The single will appear on Abrams’ debut album Good Riddance, out February 24
Dreams and reality blur together for Gracie Abrams on her latest single, “Amelie,” the second preview of her upcoming debut album Good Riddance. The soft acoustic ballad recalls a brief but impactful interaction with a girl who is now a figure in her distant past and who she can’t quite recall if she ever knew at all.
“I met a girl once/She sorta ripped me open/She doesn’t even know it/She doesn’t know my name,” Abrams sings. “We sat on the sofa/She asked me a million questions/I answered and by eleven/Memorized her face.”
“Amelie,” in all of its searching for understanding in a possible subconscious illusion, follows the equally uncertain single “Where Do We Go Now?” On Good Riddance, out February 24, Abrams needed to ask the impossible questions in order to grow up. “It forced me to reflect and be accountable,” she shared in a statement about the record. “It allowed me to walk away from versions of myself that I no longer recognized. It allowed me to let go.”
That sense of accountability started in the 23-year-old singer and songwriter’s everyday life before it made it onto a record. “I wanted really badly to get to a place in my life, as I am entering adulthood in a more real way, where I’m being more straightforward with myself and not falling into the trap of victimhood in a situation sometimes, but really owning my shit some more,” Abrams told Rolling Stone in a recent interview.
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With the National’s Aaron Dessner at the helm as producer, Abrams poured her guts into Good Riddance, even when the questions she asked had no clear answers or when the answers only led to more questions.
“I feel really more grateful than I ever have for what songwriting has provided me just as a person outside of music,” Abrams shared. “I grew up using it as a tool to process shit but like…to have done it and to finish something…I very much felt like I had kind of done the grieving and really let go of what I needed to.”
