don't say "good riddance" to listening to "good riddance"!

Wow! It has been a LONG time since I've posted here. However, I'm here to actually say something this time. I’ve long had an interest in music journalism. Lately, I really wanted to try it, so I’ve decided I’m going to try committing to posting about music on this blog, primarily smaller artists I love – and then whatever else I want to post. So, considering that, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite artist's new albums, "Good Riddance" by Gracie Abrams.

I discovered Gracie Abrams a year after her ‘Minor’ (2020) EP release. My original favorites were “I Miss You, I’m Sorry” and “Brush Fire”, but the rest of her songs stockpiled so well that those are now ancient history to me. What struck me about her initially was the brutal honesty of her lyrics. She’s currently on tour with Taylor Swift (I saw them both in July!), which is why I thought this would be a cool album to review. I'm excited to delve into my thoughts.

But first, disclaimer: I’m fine with people disagreeing with me. I’m trying to be objective, but part of this is obviously still my personal taste. I don’t intend any negative comments I say as disrespect, because disrespecting something an artist creates goes against my entire moral code. I’ve shamelessly made fun of music before, but I will never defend myself when called out.

Now that I've got that covered, true to what Abrams told listeners prior to the ‘Good Riddance’ release, I listened to the album for the first time in the tracklist order with earbuds in. I was also in Honolulu that night, so I sat on a balcony and stared at the skyline. Six months later, here’s what I think.

To me, this album commits to representing anxiety in leaving someone and leaves few crumbs. She talks about doubt, fear of restarting, navigating nostalgia, FOMO, guilt, and the harsh realization that it’s time to go. Many choruses in this album (“Best”, “Where do we go now?”, “Amelie”, “I Should Hate You”) are the hook repeated, symbolizing the incessant repetition of anxiety. For the first 10 tracks, she’s mostly talking about breakups and fear, and in the last two tracks, she is fully immersed in a new love, that in “The blue” she states, “came out of the blue”, explaining the abrupt mood change.

Abrams pictured on the cover of Good Riddance.

“Best”: Abrams said in an article before the release that this is one of her favorites on the album. It’s one of mine too. My initial impression was that it reminded me of ‘Folklore’ by Taylor Swift. ‘Good Riddance’ was produced by Aaron Dessner, so this makes sense, but I would’ve noticed this whether I knew that or not. This song was gut punch after gut punch. I could’ve been out at “when I could come to life I didn’t”, but “you fell hard, I thought ‘good riddance’” was the first line that truly killed me. She made me feel like I had commitment issues.

The entire chorus of “Best” is “I never was the best to you”. She reminds herself over and over. In the bridge she sings, “I feel terrible ‘bout how I handled it” and “I’m alone, sitting here, staying home/all of my self-control kind of got difficult, but I deserve it, though.” She’s sitting around at home beating herself up, even though her self-control tells her there’s no point in doing so.

I appreciate the accountability in the song, as well as the feeling of released tension that I bet came with writing and releasing it. As a songwriter, I’ll write 30 songs about how upset I am with someone, but it only feels useful once I’ve finally made one apologizing or taking accountability for my own end of the spectrum.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen (the most valuable part of a song for me): “Go ahead, we can just call it conditioning”

“I Know It Won’t Work”: This is another favorite of mine! Partially because it’s the one that blew up, which I always get some excitement from on behalf of the artist.

Firstly, I love the intro, which reminds me a bit of a record skipping. I have no idea what it was meant to intend, but to me it feels like the line “You’re a flashback in a film reel” from Taylor Swift’s “This Is Me Trying” (2020). It feels like a flashback in time, and that’s particularly because of the hook “Part of me wants you back, but I know it won’t work like that”. She wishes she could have a feeling back, but she knows the reason she left was because nothing was left in the relationship.

This song helps build up the idea of this album being mostly about a long-term relationship ending. She sings “It’s a lot/the shine of half a decade fading”. So much of the album is about the breakup because she’s leaving something she had been adjusted to for a very long time.

Another motif throughout this album is lyrics about the awkward moments when you know something is over but aren’t ready to say it – so you just lie even though you know it only makes it worse. Some of my favorite instances of that include – in this song – “in case this year, I come back and stay throughout my 20s/what if I won’t? How am I supposed to put that gently?”, “I hate to look at your face and know that we’re feeling different”, and “I’m thinking everything you wish I wasn’t/the call was tough, but you’re better off/I’m being honest/so won’t you stop holding out for me when I don’t want it?” Then, in other songs “You look hopeful like we’re supposed to work somehow/can’t you tell our light burned out?” (“Where Do We Go Now?”)

