Gracie Abrams has opened up about how her partner and actor Paul Mescal has helped influence her songwriting.
The couple were first spotted together at the premiere of Gladiator 2 in November 2024 and they confirmed they were an item last year.
During a recent interview with Vogue, Abrams initially suggested that she was “worried” that being in a steady relationship with Mescal might end up “threatening [her] drive to write music”.
Now, in a new interview with Rolling Stone, she has clarified her comments and said she was surprised that people had interpreted them as her saying that she felt her career as a whole was “threatened” by Mescal.
“I’m like, ‘Are we on crack? Like, what the fuck? That was my cue to be like, ‘Oh, remember why you don’t look [at social media]?’” she said.
Abrams went on to say that the actor “had the most amazing effect on my writing,” and he has given her “the most amount of space to reflect on everything in my life.”
She added: “It has held a mirror to me in ways that I didn’t know a relationship with another person of any kind could. It has given me all the perspective that I could have ever hoped for, on previous relationships, on my relationship with my family, on my friendships. It is the greatest gift, period.”
Abrams also spoke about how Mescal worked with her on the track ‘Imaginary Friend’ from her recent album ‘Daughter From Hell‘, which was released last month.
She said: “It wasn’t some extraordinary event. We’re a very musical household, and so there’s always something brewing … I feel lucky to be generally inspired by him as a person and by his brain.
NME awarded ‘Daughter From Hell’ with three stars and said: “‘Daughter From Hell’ is meant to be a reflection, so it’s fitting that the title track serves as an apology to Abrams’ parents for terrorising them as a teenage tearaway. It’s a shame that it ends up feeling plodding and dirgey, the slow, distorted guitar making it feel more torturous than enlightened.
“Perhaps that in itself is a reflection – that, at 26, Abrams still, as we all do, has more growing to do.”
Elsewhere, The National‘s Aaron Dessner recently spoke out on whether Abrams’ song ‘Death Wish’ is about Taylor Swift.
