Gracie Abrams Leans Into The Almost on The Secret of Us
breaking down Gracie Abrams's latest album The Secret of Us
Gracie Abrams is nothing if not honest. Through two EPs and now two albums, she’s managed to stay true to that guiding promise. Her sophomore album, The Secret of Us, though, shows marked growth from her debut in better blending her grown-up writing sensibilities and style with a more pop-adjacent sound. This new turn suits her storytelling better than the muddled production on Good Riddance.
On this new record, Abrams takes a singularly focused approach generally charting the arc of one new relationship from the butterflies and fantasies to owning up to the unfortunate reality of what the relationship becomes. There are small diversions that stay within the theme, like Abrams reflecting on walking away from her longterm relationship or ending a friendship with someone she considered a friend after her best friend’s break-up, that add depth to Abrams’s meditation on the main relationship. The focus and clarity of this record shows Abrams truly holding her own with big-name collaborators like Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff, and Taylor Swift.
Abrams solidified herself as a breakout artist and gifted songwriter with her first EP minor in 2020. Building a fanbase through Zoom shows in her childhood bedroom, Abrams established her acute ability to distill relationships down to their smallest, most impactful elements. minor chronicled a tumultuous first real, young relationship. She went on to collaborate with Benny Blanco on the single “Unlearn” and release a second album-length EP This Is What It Feels Like with her original collaborator and Blanco protege Blake Slatkin. This project introduced a stronger pop sensibility into her work. She saved the coveted title of debut album for a project with popular Swift collaborator Aaron Dessner. Taking sonic cues from Dessner’s successful collaboration with Swift on folklore, the dense production style of Good Riddance often muddled Abrams’s delicate voice and sharp storytelling ability. There was a clear shakiness around Abrams transitioning from primarily working with her longtime collaborator and one-time boyfriend to writing with established industry names with their own embedded styles. Luckily, The Secret of Us shows Abrams recapturing the reigns and blending the best aspects of her previous projects.
So much of The Secret of Us charts a complete narrative through one particular short relationship. “Felt Good About You” offers a prologue of sorts for the rest of the album with the thesis, “I felt good about you ‘til I didn’t.” Then “Risk” offers the exuberant crush-joy of falling for someone way too fast, mixed with the anxious awareness that love means losing control. “Blowing Smoke” fast-forwards to after the relationship is over as she’s obsessing about this guy’s new girlfriend and the life they must have together. This track lays the groundwork for the realization that this girl was always in the middle of their relationship. In “I Love You, I’m Sorry” Abrams starts reflecting on her own faults in the relationship, grasping at a self-aware accountability and also imagines how his presence will continue to linger in her mind. “us.” blends together Abrams’s own relationship storyline with that of featured artist Taylor Swift, who she’s grown close to over the Eras Tour where Abrams was an opener. “Let It Happen” sees Abrams diving into her struggle for wanting to control the situation but also knowing that in a relationship that’s a hopeless task. “Tough Love” makes a desperate plea to keep a detachment from the situation, but what she wants to feel and what she actually feels contradict each other. Taking on some distance from a break-up, “I Knew It, I Know You” focuses on the aftermath of parting ways with a romantic partner. Towards the end of the album on tracks like “Normal Thing,” “Gave You I Gave You I,” and “Good Luck Charlie” start to examine break-ups from multiple perspectives with Abrams jumping in to fill in other’s observations and write about relationships beyond her own. I’m surprised that “Free Now” isn’t the closing track with its bridge that epically opens up with all of her frustrations about falling into a relationship that was doomed from the start.
The emotional frustration, sadness, and confusion across the tracks are channeled into artful wordplay and catchy melodies that makes a largely sad album leave an upbeat impression. She’s sharpened her turns of phrase on this record and branched beyond her indie-pop comfort zone, holding her own alongside some of the biggest names in music right now. Ultimately, The Secret of Us exhibits growth and maturity in Abrams as a writer and is the perfectly vehicle for continuing to elevate her profile in pop.
Track By Track
“Felt Good About It”
In this track, Abrams summarizes the entire record blending the hope–the title of the song–with the letdown–the end of the phrase in the actual hook. While she acknowledges the relationship was good for a while, looking back, she feels like her friends were right with their warnings. She was never in control, and she never actually had all of him. It perfectly captures the reality of diving into a relationship based mostly on the idea of a person instead of the reality.
I felt good about you ‘til I didn’t / Fought hard through premonitions
“Risk”
This song encapsulates the manic anxiety of a crush so well. There’s the joy and excitement and hope, but there’s also the creeping dark side of obsession and feeling like you’ll crumble if it doesn’t work out with someone you hardly know. In the wordy, rushed first verse she admits to some light internet stalking– “Said I wouldn’t do it, but I hunted you down / Know you had a girl, but it didn’t work out / Know you bought a house, but you had to move out, and I’m not proud.” She goes on to have an inner battle with herself with her logical side chastising the butterflies and imagined life she’s created off of an online profile.
God, I’m actually invested / Haven’t even met him / Watch this be the wrong thing, classic
“Blowing Smoke”
Diving into the torture of subjecting yourself to your exes new partner, Abrams imagines her ex’s new life with someone else– “And I bet you’re at her place right now / You’re taking off your shoes, she’s lying down.” She wants to know if he’s interested in what she thinks, if she’s honest with him, if she’s just “blowing smoke” like everyone else in his life. Abrams feels like she’s the only one who really knows him, a theme that recurs on the album. She certainly gets in her fair share of barbs with “If she’s got a pulse, she meets your standards now” and “Tell me, is she prettier than she was on the internet? Are your conversations cool? Like, are you even interested?”
