Gracie Abrams has a talent for making small moments feel huge. With two singles to her name, she had already established vulnerability as her superpower, and her latest, “Stay,” cements her as a songwriter well beyond her years.
Coming together on a fine-vined tapestry of whispery vocals and yearning lyricism, “Stay” is a late-night confession with the lights turned down low. Abrams doesn’t so much sing about longing as stew in it, allowing the gravity of every unuttered word to sink into “Stay” bones. The production is understated soft keys, a distant lumber of guitar ceding room for her words, as they deserve. The words pierced, “I’d rather hear you say nothing than watch you walk away.” It’s heartbreak in its most distilled form.
Inspired by artists such as Joni Mitchell, Abrams has always written songs with old-soul immediacy, and “Stay” is no different. There’s a casual flow to her storytelling, an unsparing honesty that makes it feel less like a song than a discussion you’ve had before, maybe with yourself, on one of those nights when sleep was a challenge.
With “Stay,” Abrams once again shows that these days, the softest voices make the loudest echoes.