There is one thing I don’t love about this song, which made a big enough difference initially that I preferred (I have since changed my mind) the Jimmy Kimmel live version over the album version. I wish there weren’t two verses at the beginning of the song. I think there are great lyrics in both verses, but by the time the chorus comes, I’m a little bored. Nonetheless, the disliking of this is small, and I think both verses are very well written.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: “I’m thinking everything you wish I wasn’t”

“Full Machine”: this one is probably my favorite on the album. It’s full of somewhat submissive lines, but she writes them from a place of control. She sings, “Say something nice to me/and you don’t have to mean it” but also “I’m a shameless caller”, using the word “shameless” to change the meaning. She knows who she is and commends herself for trying, but she also admits that she’s being destroyed over something that she still says “I know better” about. I adore juxtaposing lyrics. She isn’t saying “I would die for you and I’m so sad you left me”. She isn’t saying “You better know who you just lost, screw you”. She’s saying, “I hope you know who you lost because it means a lot that someone is so devastated that you’re no longer in their life”.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: “It’s just that I’ll always choose you”

“Where Do We Go Now?”: When I say I fell in love with this song when it came out, I mean it. I love how she references specific places – “24th street, where you held me, grabbed my arm”. I love how she expresses feeling like her trying was never noticed – “you don’t know how hard I tried/had to fake the longest time” and “What a brutal way to die, but you choose it every time”. Then, she shows that she too wasn’t perfect – “we had no control when it fell through/it was one-sided, hate how I hurt you”. Meanwhile, the instrumental feels timeless and is never too overwhelming or too underwhelming.

I just need a moment to acknowledge the bridge. The long schpeel ending in “but I miss you”. I heard that for the first time and I was like, this song is perfect.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: “You look hopeful, like we’re supposed to work somehow”

“I Should Hate You”: “I Should Hate You” is the kind of song that would be my favorite if it didn’t make me feel physically unwell. I’m looping these songs while writing this, and even two sentences in, I’m pausing because of instrumentals that put a pit in my stomach. Over the acoustic guitar, there’s a whistling instrument that reminds me of how the intro to “I Know It Won’t Work” makes me feel. To me, this song feels like when you’re so exhausted that you feel like you will never sleep. It gives me the feeling that one day something that is so important to you now will mean absolutely nothing anymore, and even if that is what you want to happen, it still feels wrong. You begin to think “I should hate you because you were so important to me, but I realize now how much you really messed with my head”.

This also reminds me of “Full Machine”, in which she sings “If you asked me to run away, I’d go easily”. In the second verse of “I Should Hate You”, she sings “I just drank something strong to try to forget, but it wasn’t right” – saying she does things that she knows are bad for her just to let go of someone. To add meaning to that, she sings in the first verse “I wasted my breath when I tried to console you, didn’t I?” She yet again appears submissive, but also fully aware of how she needs to let go of her sadness and be mad. This, to me, is a very powerful thing to do in writing. Finally, perhaps the best part of the entire song is the bridge (my favorite line in it is below).

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: “I feel stupid like I almost crashed my car driving home to talk about you at my table in the dark” (never actually gotten close to this happening but I've had this feeling for so long and was shocked to hear it in a song)

“Will You Cry?”: This song has a few standout lines for me. My personal favorite is the set of lyrics “it’s kind of funny when it goes from all to nothing/you have to laugh before you start to cry/cause now I stop myself from holding onto something that makes me feel a little less alive”. I interpret these lines as her saying - in simpler words - "No one realizes how much that ending hurt me because I don't let on to anyone, but it's not like it matters anyway because I now can't accept anyone who doesn't make me feel the best I possibly can".

However, those are basically the only parts of the song I like. I can’t figure out what this song is actually about. It’s hard for me to follow, and I don’t like anything about it enough to really want to figure it out. I think the melody is beautiful, but it feels like a melody I would’ve written when I was 13 (not meant as a diss at all, I wrote plenty of songs I love to this day at 13), so it annoys me a little but otherwise just makes me feel nothing.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: “I don’t follow, I don’t want to"

“Amelie”: This song, was highly anticipated by Abrams' fandom. She played it on her 2022 tour for her second EP, "This Is What It Feels Like" (2021) on piano, and many people loved it. However, Gracie is one of the few artists who I don't care much about the unreleased songs of. When I heard this song upon its release, the lyrics were the only things even remotely keeping it going for me. That was until I heard the interpretation that it was about her past self. Now when I listen, I imagine that I'm trying to figure out what caused someone (be it myself or someone else) to become someone they aren't anymore.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "She had her hair up, she cried about her obsessions" (literally me in 2019)

“Difficult”: This song is really cool to me because the chorus moves the way a good cry does. To me the song feels like you’re crying while on a freeway full of small potholes. I love the spinning feeling of the chorus and how she lowers her voice on certain lines in the verses. The song details how she feels like her lack of mental well-being is breaking a relationship apart, and she wishes she could fix it, but it feels like a part of her.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "I hope I wake up invisible" (so simple but so, so real)

“This is what the drugs are for”: this is one of the only unreleased songs I’d hoped would appear on this album. She posted it on TikTok in 2021 under the title “Lifeline”, and I was immediately struck by the original hook that in the released version appears as “What am I supposed to do when you used to be my lifeline?”

