After first connecting more than half a decade ago on Instagram, Gracie Abrams and Olivia Rodrigo — who have since become stars in pop music — just reunited to talk about their friendship, lives and careers for a Spotify conversation posted Tuesday (July 7).
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And though the friends and former tourmates had plenty to discuss, they of course spent much of their time together chatting about one of their favorite things: songwriting, including ways they’ve felt “careless” in how they handled a subject or struggled to capture love in the past. With Abrams’ new album Daughter From Hell dropping in a matter of days, Rodrigo was bursting with compliments and shared that one of her favorite songs on the upcoming record is “Afflictions.”
“It feels pure, but also very mature,” the two-time Grammy winner remarked, with Abrams noting that it’s the only straightforward love song on Daughter From Hell. “It feels like the love is very deep and not superficial.”
“It is,” Abrams agreed, revealing that she finds it difficult to write about love. “I can’t write about it much. When I’ve tried to write about it before, it kind of diminishes what it actually feels like. But that [song] is super real for me.”
From the sound of it, “Afflictions” is likely about Abrams’ relationship with Paul Mescal, whom she’s been dating for about two years. In her recent Vogue cover story, she opened up about feeling “secure and stable” with him in a way she hasn’t in previous relationships.
On the other side of the coin, the Hal David Starlight Award winner talked with Rodrigo about the more negative relationships she examined on Daughter From Hell, explaining that she approached them differently than in the past. “I was careful about writing about conflict and pain from less of a place of pointing fingers and more so of having been on both sides, like, of both the protagonist and the antagonist of each song,” Abrams said.
“There’s songs about tough friendships or a kind of a breakup … I was careless in the past writing music about how it might impact the subject, and I don’t like that,” she continued. “I wish I could go back and fix it. And I feel like moving forward, with this album — I think there’s a way that you can write music about people and be as honest as you want and need to be and deliver it without cruelty.”
“It does have a lot of restraint in a way that I find so beautiful,” Rodrigo agreed. “[That’s] so hard to pull off. When I’m writing songs, too, I’m like — the knee-jerk reaction is just to be like, ‘Bleh, here’s everything.’ You just put it so beautifully and tactfully.”
The video comes just nine days ahead of the release of Daughter From Hell, which will mark Abrams’ first album since her breakthrough sophomore LP, The Secret of Us, reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200. So far, fans have heard two tracks from the project: lead single “Hit the Wall,” which peaked at No. 34 on the Billboard Hot 100, and “Look at My Life,” which dropped June 25.
As the two ladies reminisced at the beginning of their Spotify chat, Abrams and Rodrigo — whose own new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, recently spent its first two weeks on the Billboard 200 at No. 1 — they go way back. The former Disney Channel star has been open about how Abrams inspired her to write and post her own future Hot 100 hits on Instagram, and the “That’s So True” singer ended up opening for Rodrigo on her Sour Tour in 2022.
“She gave me such a shot,” Abrams said in her 2025 Billboard cover story of Rodrigo. “I adore her with my whole heart for forever and ever.”
“Gracie has such a singular voice when it comes to songwriting,” Rodrigo added at the time. “I think it’s rare to be so young and already have developed your very own lane. You can hear a song and instantly know if it’s a Gracie Abrams song even if she wasn’t singing it.”
Watch Abrams’ full conversation with Rodrigo above.
