Audrey Hobert, Who’s the Clown?, album review

One day you’re watching in awe as your roommate becomes a sudden pop sensation, the next you’ve found yourself hitched along for the ride. No, this is not the plot of Netflix’s latest teen rom-com; this is Audrey Hobert’s life.

Last year, Hobert burst onto pop fans’ radars after co-writing seven tracks on Gracie Abrams’ hit album The Secret of Us, including the smash That’s So True. Abrams, her bestie since fifth grade, made sure the world knew Hobert’s contributions: the two shared stage time, interviews and social media posts. Suddenly Hobert, who’d never had any aspirations for making music, was on her own trajectory to pop stardom.

“I had never written music before. Gracie and I were just living together at the time and, one day, started writing music. That was my intro to writing music, period,” says Hobert, sprawled on a couch in her Los Angeles home as though this was a therapy session or I’m Bella Freud. “When she went on to promote it and tour it and be the busy person that she is, I just felt I wasn’t done songwriting and that’s when I took a stab at it by myself and wrote this album.”

As a stab, Hobert’s debut album, Who’s the Clown?, is a fatality. Led by throbbing single Sue Me – a guilt-free track about hooking up with your Bacardi-drinking ex, built around Hobert’s detail-heavy, delightfully wordy syntax – and other sly tales from the frontlines of 20-something situationships, it might be the most relatable pop album this year (no matter how far removed you might be from its target group).

“I was never shocked by Gracie’s success because I’ve known her for so long and that girl works so hard and it makes complete sense that she’s getting this insane attention. But I don’t think I ever had the thought of ‘break me off a piece of that’,” says Hobert. “I just ultimately feel like I don’t know how this all happened. I just know that for eight months last year, I wrote viciously, and here we are.”

Hobert was Born and raised in Los Angeles. Her father was a writer and producer for TV comedies including Scrubs, Community and The Middle, while her mother worked in the theatre. Her younger brother Malcolm Todd is also a musician. Initially, Hobert had aspirations of being a professional dancer. “I danced 10 hours a week from the time I was eight till the end of high school. But the older you get, the more you realise it’s cutthroat and it’s probably not gonna work out. I think I gave up on those dreams around 13.”

Writing came naturally, though. She studied screenwriting at the New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and had plans to follow in the family business. After graduating, she spent two seasons on the writing team of Nickelodeon’s The Really Loud House (a show her father produced). “That job came in handy when I ended up meeting record labels to sign a deal,” says Hobert. “On that show, you were in a room where you were valuable if you had a good idea and knew how to get it across. It helped me in those big boardrooms with music people because I knew how to pitch myself as an artist.”

Growing up, Hobert was aware her family was tangentially involved in showbiz, but it’s all relative. “I went to this private middle school, and I was surrounded by kids who had much more powerful parents in the industry. So I knew that my dad was involved, but it was small potatoes,” says Hobert. “It didn’t feel like I was livin’ la vida loca, Hollywood style, or anything.”

It perhaps explains the aloof outsider perspective that pervades her music. Chateau is a song about going to a Grammys party, microdosing mushrooms, and hating on shallow celebrities. On Thirst Trap, she’s frustrated that her feelings for a fun new crush are making her deeply boring and predictable.

“The term ‘outsider’ resonates with me. In the books I read or the movies I watch, I’m always drawn to the outsider character and I’ve also felt on the outside often times in my life,” she says. “When it comes to the songs I’ve written, my goal is just to be brutally honest about how I feel about a situation or a person or whatever.”

Comedy is central to Hobert’s songwriting appeal. If her musical keystones – Kim Petras, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift’s 1989, slacker-poet MJ Lenderman – are part of the equation, so are her comic ones: Lena Dunham, Conner O’Malley, Dan Licata, Nathan Fielder, and her dad’s favourites, Steve Martin and Brian Regan. “I love funny people, and I love being funny. It’s, like, my favourite thing to be,” she says.

In her songs, Hobert plays the stand-up comic’s trick of making her imperfections and insecurities empowering. On the moving Phoebe, a song about identifying with Lisa Kudrow’s character on the TV sitcom Friends, she casually sings about her struggles with body image and finding solace in the show’s wacky outcast.

“I just found it funny that none of the three guys on the show are ever with Phoebe. Like, they’ll be with Rachel or with Monica but never with her, just because she’s the quirky girl. I really identified with her, just as an idea of something,” says Hobert.

“I’ve felt a lot in my life this struggle to feel physically beautiful, but I’ve always known my worth on the inside. And the older you get, the less that feeling of physical unworthiness serves you, so obviously you want to reach that point as early as possible, like in your 20s, where you’re just like, ‘F— it, I’m entirely beautiful.’ I’m proud of that song, and I’m glad I got to talk about that feeling I’ve had for a lot of my life.”

Hobert’s very specific approach to songwriting comes at an opportune time. The pop industry is flailing, the powers that be seem to understand that whatever formula they might’ve once had for producing hits is no longer working. I’m reminded of the debate that emerged after Sabrina Carpenter’s Espresso went big, and people suddenly remembered that pop music can be weird and fun and break rules.

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For four months last year, Hobert tried the industry’s approach. “I was in sessions, trying to write for other artists, and I knew immediately it wasn’t for me,” she says. “I find that setting to be not conducive to the kind of writing I like to do for songs because there’s a beat looping in the background, and the producer has dinner at six, and you’re sitting across from someone whose head you’re supposed to be in but you’ve only just met them. I really respect songwriters who can be in that setting and successfully write a big, amazing song, but I’m not one of those people.”

The experience only cemented her faith in her own idiosyncratic process. “In the writing camp world and sessions world, it’s a normal thing to have a concept or a title and then to build a song around that, but I never do that.

“I usually start at the first line and write all the way through. I find a second verse to be the hardest thing to write in a song, and a bridge to be the most fun. I’m not really someone who sits down and writes a song in an hour. It takes me weeks, usually, and many, many hours. I do say a lot of words in each song, and I go pretty fast, but I think there’s as much importance paid to understanding pop structures and formulas as there is to breaking those rules.”

Audrey Hobert’s Who’s the Clown? is out now.