While this song is, like “I Should Hate You”, a little too sad for me to listen to, there are a couple things I adore about it. This song seems to be about a relationship that’s been officially over for a while, but she’s beginning to realize moving on won’t be so simple. She expresses this with lines like “now I feel you in my room, haven’t seen you in a lifetime”, “I’ve counted all the days since you walked away”, and “though I’ve tried, I can’t pretend that I don’t sit around and think about you”.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "She appears in dreams chasing after me"

“Fault Line”: I was excited to hear this song because I’d seen a friend of Abrams' saying it was her favorite song ever. When it came on, I thought it was fine. The intro reminded me of several of her older songs that I don’t love as much, like “Mess it Up” (a standalone from 2021), “Tehe” (a track on the ‘Minor’ EP), and a little of “Friend” and “21”, which are also on ‘Minor’, but I love them more than the other three. My main issue was that by the time this song was done, it felt like a combination of the topics of “I Know it Won’t Work”, “Will you cry?”, and “Difficult”. She describes the feeling of being aware something might not work out, being okay (I think?) with leaving, and feeling like her judgment is bad. I kept waiting for something in the song. I hoped during its four minutes that it would have some cool beat drop or a key change but to no avail. It has grown on me since February, but still falls very easily at the bottom - second to last to "Will you cry?"

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "Most nights I will pretend I left this sooner"

“The blue”: I saw on Twitter before the album release that there was one love song on the album, and that it was the one you’d expect the least. That proved true. After all the breakup songs on this album, it shocked me a little, given that I’d become a little emotionally attached to her sadness (which is partially the point and partially not the point, I guess.) Because this song confused me given the sheer sad power of the rest of the album, it took a moment to get my head around it. But once I did, I began to love it. The part of the song that I felt really gave it life was the line “What are you doing to me now?” It gave the song a lack of trustworthiness so that its spot on the album made more sense. It helped remove ambiguity over why an intense love song was on the album. She’s falling shamelessly in love with someone and provides enough parallels to the rest of the record for this song to fit into its puzzle.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "I kind of think you should just drop it all and call me" (such a Taylor thing to say)

“Right now”: This is a really beautiful ending to the album. She’s still unsure, but she expresses the same confidence as the rest of the album. Having the album start with “I was bored out my mind/lost my whole appetite/when I could come to life I didn’t” and end with “I feel like myself right now” is incredible. The album is about her journey from “good riddance” to “I feel like myself”. The romantic ending is abrupt because that’s how she portrays the new love to feel when she says in “The blue”, “you came out of the blue like that”.

This isn’t a song on the album that I would listen to in my free time, but nonetheless, I think it’s a perfect ending.

The lyric that makes me feel the most seen: "Look at me, I feel homesick/want my dog in the door" (this plays in my head every time I leave my city)

I’m very excited to see where Abrams goes after touring with Taylor Swift. You can listen to both the standard version and the deluxe version (featuring "Block me out", "Unsteady", "405" and "Two people") on all streaming platforms.

Some lyrics I love that I didn’t mention in the review:

“you still tried to stay while I’d self-isolate/and I knew but I stayed hidden”

“now I bet you resent all of me, all of it, angry, blocking me over the internet”

“I know we cut all the ties but you’re never really leaving”

“I'm a forest fire, you're the kerosene/I had a life here before you and now it’s burning”

“when I kissed you back I lied”

“we could meet down the line after all of the time and give an actual try”

“guess the space was the thing that I needed, but I miss you”

“pulled the knife out my back, it was right where you left it/but you aimed kind of perfect, I’ll give you the credit”

“bet you’re doing alright and you don’t even know it”

“why’d it feel louder when all of it went unspoken?/all I can do is hope that this will go away”

“I meant to tell you how I hated how we left things when it feel through”

“I’ll break too, cracking at the same time, does it shock you?”

“you could go and I bet I’d recover overnight/finish hurting each other/you feel light years away, if I met you today/I would run to the arms of another”

“I know I’d let you in on all my bad decisions/you’d make them feel less terrible the second that you’d listen”

“this is somebody’s hometown”