Okay so this is literally not shade I promise lol but I am curious Without being the daughter of a famous dad and the association with Olivia and Taylor, do you think Gracie would have gotten any attention for her music? Like I said no shade but I feel like one day she just popped up and was there and it made me think of this question. Her sound is very Olivia and Phoebe which is obviously grounds for the music to be a hit, but I’ve seen a lot of people try to emulate that sound and not have the same success Gracie has gotten. Basically I am curious on the metrics of how many people found her organically vs how many listened because of her dad or Taylor or Olivia. Oddly enough I found her before she went on tour with Olivia and had no idea who her dad was until I eventually Googled lol
Honestly, no. I really don't think she would have gained much traction without her connections, for the many reasons you mentioned. That being said, it's impossible to really answer that, because then you are in an alternate timeline where maybe Dessner didn't produce her album, so you can't take into account "what if" the album didn't exist, etc...
Definitely not. Like you said her sound has a Phoebe/Olivia vibe but she isn’t 1/10th the songwriter they are
I guess my question is: Does it matter? Taylor’s road to success was paved by her parents’ money and connections. Olivia is one of many pop stars to come out of the Disney system. Success in the music industry is so rarely organic, and when it is, there’s still a truly massive amount of luck involved. Raw talent (of which I think she has plenty) will rarely get you there alone. That said, yeah, having a famous dad and getting to play gargantuan venues as an opener for two huge pop stars really shortens the path to fame.
I feel like there’s gotta be a slight difference between your dad being a wealthy stock broker vs. your dad being JJ Abrams lol But I do obviously agree with the overall sentiment. I don’t think Gracie would have had immediate success like she has. Her style of music is relatively popular in circles, but without having Aaron Dessner who knows what Good Riddance would have been or sounded like
Haha, well, sure. But worth noting that there are a lot of young, talented girls whose parents do not have the financial ability to uproot the family and move to Nashville for the sole purpose of giving their daughter a better shot at making it in country music.
Oh definitely haha, her family had financial liberty to help pave a path that a whole lotta us never would have
To be clear, I obviously think Taylor is massively talented and got where she is largely because of that talent and because of her own sharp business instincts. But IMO asking "Would Gracie Abrams have gotten where she is without being the child of JJ Abrams?" is the same thing as asking "Would Taylor Swift be the biggest artist in the world if she hadn't grown up with wealthy parents?" in that the answer to both questions is probably "No."
Didn’t really care for anything off the first album, but “Risk” is a great song. Someone tell Dessner it’s okay to turn up those drums. This is pop music, not tender indie rock.
I really liked Good Riddance, but I like how willing she was to do something different this time around. I was impressed with how well some of those songs worked in a stadium on the Eras Tour (particularly "Difficult") but these new songs sound like she really wanted some bangers for the next time an opportunity like that comes along.
I like this a lot, but I wish she'd leaned even more into a full-pop direction. Not sure I like anything as much as the singles. "Close to You" is a weird closer, though. Feels like it should be way earlier in the tracklist.
Enjoyed this so much on first listen I'll need to listen a bunch in the next two weeks to decide where it ends up on my middle of the year list.