Her voice—intimate, airy, and sweet, occasionally an angelic whisper from a best friend— carries across stadium crowds of tens of thousands, particularly when opening for her friend Taylor Swift on ‘The Eras Tour’. Abrams’s debut album, Good Riddance (2023), transmutes details from a formative yet ultimately unfruitful relationship into lyrics sung by devoted fans across the globe.

GEN V spoke with 24-year-old Abrams from her car (she was buying a new amp, which she was particularly, well, amped about) to discuss life on the road, privacy, and her thoughts on fashion.

GEN V: You seem to be on tour a lot, which isn’t every artist’s favorite part of the job. How do you feel about it?

GRACIE ABRAMS: With touring, I feel like I’ve changed a lot in a short period of time. I was really crumbling into myself a few years ago, and as soon as I started touring, right after the pandemic, it was a complete 180 in terms of how much I was interacting with people and the kind of energy that I was exerting in order to do as well as I possibly could.

(cont.) That experience ultimately jump-started my adulthood and triggered this process of figuring out the person that I am and am proud of. Touring was like exposure therapy and I fell in love with it. And so much of that has to do with the people who I tour with—not just my crew and my band who are like family to me, but the people who attend the shows. There are so many familiar faces at every single performance.

GEN V: You seem to have a really profound connection with your audiences while you’re performing.

GA: The best lesson that I’ve learned about touring is to make the show as little about me as possible. It’s not just about one person. The songs immediately become about everybody as soon as we’re singing together, and the performance would not be able to happen without our front-of-house engineer or our tour manager. Every single person plays such a large role.

GEN V: Your lyrics are very revealing and vulnerable. How did you feel when writing your album?

GA: When I was writing Good Riddance, it was the first time I actively thought, “I may be frustrated with this person or heartbroken about something, but I’m also going to have some accountability and be honest about the ways in which I contributed to the downfall of a relationship.” Before, I would sit and write a song and then 15 seconds later I would put it on Instagram. But I now see that it’s often the months that pass between writing something and putting it out that so much happens and, by the time you release the song, it’s like, “Is this even relevant to me today?” Things change quickly.

GEN V: Does fashion play a role in your performances?

GA: I’ve realized that what you’re wearing does shape your identity a little bit when you’re on a stage. I feel most aligned with my music when I’m performing in clothes that I also wrote the songs in. There’s something really cool about feeling at home in your clothes when you’re on a stage in a city you’ve never been to before.

This cover story appears in the pages of GEN V (Issue 3): now available to purchase!

Photography Jack Bridgland

Fashion Nicola Formichetti

Creative Director Stephen Gan

Editor-In-Chief Mathias Rosenzweig

DP Mynxii White

Makeup Sarah Tanno (Forward Artists)

Hair Bobby Eliot (The Wall Group)

Manicure Jolene Brodeur (The Wall Group) using APRÉS NAIL

Executive producer Dana Brockman (viewfinders)

Production manager Frank DeCaro (viewfinders)

Producers Robbi Chong, Din Morris (viewfinders)

Digital technician DJ Dohar

Lighting technician Ryan Hackett

Photo assistants Adam Matijasevic, Ricky Steel

Stylist assistant Brianna Dooley

Makeup assistants Phuong Tran, Ghost

Hair assistant Arbana Dollani