Amazing Gracie: Pop’s new superstar kicks off her Australian tour

Not long before taking the stage for the first gig on her Australian tour, Gracie Abrams appears on my Zoom, frantically whirling around her Sydney hotel room like she’s in a spin cycle.

She’s just after a power outlet for her laptop – “My computer’s at 2 per cent, and it’s unacceptable,” she says – but as a visual metaphor for the pop star’s past 12 months, the frenzied blur couldn’t be more apt.

Gracie Abrams, who launched her Australian tour in Sydney on Friday, has suddenly become one of pop’s biggest new stars.

The 25-year-old toured here last January with her debut album Good Riddance, performing at mid-size venues like Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion and Melbourne’s The Forum. On Friday, she returned as a megastar with a sold-out audience at Qudos Bank Arena hanging onto her every word.

“It’s crazy because those rooms [on the Good Riddance tour] felt so big at the time,” says Abrams, dressed casually in a black hoodie, her trademark Jane-from-Daria bob in disarray. “I can’t believe any of these people know I exist, let alone spend their money to be here. To be playing these arenas, it’s mind-blowing.”

Since releasing her second album The Secret of Us last June, Abrams’ profile has risen meteorically. Buoyed by hits Close To You and That’s So True, a vicious kiss-off that shook the rafters as Friday’s encore, the album has surpassed a billion streams and spent 45 weeks and counting near the top of ARIA’s albums chart.

“It’s just so f---ing bizarre,” Abrams laughs. “I couldn’t have ever anticipated this album doing what it’s done. It feels like I’ve lived 10 lives in the past year.”

Last year, Abrams supported Taylor Swift across 50 dates of Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour, where she clearly learnt how to handle her own ever expanding stages.

At Friday’s gig – dressed in a silver sequined gown, no shoes – her command was obvious, tilting between pained balladry, flirty dance-pop, and random chit-chat with fans who gifted her their own journals and scrapbooks. (Unlike other stan groups, Abrams’ haven’t yet settled on their own collective noun; Redditors keep trying to make “Gracelanders” happen.)

She even covered Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn from her infamous “B-stage”, an in-the-round stage extension made to resemble her childhood bedroom.

Abrams’ sudden pop explosion was unexpected. The daughter of Hollywood showrunner JJ Abrams and producer Katie McGrath, she’s such a student of Swift that, for the casual listener, it was perhaps hard to see the point. (Abrams acknowledges the debt: accepting the prize for songwriter of the year at Billboard’s Women in Music awards in March, she said of Swift, “I will never stop thanking her for the gift of her pen, which very much raised me.”)

But Abrams’ songs – with their deeply felt, diaristic and scathing self-examination – have captured a generation of listeners. For the thousands at Qudos Bank on Friday – almost all of them wearing hair bows, her unofficial stan uniform – Abrams’ heart-on-sleeve vulnerability, relatable vibe and emotional hooks are undeniable.

Songwriting is a “selfish process”, says Abrams, but once a song’s done it belongs to her fans.

“I see what they respond to and that stays in my head,” she says. “It’s then about making their experience as audience members the best version, because I want them to love it and be proud of it because they’ve spent so much time caring.”

Abrams’ reported romance with Irish actor Paul Mescal has fuelled further intrigue around the rising star.

Online rumours suggest he’s been travelling with her – he was spotted dancing at her gig in Auckland last week – but, like their relationship, they remain unconfirmed. At Friday’s gig, I didn’t see Mescal (nor any other man in shorts).

Tabloid attention may not be conducive to Abrams’ brand of bloodletting songwriting, but she’s facing more pressing concerns. In a recent interview, she mentioned feeling pressure to “reinvent” herself for her next project, now an expected part of the pop cycle.

She has a collection of new songs that, even a month ago, she thought would form her next album. “Now I think I’m gonna blow it all up and start following another path,” she says, declining further detail.

“Not to necessarily reinvent the wheel, because my songwriting process has not radically changed since I was eight years old, in terms of having a feeling, having the instinct to write it down, and going away into some semi-isolated corner to make it happen,” Abrams adds.

“But I have been inspired by new places recently and it’s been interesting to hear the music that’s come from that, and I feel compelled to allow myself time to explore what it would look like if I see that through fully.”

Judging by the devotion on display at Friday’s gig, her Gracelanders – or whatever they might call themselves – are sure to follow.

Gracie Abrams’ The Secret of Us Tour continues in Sydney May 3-4; in Brisbane May 6-7; in Melbourne May 9-11; in Adelaide May 13; and in Perth May 16-17.