Chronically Elle

a love letter to Gracie Abrams ❤

You’re 15 and in your bedroom, scrolling through Instagram in an effort to distract yourself from the digital silence. The lack of text messages. Calls. Or any sort of contact from the people who want to believe are your close friends. But the phone never rings. The screen doesn’t light up with a notification. The weekend just began and you try not to feel ungrateful for the friendships in your life. You see a photo or two of your so-called ‘friend group’ (you always hated that term because it sounds exclusive and cliquey) without you and try to justify how they’ve neglected you: you’re always busy with swim practice anyway; maybe it was an accident; they wouldn’t purposefully exclude you…

You continue to scroll on your phone, ignoring the whispers of loneliness in your ear. A video of a girl with long brunette hair running towards a camera in front of a rustic brown barn catches your attention. A relatively niche artist you recently started following is promoting her brand new song released earlier the same day. Something about the strum of the guitar pulls on your heart like a magnetic force and you can’t open Spotify fast enough. You click the play button. And as the next 4 minutes and 9 seconds go by, the entire trajectory of your life is spun around. Every ounce of bitter loneliness you’ve tasted is washed away and replaced by  validation from someone whom you’ve never met but somehow knows you better than you know yourself. You’re not alone. You never were. 

Sophomore Year of High School-Winter: 

I am sitting in the quaint and cozy library of Buffalo Seminary High School, desperately searching my brain for the will power to complete my French homework. Listening to Spotify’s recommended songs, I pick up my phone as an unfamiliar beat starts playing followed by an unfamiliar voice. I have been skipping songs I don’t know– I love hearing new music but today I am seeking the comfort of familiarity. Before my thumb lands on the ‘skip’ button I pause at the name of the artist– Gracie Abrams. I have vaguely heard of her before through a friend who is constantly posting about Gracie on her Instagram story (shoutout Grace, if anyone is an OG Gracie fan it’s you), but hadn’t thought to check out her music on my own. I give the song a listen because I am already captivated by her unique vocal and enticing melodies. The song is accompanied by a clip of Gracie dropping what appears to be a birthday cake on a doorstep– but as the song passes, that’s all I really remember. I can’t remember the title, but I do thoroughly enjoy this new song and am excited to share with my classmate that I listened to Gracie Abrams for the first time.

A couple weeks pass and after scouring Spotify I finally find the “cake” song as I nicknamed it in my head. The title is “Mess It Up” and I immediately add it to my playlists. 

As the month passes, I add a couple more Gracie Abrams songs like “21” and “Feels Like” to my daily streaming cycle. I made a mental note to stream more of her discography eventually, but little did I know, in just a matter of days Gracie Abrams would impact my life forever.

April 8, 2022

After school in my bedroom, I find myself scrolling through Instagram desperately trying to mute the uncontrollable voices in my head. The ones that are going over my every move of the week pin pointing each time I made a mistake, said the ‘wrong’ thing, spoke too softly, shouldn’t have spoke at all, should’ve spoken up, could’ve been a better friend, could’ve have been more proactive, and wondering why I constantly feel like a floating ghost in a world of visible people. I came across photos of my “friends” together without me and wondered where I went wrong and why I always felt so distant from my peers. Being a high-level athlete, I know I probably would not have been available anyway, but an invite still would’ve been appreciated. But these thoughts and critiques are nothing new. I’ve just never had a way to articulate or explain them. I always felt invalid or that somehow it was my fault. These feelings have overtaken my internal monologue since the day I formed my first thought and I’ve just learned to live with it. 

As I lay there on my bed, my chin resting on one palm while the other holds my phone, I swipe my thumb across the screen yet again. But never did I guess that this single scroll of a screen would change my life. 

The next video I come upon is an Instagram Reel posted by Gracie Abrams whom I just recently started following. I glance at the caption which reads “somehow Block me Out comes out tonight.” I quickly turn up the volume as I watch and listen to the clip of Gracie running towards the camera, flipping around her long brunette hair (before she chopped it to her now iconic bob in late 2023) in front of producer Aaron Dessner’s famous Long Pond Studios. I am immediately so pulled to the essence of this clip in a way I have never felt before. The video is just a few short seconds of the introduction to the song which is mostly composed of merely guitar chords that somehow sound exactly like my deepest most personal thoughts if those thoughts transformed into music. Majestic but secluded, prominent but subtle. My heart starts to knock on the doors of my chest as I notice the date of the post says April 7, meaning the song has already been released. Rushing to Spotify I type “Block me Out” in the search bar and can’t press play any faster. I hear the now familiar chords of the intro and close my eyes, knowing that this song would be special– having no idea of the extent. 

