Gracie Abrams: Gen Z's ‘relatable' pop star delivers a one-note performance

Telegraph

08-03-2025

When American singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams announced that the support act for her Secret of Us arena tour would be a bedroom pop artist called Dora Jar, her fans started a petition to replace Jar, complaining that her 'slow-paced' songs would not 'get the crowd excited'. But Abrams herself is a purveyor of plaintive ballads: songs which have enjoyed chart success – That's So True has just spent eight weeks at No 1 in the UK – and which had no trouble exciting the O2 Arena crowd.
The Jar incident frames Abrams' fans as demi-Swifties – Taylor Swift's overzealous army of fans – and indeed, the 25-year-old was a support act on Swift's Eras tour, works with Swift producer Aaron Dessner, and released a debut album, Good Riddance, indebted to Swift's album Folklore. She can sound so much like a wannabe Swift that you wonder why she hasn't been wrestled to the ground by a legal team.
Thursday's crowd was mainstream pop crowd business as usual: the occasional startled dad amid a sea of young girls wearing bows in their hair, plenty more parents waiting outside in the O2 atrium as if waiting in the playground at the end of the school day. Abrams played her part with aplomb, radiating relatable girl-next-door energy and declaring that every single person in the audience was her best friend. She stretched her two albums out over almost two hours: strummed romantic anguish with TikTok-friendly hooks.
At times her performance felt calculated, a focus-grouped pop star: from party-line patter to the way she ran off stage barefoot, clutching her guitar. Abrams, who is rumoured to be dating actor Paul Mescal, is the daughter of filmmaker JJ Abrams. But being a 'nepo baby' only gets you so far, and she clearly has whatever's required to sustain an audience. She's grown that audience organically – her first show in London was four years ago at the tiny 320-capacity venue Omeara – and is a capable live performer who doesn't rely on backing tracks, even on vocally demanding songs like Tough Love, its verses hurtling like the freight train thoughts of a lovesick teen.
She seemed entirely at home in front of the O2's enormous crowd – sometimes literally. Towards the end of the night, she left the basic main stage (four-piece band, raised platform, intermittent dry ice) for a B-stage decked out to resemble the bedroom where she wrote and performed songs on Zoom during the pandemic. A camera recreated the homemade angle for the arena's big screens as Abrams played her 2020 lockdown hit I Miss You, I'm Sorry. It was a neat piece of stage design, the online fans transformed into a real-life throng.
But it wasn't enough to shake up the evening. Abrams' songs don't vary much in pace, and if you were one of the few not screaming along to every word, the show began to plod. Even a new song, Death Wish, inspired by a friend who was dating a 'mega narcissist', offered more of the same.
You wanted the band to have more of a presence: when they did, the results were fantastic. They freed I Miss You, I'm Sorry from its bedroom pop confines, supplied Free Now (from her 2024 album The Secret of Us) with deserved angsty oomph — and sent the middle eight of her best song, That's So True (still lingering at No 1) to roof-busting heights. Abrams may have brought her bedroom with her, but she fares better when she leaves the muted bedroom pop at home.