State of Gracie

Pop star Gracie Abrams has built a millions-strong fandom on songs about heartbreak. But she's a real sucker for Valentine's Day.

- WILLA BENNETT

Vintage tank top, Palace Costume. Pretties undies. ERL boots.

Gracie Abrams is swiping through her iPhone photos, which she's sorted chronologically by Valentine's Days. There was the one with her first boyfriend. The one she spent with her roommates in their Barnard University dorm. The one where she "made out with this cute boy at a bar after one of my New York shows." Then all the Valentine's Days she chose to just spend working on her music. "But I'm not a hater at all," she says about what the holiday stands for, about the idea of collectively celebrating some form of romantic ideal.

"What I love about a healthy relationship is that your life doesn't radically change," she continues. "You just fit into each other in a way that feels positively challenging and deeply supportive-it's like a place to land." (Even if Gracie won't divulge more specifics, real stans can only assume she's talking about her relationship' with actor Paul Mescal.²)

The fact that the 25-year-old singersongwriter is dissecting her preference for secure attachment styles is surprising. Right before we meet for pizza and orange wine at Gjelina, one of her favorite restaurants in Los Angeles, "That's So True," her brutal ballad about an illusive ex-lover, earned Gracie her first-ever Top 10 spot on the Billboard Hot 100. And while she's certainly not the first artist to turn romantic rejection into a series of bangers about intense heartache that are made for screaming and sobbing on repeat ("That's So True" now has more than 400 million Spotify streams), the song does showcase her unique ability to articulate what intimacy feels like for her incredibly anxious, lonely, and online generation.

ERL dress. Deborah Marquit bra and thong. Tom Binns necklace.