For the next four minutes and nine seconds I feel as though a spell has been cast over me. Opening my eyes, I realize they are filled with tears (which is happening to me now as I write this, looking back). Every word of the song is identical to everything I never had the words to say. To make sure I heard properly, I press play once again. This time by the end, my jaw is on the floor and my palm covering my open mouth. I am frozen in shock. Paralyzed by validation. As if answering my prayers, this song gave me words to the feelings I could never quite describe. In a sense, I feel as if my soul is levitating. The weight of isolation I have carried on my shoulders is lifted because someone else knows exactly how I feel. To be completely honest, I am also partly suspicious that Miss Abrams somehow broke into my room, stole my personal journal, and wrote a song based off of what was inside. In my entire 15 years of life, I have never felt less alone; never felt more visible; and never felt more known. An adolescence of feeling misunderstood in my surroundings and lost among my peers is put to an immediate halt by a 22-year old girl I’ve never met and her guitar of enchantment. Without a doubt I have just discovered my new favorite song…of all time…forever…as long as I live. 

The Memory I Swear Was a Dream

It is safe to say that immediately after hearing “Block me Out” for the first time, I shortly had the entirety of Gracie’s discography memorized (including unreleased tracks), quickly finding that I heard a piece of my own echo in every one of her songs. At the time, she had only released two EP’s, “minor” and “This is what it feels like”, but no studio albums. Though every single song off of her first two projects is immensely important to me, Gracie finally dropped her first full studio album. “Good Riddance” was released on February 24th, 2023. At the time, I was paranoid about Gracie becoming mainstream with her relatively big single “I know it won’t work.” Though I wanted my favorite artist to be successful, Gracie Abrams becoming a household name in the pop industry felt like losing the intimacy that makes her music so special. The idea of other people knowing the lyrics to her songs was like having my diary exposed to the world. After “Good Riddance,” she gained a larger fanbase but remained relatively underground as far as indie-pop artists go. Just when I didn’t think her music could cut any deeper, Gracie dropped a deluxe version of “Good Riddance” in June of 2023. Not only did she include “Block me Out” on this version of the album, but she added 3 new songs including “Unsteady” which immediately stole the spot as my second favorite song of all time.

Watching Gracie’s Career Takeoff

You probably know her as the “‘That’s So True’ girl,” or Taylor Swift’s apprentice with the bob that gets shorter by the day, but I will always know her as the girl that changed the game of life for me; my mentor; my best friend who doesn’t know I exist (if you can’t tell I am very parasocial about her). After her release of her sophomore album “The Secret of Us” in June 2024, Gracie took the music industry by storm. With the song “us.” featuring Taylor Swift, the Tiktok hit “I Love You, I’m Sorry,” and of course, the global hit “That’s So True” bringing her to 37million monthly Spotify listeners, my biggest fear came true– Gracie Abrams became one of the biggest breakout names in music. But I couldn’t be prouder of the artist who deserves it all. 

To represent the way Gracie has permanently impacted my life, almost a year ago I got my first tattoo of her lopsided star logo which has been applied to Gracie’s merchandise since the start of her career (she also has a similar tattoo of her own!). To me, this tattoo was more than just an aesthetic decision or using my independence as an 18-year old. The little star on my right forearm is a  way to remain eternally connected to the artist that serves as a lifeline for me (and I am already plotting to get my second Gracie-related tattoo…). Though I am not sure I will ever be completely free from how “every voice in my head is trying its best to haunt me” as Gracie sings in “Block Me Out,” I know I will always have music to lean on when “I look around to find it desolate” (Abrams, “Block Me Out”). This song still applies to my life and hits home just as hard as it did the first day I heard it four years ago. I use it like oxygen to breathe, having it’s specific Spotify code hanging on the wall in my dorm room as a reminder that when I feel no one hears me, Gracie Madigan Abrams always will. 

Every day I pray I will get the chance to meet Gracie. It would mean the world to thank her for her courage to be vulnerable, talking about the uncomfortable topics that ultimately unlock souls from the cage of feeling alone. I truly could write an essay just as long as this one about each of her songs individually. Though “Block Me Out” was the turning point that started what would become a lifelong obsession, she does not have a single track that isn’t deeply personal to me in some capacity– and I know many fans reading this would say “that’s so true!” (pun intended).

In utmost seriousness I do not know how I would function in a world without Gracie and her music. Listening to her voice has become my daily dose of comfort, as vital for my health as any prescription on my shelf. To sum it up, I have probably shed more tears (of every emotion) from the existence of Gracie Abrams more than anything else combined in my life–but as a true Gracie fan, “ after all of this time I should be a pretty crier” (Abrams, “Block Me Out”).