Chartbreaker: How Audrey Hobert Went From Writing Hits for Gracie Abrams to Creating Her Own ‘Brash and Bold’ Breakthrough

A fewer months ago, erstwhile speaking to Billboard for a screen story astir her person Gracie Abrams, Audrey Hobert pulled unfastened her Notes app and work aloud the lyrics to 1 of the archetypal songs the 2 ever wrote together: a parody mentation of Smash Mouth’s “All Star.”

“Hey now, shingle your ass off/ Get immoderate substance now, propane/ Hey now, creation your ass off/ Break it down now, dilatory mane/ All that glitters is gold/ Even sexy ogres, they get old,” she sang to the tune of the signature Shrek soundtrack hit. After reciting the chorus, she instantly covered her look arsenic the cringe of her college-aged self’s antics washed implicit her.

The puerility besties wrote the opus astir 4 years agone successful Abrams’ basement arsenic a joke. Now, the popular satellite is taking some singer-songwriters precise seriously. In 2024, Abrams’ medium The Secret of Us made Hobert a chart-topping co-writer, acknowledgment to the runaway occurrence of Billboard Hot 100 apical 10 deed “That’s So True,” which the brace crafted portion drunk 1 nighttime connected the extortion of Electric Lady Studios successful New York City. This year, Hobert has leveraged that whirlwind entranceway to the euphony manufacture into her ain solo career, formally introducing herself successful May with pb azygous “Sue Me” — an uber catchy dance-pop opus astir hooking up with an ex — earlier dropping her boisterous debut medium Who’s the Clown? successful August.

Today, she joins our Zoom telephone from the aforesaid room array wherever she’d sat for our past interview, but this time, she’s the focal constituent of the story. Coming consecutive from different meeting, she signs connected a fewer minutes precocious with her hairsbreadth scraped into a sweaty ponytail, breathlessly devouring slices of pome — a ocular practice of conscionable however go, go, spell her beingness has go lately.

Since debuting connected Billboard‘s Pop Airplay illustration past month, “Sue Me” has reached a No. 26 high, and the 26-year-old California autochthonal is present moving backmost and distant — rather virtually — to support up with her blossoming euphony career.

It each started erstwhile Abrams nudged her person to motion a publishing woody with Universal Music Group successful December 2023 truthful that she would beryllium “set up properly” for immoderate royalties The Secret of Us accrued. Shortly after, Hobert started moving arsenic a league songwriter, an wholly antithetic way from the 1 she’d primitively charted aft graduating NYU with a grade successful songwriting and concisely moving connected Nickelodeon sitcom The Really Loud House. But aft years of experiencing imposter syndrome — beryllium it portion moving astatine a edifice oregon arsenic a CBS accumulation adjunct — she had yet recovered her calling.

“When I started going retired to sessions arsenic a songwriter, I conscionable did not person 1 tense bony successful my body,” she reflects.

Even so, thing was missing from her experiences penning lyrics for radical she hardly knew. “It wasn’t adjacent a feeling of needing to beryllium myself,” she continues. “I conscionable knew I loved to constitute songs due to the fact that of my acquisition with Gracie — truthful I started penning astatine location by myself.”

From self-imposed solitude came aboriginal Who’s the Clown? songs “Chateau,” “I Like to Touch People” and “Wet Hair,” done which Hobert realized that she had thing to accidental with her euphony — and that she was the 1 who needed to accidental it. After ner...