Over the last decade, a trio of singer-songwriters have dominated pop music. 36-year-old Taylor Swift inspired and toured with 26-year-old Gracie Abrams, who, in turn, inspired and toured with 23-year-old Olivia Rodrigo. But while this lineage of diaristic, angst-filled lyricism has produced some of the biggest hits of the past ten years, by 2026 these soul-baring pop stars have begun to diverge. With her blockbuster wedding to NFL chad Travis Kelce, Swift has become – at best – an overly commercialised vision of the American Dream; with her latest album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So In Love, Rodrigo has grown into an artist’s artist in her own right. Abrams, meanwhile, is starting to feel as though her music hasn’t evolved at the same pace. Above all, her latest album, Daughter From Hell, feels stuck in the past.
To Abrams’ credit, repeating history is the project’s explicit focus, tracing the turbulence of her teenage years as she brands herself the titular Daughter From Hell. Throughout, Abrams draws from her rich toolbox of visceral – if slightly vague – metaphors, describing herself variously as “a crack in the pavement,” “a pill swallowed down”, and “not a problem you can solve”. On the title track, she even offers a direct apology to her mother for all the aforementioned angst. The production, meanwhile, plods through a sepia-toned liminal space of pulsing synths and indie-folk guitars, with a throwback in the form of its sole guest appearance from Marcus Mumford. Both sonically and figuratively, this is a slow walk down memory lane.
Given her rare gift for articulating an aching heart, and the fact that they share hit songwriter Dan Nigro as a collaborator, the parallels with Rodrigo abound. However, where Rodrigo’s latest album approaches these emotions with newfound maturity, Daughter From Hell sees Abrams relive her teenage suffering with all the pain of the moment and none of the wisdom that has presumably followed. The album recreates adolescent intensity in detail, but rarely reframes it from the perspective of the adult looking back.
This languishing has its moments on tracks like “The Knife” and “Minibar”, which rank among the most cutting and vivid songs Abrams has ever released. But by the time she tells us she’s heartbroken in the millionth different way on “Broke My Heart”, the repetition begins to dull the emotional impact. She veers dangerously close to familiar caricatures of teenage girlhood, relying on familiar images of romantic devastation without always finding something new beneath them. For all her instinctive intimacy as a songwriter, it’s hard not to leave Daughter From Hell feeling that Abrams is diaristic pop’s middle child: too caught in the past to know where to go next.
For all its meandering, however, the album still contains flashes of songwriting greatness. Below, we break down the five best tracks on Gracie Abrams’ third album, Daughter From Hell.
If Daughter From Hell is a walk back in time, then its second and final single, “Hit The Wall”, frames the journey perfectly. It casts Abrams as perennially trapped in the pitfalls of her past: she’s “a crack in the pavement”, “a downgrade”, and “not a problem you can solve”. Both sonically and lyrically, the track overflows with emotion, as Abrams delivers these relentlessly visceral metaphors over cascading vocals and a maelstrom of synth lines. Daughter From Hell’s narrative may be loose, but hitting a wall is clearly where it begins.
Sonically speaking, “The Knife” is one of the biggest songs on today’s release, gradually building from a nostalgic piano melody into a yearning ballad backed by a soul-searching guitar riff and booming drum beat (one of only two tracks to feature drums at all). Still, that doesn’t stop it from being one of the album’s most emotional moments, with Abrams’ vocals rising above her usual whisper to deliver melodies that feel equal parts confrontational and fragile. Abrams has long been a master of songs to cry to, and “The Knife”’s tale of heartbreak that never quite goes away is a blubbering example.
The project’s lead single, “Look At My Life”, offers some notable exposition on the experiences underpinning Daughter From Hell’s otherwise unmitigated angst. Alluding to substance use in lines like “I’ve been thinking through the hard stuff over light drugs”, and even addressing her tour photographer Caroline Zimmerman by name in an appeal for reassurance (“Do I look high-functioning or is my façade crumbling? / Oh God, don’t actually answer me, Caroline”), Abrams writes with a sobering clarity here. Kicking the BPM up a notch and propelling things forward with a constant, driving bass drum, “Look At My Life” is one of the moments where Daughter From Hell feels like it’s really going somewhere.
When we traced the lineage of diaristic pop above, there was one name in particular we left out: Audrey Hobert. Rising to fame as a co-writer on Abrams’ sophomore album, The Secret of Us, Hobert’s 2025 debut, Who’s The Clown, proved she had the metaphorical mettle to match Swift, Abrams and Rodrigo. So it’s particularly powerful to see Hobert and Abrams reunite on “Minibar”, resulting in painfully vivid lyrics like “I’m at the corner minimart / Got 50 bucks and a brain cеll / Someone percеived me, kinda scared / Left empty-handed, but oh well.” At this point, Hobert and Abrams should just write a whole sitcom.
Where the rest of Daughter From Hell languishes in old-timey indie-folk instrumentation, its title track makes a notable departure. Taking a leaf from Ethel Cain’s book with its pink noise-coded, crunchy guitar chords, the song sees Abrams lean into her singular ability to confront and withdraw simultaneously, rasping heartfelt apologies to her mother for all the pain she put her through.
The real kicker, however, arrives in the track’s closing moments. As “Daughter From Hell”’s opiate-washed guitar chords drift off into the distance, Abrams finally arrives at some kind of resolution: “Daughter from hell, but I came around / I’ll try to become you now.” It’s in these moments of reflection that Abrams’ new release feels most compelling.
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