‘Good Riddance’ Album Review
Photo By Peter Sullivan
Gracie Abrams, the burgeoning 23 year old singer-songwriter, released her debut album entitled ‘Good Riddance’ on February 24th. The 12-track album delves into the push and pull that comes with early 20s relationships, alongside the uncomfortability of growing up and inherent sadness of leaving the familiar. Fraught with intensity and swirling internal dialogues, Gracie paints her feelings in her trademarked moody, melodic, soft-voiced way that ever-encapsulates and resonates with her listeners.
The opening track, “Best” is a candid and honest conversation that Gracie is having with herself, in which she reflects about self-sabotaging a former relationship; playing with someone’s heart and getting away with it. The chorus is an admission that, “I never was the best to you…” repeated throughout the song - prolonging a sense of guilt for the way she mishandled someone else’s love. There’s a lyrical callback to the album title in the beginning of the song saying, “You fell hard, I thought ‘good riddance’”. Knowing one’s own downfalls in a relationship is almost as heartbreaking as writing about the wrong done to you, and Gracie does it in a notably graceful and apologetic way.
Similar to “Best”, the second track “…I know it won’t work” is another poignant ballad about unrequited love in which she is the one walking away. This track is slightly more up-tempo than the prior song, having stronger percussion and greater frustration in her voice. The lyrics are cutting - such as, “You will love me until you resent me” and “So won’t you stop holding out for me when I don’t want it / Just brush me off.” Gracie admits to wanting to stay with someone out of selfish ease and comfort, but ultimately she knows that it won’t, and can’t, work that way.
Gracie released three songs prior to the album drop - “Where do we go now?”, “Difficult” and “Amelie”. “Difficult”, released in October, is a song of self-reflection married with self-doubt - a concept all too familiar to people in their twenties, especially women. She sings, “Oh, I know spiraling is miserable / I should probably go back home / Why does that feel difficult, difficult?” A similar song of self-doubt, homesickness, and general anxiety of growing up is the final track of the album, entitled “Right Now”.
The single, “Where do we go now?”, released in January, continues on with the narrative of uncertainty of how to navigate a relationship she inherently knows has an expiration date. Being stuck within a relationship can feel like drowning, and this song elicits those feelings of confusion and lack of direction.
Photos by Rolling Stone
“Amelie”, which was released February 10th, is all about a different kind of connection - fast and fleeting love. She reminisces about a girl, Amelie, who stole her heart and captivated her attention more than she is able to express, so much so that she questions if it really happened. She sings, “I met a girl once/ She sort of ripped me open/ She doesn’t even know know it” and “She cried about her obsessions / But she doesn’t know I’d let her/ Ruin all my days”
The tide turns, with Gracie writing about being on the other side of passionate love - one in which she’s the one receiving unrequited love. “Full machine” and “I should hate you” speak
to this sensation of doing anything for someone who doesn’t deserve the effort - and wrestling with the feeling of stupidity that follows it. In “I should hate you” Gracie spins in her head thinking, “I should hate you, I feel stupid…All I ever think about is / Where the hell you even are / And I swear to God I’d kill you/ If I loved you less hard”.
Many of the songs hark on the feeling of a too-strained relationship that is held together by the thread of familiarly and history. “Fault Line” and “Will you cry?”are especially exemplary of this ideation. In “Will you cry?” Gracie is in a one-way conversation with this mysterious lover, accompanied with euphonious guitar stringing and a dull yet constant drum thud keeping tempo. She beckons the question, after so much mutual tribulation, will her partner even cry if she leaves? Or are they both so jaded from fighting that they’re beyond tears.
The utter loneliness of a breakup feels revolutionary and one-of-a-kind for those going through it, but Gracie writes about it in a way that feels all too familiar. In the song, “This is what the drugs are for” she sings, painfully, that, “Look now I’m alone again / I’ve gotten used to sleeping here without you / Though I’ve tried I can’t pretend / That I don’t sit around and think about you”.
In my favorite track from the album, entitled “The blue”, Gracie encapsulates how love begins before you even realize it, and especially when you aren’t expecting it. She verbalizes the vulnerability of getting to know someone, and hitting the boiling point in which you know that if they left, you’d be greatly affected. Lines that particularly stand out to me are “Send me every song/ That keeps you from sleeping / I bet I could recite ‘em all” And “You came out of the blue like that / I never could’ve seen you coming / I think you’re everything I wanted”. As expressed in the song, there is something so terrifying yet amazing within the experience of falling in love with someone and relinquishing control.
It’s unclear whether the love interest throughout the album is a singular former love, or an amalgamation of many. As many of us can relate to, a single partner can sometimes feel like a thousand different people at once as you steer through the different seasons of companionship. As in life, honesty is the best policy, and Gracie Abrams’ brutal honesty of her inner dialogue and her prophetic lyricism gives her a grace beyond her years that will carry her far and wide.
