This new Gracie Abrams album... it's not good.

Yes, here we have the terrible, new, full-length album from singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams, Daughter from Hell, the follow-up to 2024's The Secret of Us. An album that, when it dropped, at the time, I didn't enjoy it, I still don't enjoy it.

And there were a lot of people, obviously, who were very negative toward the record as well. Not only negative to the content of the music, but the fact that Gracie Abrams has been labeled one of the biggest nepo-babies in the music industry given that her father, J.J. Abrams, is one of the biggest directors of the modern era. Though, detouring even further here, this is not even my biggest bone to pick with Gracie and her music. Not only because there are plenty of really good quality nepo-babies in the music industry.

Throughout its history, frankly, lots of great musicians who have written fantastic songs, came into music with connections to the music world or entertainment broadly.

If they make good music, they make good music. That's all that should matter.

Personally, I have more of an issue with the industry and our current economic system that makes it difficult for your average person to pursue music as a career, making it increasingly likely that the average successful musician is going to be somebody who is already connected to the entertainment industry or has the means and the money to tough it out in the underground trenches for a while, being unsuccessful for a period of years. That is until they actually get their first big break. But again, I digress, I digress, I digress.

My biggest issue with Gracie and her music is that it's so boring, it's so uninspired, it's so derivative, it's so soulless, and also over-inflated in terms of importance, given out of the gate she already had people like Aaron Dessner and Taylor Swift giving her the stamp of approval when there was really nothing about her lyricism, her songwriting, and her musicality that warranted that sort of endorsement so early on. However, Gracie came into the industry pretty young, and obviously, she wants and desires so badly to be a successful professional songwriter.

Anyone in her position understandably would take on these collaborative opportunities, these endorsements, if they were given. Long story short, I tried to shut out as much of all of this as I possibly could going in into this new record, because Gracie wouldn't be the first artist to drop a debut album that was a little underwhelming or wore its influences on its sleeve.

Lots of great, influential artists have done the exact same and then later went on to drop fantastic records that were game changers. So again, I went into Daughter From Hell hoping that I would at least see signs of Gracie moving in this direction and finding ways to define herself as an artist, make herself distinct among all of the different singers and songwriters out there in the crowd these days – give us a reason to see her in a lane that is at least slightly different than that of her biggest inspirations. But unfortunately, I think this record is somehow more unimaginative than its predecessor.

It really has less going for it in terms of originality. And what makes it even worse is that the runtime is now longer, almost an hour in length, because Gracie and her collaborator seemingly just don't know when to stop on this one despite the painful lack of distinct and memorable ideas here. Now, once again, for the vast majority of this album's runtime, Gracie is working with the one and only Aaron Dessner as a producer and a co-writer.

And obviously, if you're unfamiliar, not only has Aaron made a name for himself as one part of the indie veteran act The National, but he's also produced numerous tracks with songwriters like Taylor Swift, one of Gracie's biggest musical influences. And I feel like on this record, the dynamic that her and Dessner have going, it's just working against her.

Because now Gracie is sounding more like Taylor than she ever has. And not even generally, it's as if Gracie is just a fan of a very compact era of Taylor's catalog. The influence only stretches from the folklore-evermore era to some Tortured Poets and a little bit of Midnights.

But it's not only just copying Taylor Swift so blatantly and so unabashedly that makes this record feel so redundant and so boring and so basic, but also, every instrumental on this thing feels like a sad, mellow ringtone from the 2010s.

It's agreeable, unseasoned, flavorless wallpaper in the worst possible way. Even the few spare moments on this thing where an instrumental might feel a little electronic or a little poppy with just a pulsating synth, maybe a sequenced beat. Even those moments feel like they're kind of pulling back as much as they can to not become too punchy or too overt or too expressive or animated.

Because one of the few songs on here that does feel a little over-the-top or energetic, "Minibar," which of course was co-written by Miss Audrey Hobert, someone who Gracie has collaborated with in the past, which has led to some of her songs sounding a little bit quirkier and a little sillier than average. Because without Audrey in tow, Gracie's writing tends to run a little, I'll say, sleepy.

