This page is dedicated to Grace’s, as yet untitled, upcoming album. We will add to the page as new info comes along.
In an interview with
"Who What Wear" Grace talked about how the album showed a new side of herself
"It's a very secretive, personal side of someone that's jarring to see," she says of what's on the record. "That's normally something that you might not even see in a partner for a year or two—someone baring their soul." At the same time, the album's narrative is relatable, even if details having to do with her childhood in the spotlight might not be. "It was just a kid—a little girl—with a lot of weight on her shoulders and being told 'You're so strong' instead of 'Let us take that.'"
"With this album, it's the first time since I was a little girl that I got back to that beating heart. This is a vulnerable release for me.” The album started with the writing of ‘What's Left of Me,’ a raw and complex ballad about the aftermath of a broken relationship. "I had no direction. I had no concept. I just felt like I was writing from a real place." In the lyrics, VanderWaal tackles not knowing what parts of her, physically and emotionally, were left untouched—undamaged—by the person she loved. In facing that pain head-on, she says the floodgates opened, allowing her to access deeper trauma from various aspects of her life. Much of this introspection went into the other songs on the album. "I felt like I was slowly collecting this gunk that was crusting over and crusting over. Crafting each song was a way of scraping off that gunk one layer at a time. When I finally did it, I was like, 'Oh, that's not too bad. It actually sounds pretty good. So I kind of was just like, 'How deep can I go?'"
She had an unlikely source of influence throughout the writing process: "I was heavily inspired by that scene in Midsommar where they're all crying and breathing together," she explains. "I just want to vomit and cry and shake and have it all be a part of everything."
Grace explained that the album would be "heavy" but an accurate look at what she’s going through at the moment. "There isn’t really a resolution to the album because it is a freeze in time of what I’m mentally going through right now. … I thought that that is impactful and artistic because it is so real, and it is kind of dark, but reality doesn’t have a resolution. … Sometimes you go through things and there is no grand meaning or lesson that you got from it. You just went through it and now you got to just carry that with you."(Hollywood Reporter Sep 27, 2024)
“I feel attached to this project that I'm working on right now more than anything. It's the best work I've ever done in my life. People ask me what my next album is like, and I'd just say it's a lot of meaningful production. The sounds are extremely intentional, and everything you're hearing, I chose myself. I had so many complex feelings about becoming a young woman, and I'm very inspired by the future me, what my experience has been, and also some feminist theory. Everyone's like, "fuck the patriarchy," but it's so much deeper than that. Patriarchy is within the core of who you are, and there's a sense of resentment in finding out half of your core isn't yours. 'That's just a shocking feeling as a young woman. I wanted to capture the nuance of that.” (Interview with L'Oficielle USA November 2024)
The writing process
"The album is very rich in writing. I wanted to produce the songs around the writing. Some of them are more abstract in that way. I love Frank Ocean and his production style. I feel like he wrote it first, and then put emphasis from the words into the music. But some of the songs on the album are more like funzie – and some are more like artistic and weird, and some you can sing in the car – there is a good balance. The album turned out better than I could ever have imagined. It ended up being way more conceptual – it was way bigger than I was expecting, and I began to lean into what was naturally happening there, because this is really abstract and cool." (Interview on Audacity (Radio)October 15th 2024)
Grace elaborated further on the writing process in an interview with Travis Mills on Apple Music: "I am a fan of ‘worlds’. I love visuals, I love music videos, I love lyrics. These are all components that are very personal to me; all of it is coming from me. I am also not in touch with myself well, so things tend to develop in front of me. It must be coming from my subconscious, and then I consciously follow it from there. So, I did not come up with the concept for the album first. The music started doing it, and it started revealing itself to me, and I was like – Oh shit! This is this: I know the name, and I know what it looks like, but I am not coming up with this. It is being implanted in my brain, like Frankenstein, and I made it come alive, and now it’s telling me what it should be."
"I remember when I first started writing in studios. I would write silently in the corner, I would not brainstorm openly at all. I had so much embarrassment about it; I was like – you’re going to sound dumb! And then you start getting desensitized to it, doing it so often. I felt like the last step out of that, where I can continue to evolve, is vulnerability and honesty in my words, and [accepting that] – people in this room may not even get this! And I have been through so much that was so bubbling and hot and not ready to be accessed for a very, very long time. And I was aware of that; I was afraid of it. All I knew was – I should not touch this. And then I was writing and just cracked open a little bit of it. I was very inspired by Fiona Apple. And say what you want about Kanye West, and that is a scary name to be bringing up right now, but in the context of that one song – ’Today I thought about killing you’ – that always stood out to me, because I just love striking honesty, it’s almost like performance art, to be so absurdly honest. And when I started doing that with this album – I was like – OK, that’s what this is."