They’re just blowing smoke / I’ll say what they won’t / I know everything they don’t
“I Love You, I’m Sorry”
Playing on one of Abrams’s early breakout songs, “I Miss You, I’m Sorry,” this track revisits that relationship from a further distance. In this song, she accepts the tentative acquaintance status between them and admits her mistakes in the relationship.
That’s just the way life goes / I like to slam doors closed
“us.”
In this collaboration with Swift, they probe into the disintegration of a secret relationship (where the album title comes from: “Wonder if you regret the secret of us”) and the pain that parting ways leaves behind. It’s a pessimistic take on love, that someone always gets hurt, articulated through a series of poetic missives. “And what seemed like fate, give it ten months and you’ll be past it,” Swift bites in the pre-chorus. There’s traces of The Tortured Poets department on this track as the bridge mentions another acclaimed poet and some misunderstanding– “You never read up on it, shame, could’ve learned somethin’ / Robert Bly on my nightstand, gifts from you, how ironic.”
And what seemed like fate becomes “What the hell was I doin’?”
“Let It Happen”
“Let It Happen” picks back up on the infatuation of “Risk” but deeper into the relationship. There’s more substance to support her excitement, but she’s also having to prod herself into truly being open and vulnerable with someone who might not actually be worth her time. She’s holding more distance with lines like, “Here’s to hoping you’re worth all my time / I might barely know you, but still / Don’t love you yet, but I probably will.”
I had a backbone made of glass and then it broke
‘Cause I can tell that I’m projecting half the time / I lack context so I’ve made up all these lies / It’s the only thing that helps me sleep at night
“Tough Love”
This track represents the angry, bitter part of a break-up, relishing in all the things you disliked in the person. “Tough Love” chronicles the aftermath of a particularly bad fight in Boston where she left him and got on the train and then took a walk along the Charles River, contemplating life without him. Set in specific, vivid scenes, the track truly hits its breaking point in the bridge where she lists everything she won’t miss about him “7 Things I Hate About You” style: his shitty friends binge drinking, his ego and shallowness, being inclined to push down her feelings, the way he’d kick her legs in his sleep.
I laughed the second he tried to call my bluff / I guess it’s always funny until it’s not
“I Knew It, I Knew You”
In this track, Abrams dips out of the new, exciting, chaotic relationship that most of the album is foregrounded by and instead looks back at a relationship that she left for her own good. She reflects on being the one to end it, watching the other person take it hard but not being able to feel bad about walking away because it was the best choice for her. She processes how strange it is to know someone so well and become strangers once again creating, an effective break-up song from a perspective that’s not usually given.
Well I knew it, I know you, I called it / And it makes me wanna cry sometimes / But don’t you know the deal now? / Well I just can’t pretend that I’m sorry / When I’m not sorry
Gave You I Gave You I
In this track, Abrams comes to the crushing realization that no matter how much she poured into this budding relationship, she would never get the commitment she wanted. Over the course of the song, she starts to understand how emotionally unavailable this other person is, no matter how much she tries to give of herself to make it work.
You got bored and I felt used, now / I’m all sad about it
Normal Thing
“Normal Thing” explores crushing on a movie star that she sees both on a screen and in real life at all the Hollywood bars. She gets in some witty quips with lines like, “I was on my couch, you were on my screen, one of us was stoned.” She also makes a potentially interesting allusion saying, “And the plot line was rare, swear I felt you right there,” that reminds me of the phrasing and cadence of “All Too Well (10 minute version)”. In the final chorus, she admits that it was dangerous to get close to someone she built a narrative around on the screen, but she doesn’t deny that she’ll see this person again.
And the story you want is the story you get / Are you special or was this all scripted in his head?
Good Luck Charlie
It wouldn’t be a Gracie Abrams project if there wasn’t a song that name-checked Audrey. Now, with Abrams’s longtime friend co-writing on almost the entire project, we get to see a song that’s about Audrey. It opens with an anecdote about a guy who kept a picture of Audrey in his wallet, and the bartender saw it and thought she must be dead which sent him down a long thought spiral. As the song goes on, it’s revealed that this is a different kind of break-up song as Abrams is severing her friendship with Audrey’s ex, Charlie, telling him, “You know that it’s her or nothin’.” Apparently Abrams wasn’t enough of a Disney Channel kid to have the title ring any other bells.
Good luck, Charlie / I hope you’re ready
Free Now
“Free Now” feels like the final track on the album. It has a classic quiet verse/chorus into an utterly explosive bridge patterning that creates a sense of final cathartic release. This is also the comedown song from the fantasies, the what-ifs. She’s able to see their situation clearly for what it is and that makes it easier to walk away, free of resentment and full of awareness. By this point, she understands that he’s too hung up on his ex to ever open up to her, and she tries to be logical and understanding until all the emotion oozes out in the bridge in a way that feels similar to “Happier Than Ever.” In the outro, she still leaves the door open to reconnect if he’s able to find a right time to come back around.
“Free Now” feels like a completion of the journey that started with “Risk”; the sobering moment when the lights come on and your fantasies can’t hold up to the daylight.
And I hate to pull the plug, but I think I get your deal / I finally know better than to wait for you back here
You were straight up with me, you were so kind / But I knew what you knew, honey, great minds / It was harsh cause I lost what I wanted / I was brave when I kissed you in London
If you feel like fallin’, catch me on the way down
Close to You
“Close to You” ends the album with a sense of regression with the desperate equivalence to “Risk” as she begs, “I wanna be close to you,” regardless of the consequence. She signals in the verse that this is an early obsession, nothing more than a crush, but it’s once again overpowering. While I don’t love “Close to You” as an ending track and its not the strongest on the album, I see this as Abrams making a point around the fact that this cycle isn’t a single journey you process through and then heal from. These butterflies, the intense hope and myth making repeats with each new crush, even as you should’ve learned.