ARTIST TO WATCH: Gracie Abrams

For Gracie Abrams and her 329,000 Instagram followers, July has been an exciting month. Her first project, a 7-song EP titled Minor, has just been released after years of documented writing, tinkering, and rewriting.

The title track is a song that Gracie’s fans have been begging for for over 3 years. During that time, she’s posted brief snippets: breathy, hushed singing in her bedroom; a guitar chord; lyric fragments. Minor had become synonymous with her account. And now that it’s here, it lives up to its cultivated hype ─ her posts have garnered thousands of all-caps comments, exploding with adoration, exclamation points, and emojis. 

Her account is very personal and, before this month, was the only access to Gracie’s music anyone had. She writes in her bedroom, under color-changing lights, pouring her heart out from her bed for anyone who will listen (which is a lot of people, as it turns out). It has always been this way, with this intimate connection between artist and viewer. As much as her followers care about her, Gracie cares about them, interacting with them in the comments and partaking in inside jokes. 

The live shows she had planned (her first-ever) were inevitably cancelled due to the pandemic, but that did little to stop her performing. The "Minor Bedroom Shows" are exactly what they sound like: concerts held from her much-familiar bedroom, played over Zoom to lucky listeners from select cities. In a way, this is more fitting than a normal concert. Minor is played to an audience for the first time in the room of its inception, where thousands had watched it grow and transform along with its creator. 

From one girl sitting alone in her bedroom to another: you are heard, Gracie Abrams.