Gracie Abram’s Rise to Fame

By Gracie Sacks ‘26
Gracie Abrams has grown tremendously in less than a year, selling out stadiums, climbing the rankings and reaching the top charts.

American singer and songwriter Gracie Abrams has followed in the footsteps of her close friend and role model, Taylor Swift. At the ripe age of 25, Abrams was the opening act for the Era’s Tour and was nominated for Best New Artist at the 66th annual Grammy Awards. 
Throughout her childhood and musical career, Abrams praised Taylor for her sophisticated lyrics, unique melodies and inspiring ability to demand a crowd. 
Abrams was thrown into fame from the moment she could walk and talk, her father being the filmmaker J.J. Abrams, and her mother being producer Katie McGrath. 
At just eight years old, Abrams developed a strong love for the musical community and vowed to become the best of the best. 
After being accepted to the prestigious Barnard College, Abrams ultimately dropped out to pursue her musical career. 
On Monday, December 9th, Abrams announced her tour: “The Secret of Us Deluxe.” Instantaneously, millions of people searched Ticketmaster in their browser, a widespread platform for entertainment tickets. Suddenly, the website crashed. 
This was not the first website crash for Ticketmaster. In fact, the most commonly known Ticketmaster crash was quite recent, during the Era’s Tour. When the sale went live in November of 2022, the website experienced a complete crash within the first hour, many users got logged out or removed from the queue.
 The website simply could not manage the 3.5 million people registered for pre-sale. With 2.4 million tickets sold, Taylor broke the highest single-day ticket sales record. 
Thursday, December 12th, was the day tickets for Abram’s tour went live. With an overwhelming number of pre-sale applicants, the website glitched and many people were unable to acquire tickets. 
Conveniently, Abrams decided to save tickets for the general sale, and tickets are still available with an average price of $761. 
The connections do not stop here. Abrams released a song titled “Us”, featuring Taylor Swift. This song serves as a vote of confidence from Swift to Abrams. While Swift commonly has others featured in her songs, she seldom is featured in the work of other artists. 
The two artists also share a similar music style, both writing about the adolescent experience: love, heartbreak, insecurity and fear.
Abram’s music is so attractive partly because she is not trying to reinvent the wheel, rather, she does what she knows and stays true to her musical style, regardless of how “basic” or “typical” it may be. Her transparency and vulnerability is what sets her apart, and what has granted her such a significant following. 
She commonly alludes to the changing standards for women and the expectations of various relationships, her unfiltered messages about societal issues present her as a brave figure with a strong and insightful perspective on life. 
Some of her most famous and popular songs are “Close to You”, “I Love You, I’m Sorry”, and “That’s So True.” 
At its peak, “That’s So True” reached number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, and reached the top charts in countries around the world. Such countries include Norway, the UK, Sweden, Switzerland and New Zealand. Another song, “Risk” gained a lot of traction and reached over 100 million listens. 
Many other singer-songwriters have given Abrams their stamp of approval and positive wishes, such as Olivia Rodrigo. Her music is only predicted to rise in unimaginable ways, begging the question, will she be the next Taylor Swift?