Gracie Abrams – Hit the Wall

An 85% reduction in Taylor Swift references compared to the last time we reviewed one of her singles…

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[5.57]Ian Mathers: Goddammit, just when I thought I was out (found The Story of Us mid except for a few songs), she drags me back in (a song with a surprisingly brisk pace that actually lands the psychodrama that didn’t always work for me before, it feels compellingly wracked and yet also something you could play during the comedown phase of a Sad Bangers night).
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Claire Davidson: “Hit the Wall” finds a nice middle ground between Gracie Abrams’s singer-songwriter impulses and her likely contract-mandated angling for crossover appeal. The song’s backdrop is intimate while still allowing for vitality: co-producer Aaron Dessner equips Abrams with a pulse of pattering keys anchored by faint piano chords and, later in the track, a steady undercurrent of muffled bass thumping that gradually galvanizes the song. These subdued environs give Abrams ample space to convey the exasperation driving her lyrics, as she surveys the unhealthy coping mechanisms she employs in relationships, strategies that leave her unable to even bottom out with any real finality. Abrams’s breathy, flustered vocal delivery often punctures her songs rather than elevating them, but here, that defeatist approach feels intuitive, compounding the brutal resignation behind lines like, “I barely deserve it if you do stay.” The song undercuts its power at crucial moments: for a vocal timbre as fragile as Abrams’s, the decision to stack vocals she delivers in her upper register on the latter two verses proves distracting, and the bridge’s repeated attempts to lurch the song into a higher key never truly crystallize into a real epiphany. Yet for an artist I’ve struggled to appreciate on the whole, Gracie Abrams continues to surprise me—she may be working with a very limited set of strengths, but she’s grown wiser in learning how to utilize them.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Tediously navel-gazing in all the ways I’ve come to expect from Abrams; has the additional black mark of sounding like it was accidentally sped up by 10-15% late in the production process.
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Nortey Dowuona: Put the wrong review here and didn’t even care. Then i heard this and did my dishes. Problem solved, blurb done.
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Charli Jae Brister: Yeah, it’s suitably cinematic. But it’s just kinda…not great? Cooed baby whisper vocals are not great!!! Please resonate in your sinus cavities, I’m begging you!!!
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Al Varela: Gracie is very lucky to have the Dessner brothers in her corner. I don’t know if she’d have even a chance of being good without them. Alright, that’s a little backhanded, but if nothing else I do think Gracie is slowly improving as a writer. I like the pained yearning of wanting to be with someone but being your own worst enemy. Constantly at war with yourself and curling into yourself as the world moves on without you. The build-up in the production really works too, especially with the building piano chords and swells of lush synths building with Gracie’s voice. If this had a bigger emotional payoff at the end of the song, really go out on a bang instead of a fizzle, I’d be willing to call it legit great. She’s getting there, I believe she can live up to her potential. She just needs to push herself to get there.
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Alfred Soto: Aaron Dessner’s arpeggiated melancholia found its match in Taylor Swift’s will to prowess; but that blighted context in which Folklore busted sales records (again) has vanished, and what’s left is Dessner’s saleable, recombinant angst. The multitracked winsomeness and plinky-plonky keyboards would also work for Megan Moroney or Matt Berninger.
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