Even this track instrumentally feels like it's doing everything it possibly can to be toothless. But yeah, in this section of the review, just trying to focus simply on the sonics and production of this record, this thing just has just absolutely no distinct personality to it whatsoever. It's like this featureless mishmash of pop and singer-songwriter music and folk, too. Very acoustic but simultaneously devoid of anything that might feel a little organic or rustic or textured.

It's like a lack of a commitment to a style, a direction, a sound. The only bit Gracie is committing to on this project is blandness and that's it.

Then there's the songwriting itself, which structurally I will say is pretty basic, pretty boring. One of the only moments on this thing that took me at least a little bit by surprise or felt kind of meta or smart is on the song "Humming" when Gracie sort of breaks into these humming passages as this self-referential way to kind of process these really upsetting personal moments. But outside of that, nearly every song on this thing features a very average and uninteresting basic progression.

Occasionally you do get a very subtle and low-key ballad on here, which might feature a vaguely sad melody, but Gracie lacks the vocal range and conviction and performance ability to really sell it. And not that singing or performing in a really subtle way is necessarily a bad thing. There are a lot of great songwriters out there these days that do exactly that, be it either a Billie Eilish, a Phoebe Bridgers, but Gracie lacks the lyrical punch of those artists.

And the lyrics are one of the most disappointing and uninteresting things about this record. Not only does a lot of the writing feel off the mark given the title, which to me read as if we were going to be going into an experience here where Gracie was maybe writing about meeting up to certain expectations as a child, transitioning into adulthood, becoming your own person, and the growing pains that come along with coming of age.

But the vast majority of the tracks on this record seem to center mostly around breakups. But a lot of Gracie's writing and descriptions around these experiences are so lacking in detail and so vague that you don't really get a sense of the situation at all or why she's so upset. In fact, I feel like many of the song titles on this record read as very basic and very plain because Gracie is trying to put the listener in the space mentally they're supposed to be in that the lyrics should be putting them in, but they're not because they're so boring.

So we're going to tell the listener off the bat, "Broke My Heart," "Sober," "Afflictions," "Men Like You," "Daughter from Hell." And not only does Gracie fail to give us a strong sense of these relationship dynamics that are supposed to be so upsetting experience secondhand, but there are moments where the writing actually comes off as genuinely pitiful or just lacking in self-awareness. Like on "Look at My Life" where she makes reference to the Big Shots and the Barbies at this party. Which, girl, you're in that group! You're not some outcast in the corner who nobody can make heads or tails of, reading a book by yourself.

Or another spare lyric where she makes reference to all the weed she's been smoking since age 17 catching up with her. As if she's been smoking pot for the past 25 years or something and it's finally wrecked her life.

When, her having been 17 was not that long ago and you're literally a successful songwriter with millions of fans whose career is clearly not hinging on your vocal talent. I also have to go back to the song "Minibar," which I know the lyrics on this track being the attitude, being the vibe that they are, it's probably coming down to Audrey being in the mix on the writing with this one.

But I really, truly can't with the lyrics of this track. It's basically the Gen Z version of Quirk Chungus.

"Oh, I'm so crazy, I'm causing trouble, OMG, I'm being perceived, I need to run away!" Then there's also "Imaginary Friend," which is weirdly sad and not even in a poetic or interesting way. Gracie's basically just describing talking to this other person who she used to be in a relationship with and they've left long ago, so they become her imaginary friend and she describes herself as having fixed certain things and even having become cool. I mean, it could be self-aggrandizing, it could be self-effacing. Regardless, it's not catchy or poetic enough to have license for either.

It's just bad wallowing. Maybe that's the best way to break this album down.

It's just derivative, uninteresting, bland wallowing that sounds like Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers, a little bit of Bon Iver, who you can really tell is involved in the writing sessions on some of these tracks. But yeah, that's, pretty much all of my thoughts on this just dreadful album that really serves no purpose and brings nothing to the current music landscape or pop meta.

Literally everything Gracie does on this record, there is a better version of it out there somewhere that is very easy to find. Which is why this Gracie Abrams album is not good.