Hit The Wall – Gracie Abrams

It has been two years since The Secret Of Us summer that made most of the crowd absolutely fall in love with Gracie Abrams. Thank god Gracie has come out of hiding to add to this absolute whopper of a musical summer and tease her new album Daughter From Hell with her new single “Hit The Wall.” Today we highlight the true meaning of this release and the potential themes for the new album.

That classic Gracie intro music opens us up to a self deprecating verse. To her ex, she is now basically saying: great, look at what you did. You hurt me, so now you can watch me crash out. In the chorus she takes us through the motions of her pain and how difficult it is for others to make sense of her emotions: “A room full of doctors and an inkblot.” She runs through a series of phrases that all essentially mean her timing is always off and she always gets it all wrong. She knows that she lets people walk all over her and cannot stop it. She just watches it all happen to herself without any control over it. At the same time she says, “I barely deserve it if you do stay,” letting us into the thought that maybe she does all this because she feels like she deserves the destruction and misfortune. She doesn’t see herself as someone worthy of connection and intimacy. The second chorus levels us up musically when we hear a touch of Justin Vernon’s backing vocal in “I just hit the wall.” Gracie is advancing creatively and clearly has a tremendous team behind her. Then we open up into a freeing bridge on the line “Watch my blade ricochet,” meaning to watch her own actions fall back on her and bite her in the ass. She tells us that she is “Face to face with every girl / That I tried to play,” which is a really interesting way of telling us that not being true to herself is all crumbling down at this moment. All the people she idolized and tried to replicate to make people like her are catching up to her, when really she should have just been true to herself the whole time. The outro verse seems to be a message to her current lover. She is warning them that they will soon see the pattern she lives by. The cycle of breakdowns will eventually catch up to them and destroy their happiness together. She knows it will be painful, and it is one of her biggest fears. She assures them once more that this is not a cycle they can stop or solve.