Travis asked: ‘Does it feel scary at times, knowing that you are putting it all out there?’ "No, I have been through so much, but it also granted me invincibility. There is so much hate and meme culture, and [said ironically] it’s such a time to be alive. This is the social culture I have been in since I was 12-13 years old. And there is inexplainable pain that has come from that and from trying to grow and evolve with all of that commentary circulating about you. But then sometimes I meet someone, and there is a moment where I see they are so afraid because they have so much to lose. I feel like a lot of people are always filming themselves in their minds. We have started to behave as if we are being filmed at all times. And since I have already been through that – so many people’s biggest fear – being viral, being so hated has granted me so much invincibility because I have already passed that threshold." (Apple Music interview with Travis Mills, posted online on
16 Oct 2024)
In an Interview with
Behind The Blinds Magazine, published in November 2024, Grace talked about her primary source of inspiration for the album.
“I know how fragile my feelings are, and I’ve waited a long time to lean into them personally, these untapped traumatic feelings inside, and I was never ready until now to confront them. I just knew it was the right time to tell my story in my music, and it’s liberating to reveal a lot of pain. … now I’m doing this for myself, which gives me an invincibility to any fear of what people might think or say. … an experience and song can fester within me for a while, and the greater the feeling, the longer it festers! I’m very disconnected from myself for someone who is a songwriter [laughs], but then that’s why I like writing, because it’s the only time when I can fully connect with my emotions.
I’m calling this album a project rather than an album because I want everything that’s gone into it to feel like performance art and tell a story, and one of the central themes of the project is the pain of girlhood to womanhood and the romanticizing of girlhood into the resentment of womanhood. … Well I’m imagining it as an art exposition, so it will have a title, the theme, and each song is an art piece around the room, and that format will make up the spirit of the album, like you’re walking through a story, and there will be mixed mediums, from imagery and dancing, to my love of colours and colour theory, a lot of stuff I’ve never done before.
I’ve been exposed to so many different visual expressions and inspirations in my life, from art and painting to acting, architecture, interior design, poetry, and strong symbolism. I wanted to look within and deconstruct why things were impactful to me, like, when I read a poem, was it the words, or the flow that drew me in? Or looking at fashion and the juxtaposition in an Alexander McQueen dress, that feminine silhouette fighting against a restrictive material like leather or corsetry. I wanted to take that dagger of honesty behind everything and work out how I can bring that same intensity into a song, and that’s what’s really driven me in this project.”
Using the Mellotron in the writing proces
"I am obsessed with the Mellotron. I basically write everything on it, and I always have. And it normally starts there. The hard thing about an album is that I am a very fluctuating person, so I have to force myself to stay in a phase, which is not natural to me at all. I am basically a re-invented person weekly. So I am trying to stay in the mentality of my album and not move on before it is even released." (
Interview on Audacity (Radio)October 15th 2024)
It all kicked of with ‘What’s Left Of Me'
In an
interview with ABC Newsline, Grace said that 'What’s Left of Me' was the first song she wrote for the album after she left Columbia, when she was in between labels.
"I wrote ‘What’s Left of Me’ and thought – oh, I am writing really, really well, let’s write an album. Do the thing like it’s supposed to be done. And then conceptually, it started evolving, and I was like – ooohh, this should be a thing"…”And it actually kicked off this whole album”
“I called my manager – and I had just hired him – and said, ‘I just wrote this song, I think that I am writing the best I have ever written, I am going to write an album. We are going to let my old label have all my music, and we are going to do this the right way, I am going to write an album, I know I can do it.’"
“It was really intentional [to release 'What’s Left of Me' as one of the first singles]. When I came to Pulse Records with an album, a world, and a concept, we were just like, How can I lead people into this in a way that I feel most comfortable and confident in? I don’t want the project to be shock value, and I don’t want it to be discredited as that. It was really important for us to slowly integrate my new project into the music that people know and what I do.”
(
Hollywood Reporter Sep 27, 2024)
Plans for release
"I want to announce my album in the most insane way I can think of. There will be lots of honesty, storytelling, fashion, and great things to come." (from Apple Music interview with Travis Mills, posted online on
16 Oct 2024)
