 tracks, while frequent Olivia Rodrigo producer-songwriter Dan Nigro has a coproduction credit on the fretful, am-I-doing-it-all-wrong song second single, “Look At My Life.”
Elsewhere, Mumford & Sons singer Marcus Mumford pops in for a guest vocal on the tune Abrams has said is her favorite on the LP, “What If It’s Right?,” and Abrams’ boyfriend, actor Paul Mescal, has a cowriting credit on “Imaginary Friend.” Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon is listed as the coproducer of “Hit the Wall” and has a cowriting and coproduction credit on “Broke My Heart,” one of several songs on which he also contributes additional vocals.
“It’s definitely my favorite music I’ve ever made, and I feel very closely connected to it,” Abrams told The Hollywood Reporter in January. “I appreciate so much that these albums are time capsules of where I’m at in my life at any given point, but right now it does feel very like me. I hope that whoever finds it, connects with it and that they make it theirs when it’s out one day. But not yet.”
In a recent Spotify conversation about songwriting, friend Olivia Rodrigo said the Daughter From Hell song “Afflictions” is her favorite so far, calling it “pure, but also very mature. It feels like the love is very deep and not superficial.” Abrams agreed, admitting that she has a hard time writing about love and tends to avoid it if she can. “When I’ve tried to write about it before, it kind of diminishes what it actually feels like. But that [song] is super real for me,” Abrams said.
The pair also talked about the more negative relationships explored on Daughter From Hell, with Abrams saying she approached them differently than she has in the past. “I was careful about writing about conflict and pain from less of a place of pointing fingers and more so of having been on both sides, like, of both the protagonist and the antagonist of each song,” Abrams said. “There’s songs about tough friendships or a kind of a breakup … I was careless in the past writing music about how it might impact the subject, and I don’t like that. I wish I could go back and fix it. And I feel like moving forward, with this album.”
Abrams’ The Look at My Life tour will begin playing North American arenas beginning on Dec. 2 in Denver.
Listen to Daughter From Hell below.
