What creates a musical phenomenon? Is it burying a song under well-coordinated technicalities? Or rigging the symphonies to create an epitome of pop perfection that finds itself spiraling through TikTok dances and trends?
In all fairness, you can’t argue the undeniable chokehold catchy beats and satirical angles on depression have on us- Why confront what you can deflect with comical tunes?
While the jazzy realm of spirited dance does appease a horde of listeners; attention can’t help but direct itself to the evolving dimensions of delicate and meticulously carved song-writing. The kind of writing, that has for long, been a stylistic trademark for the famed likes of Taylor Swift and Joni Mitchell.
But, As the continuity of our musical timeline demands, the folkloric torch of intimate lyricism requires to be passed on to new potential. In this case, the era’s winner is none other than Gracie Abrams- Melody's own child, the 22-year-old songwriter rarely refrains from similar unbridled transparency in her brutally jarring story-like songs.
An artist that comes around once a decade, Gracie’s enriched mind diffuses the barriers between herself and her listeners, fearlessly bearing her heart and soul to a world capable of corrupting her genuineness with twisted connotations.
The courage that sprung upon Gracie back in 2019 with her debut, “Mean It”, only further expounded itself in her recent single, Block Me Out. The overwhelmingly anxiety-ridden song reads like an unfiltered diary, each resounding lyric draped in shades of emotional chaos and intrinsically woven truth.
Produced at Long Pond, Block Me Out grapples with a gritty sense of being at odds with yourself. She expertly delves into the sensations that accompany lost discernment, and the poignancy of waking to inadequacy.
As so, she thematically centers the song around an instinctual disassociation when she repetitively confesses, “Wish I was heavier now, I'm floatin' outside my body.” The relatability of her piece marks a venture into the enigma of settling within the blur of an individual and representative experience. Both of which bring her to the pinnacle of modern-era poetic lyricism.
Sonically tied together with hauntingly airy tones, and the wistful tinge of soft strings, Gracie breathes a haltingly realistic vision of life through the lens of inescapable anxiety. In doing so, she creates a dredged-out character who loses herself to the incomprehension of life’s ironic lifelessness.
However, what truly differentiates the song isn’t her low-pitched voice or the enticing imagery. That distinction lies within her elaboration upon life’s cyclicality - The cyclical nature of mental cages, identity conflicts, and failed attempts to escape society’s overbearing silhouette. She lays out her constant preoccupation with how she’s perceived in, “Don't know how they see me now”, outlining the effects of society’s gaze on how she re-brands herself. The spoken of cyclical nature eventually bears fruit to an innately intricate commentary on emotions, that listeners may initially find rather ordinary. For instance, the song goes miles beyond what we suppose concepts like loneliness to be, representing its layered emotion as not just being sequestered from a crowd, but on a more melancholic scale, “feeling lost in every crowd”.
Think about it. Are you lonely only when you’re locked up in your room, or when people don’t care enough to understand your thoughts, ending up with you attempting to solve the crowd like a mathematical equation, as opposed to holding a conversation?
With that, Gracie also elevates our interpretation of speech.
Humanity is quick to romanticize free thought as a flawless object of desire. Regardless of our wishful thinking, those rose-tinted lenses don’t pertain once we are subjected to the brutalities of society and the animalistic joy wrought by shooting down opinions that aren’t honey-glazed.
This very worldly bullet is what causes the most willful of individuals to succumb to shame at “thinkin’ way too loud”. It is at this pivotal moment of the song, that Gracie skillfully emphasizes the performative propaganda of, ‘free speech” as linked to an understated apprehension toward bone-deep destructive criticism- An impact that society usually waves off as a slightly way-ward comment. An impact that can shatter the surety of innocent speech.
The beauty of such poetic music is composed of its effortless escapism into realms akin to this one, yet simultaneously, fabricated solely of the artist’s eye and the listener’s heart. We envision through emotion rather than through the dulled monotony of analysis.
Gracie Abrams falls amongst the ranks of artists who hold the power of making each listener feel like her muse. The euphoria of this relation is enough to sustain someone for months to come, and is precisely what places Gracie at the forefront of the music industry.
Through mere words, we lose ourselves to our subconsciousness.
For a few moments, we find ourselves suspended in a gold rush of our own stories. We reflect, recreate, and relate without even attempting to do so, and the product is endearing enough to pay no heed to the bizarreness of pure pathos.
Captivating and enthralling, the young phenomenon wears her heart on her sleeve with a vulnerability that just can’t block you out.
By Tanya Tilokani, editorial intern at the attic diaries