{"id":690969,"date":"2025-11-14T01:29:03","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T22:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=690969"},"modified":"2025-11-14T01:29:03","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T22:29:03","slug":"grace-ives-is-opening-a-new-chapter-and-releasing-her-most-expansive-music-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=690969","title":{"rendered":"Grace Ives Is Opening a New Chapter\u2014and Releasing Her Most Expansive Music Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Music<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Grace Ives Is Opening a New Chapter\u2014and Releasing Her Most Expansive Music Yet<\/h1>\n
By <\/span>Liam Hess<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

November 13, 2025<\/p>\n

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    Photo: Clare Gillen<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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    In the fall of 2023, Grace Ives returned home to New York. After spending most of the previous year touring her critically acclaimed second album, Janky Star<\/em>, within a matter of weeks she found herself\u2014for lack of a better term\u2014crashing out. In a remarkably candid letter accompanying the musician\u2019s latest three singles\u2014released under the tongue-in-cheek title of, well, Singles<\/em>\u2014Ives recounts the period that followed: hitting rock bottom; crying and vomiting; \u201cdrinking, lying, and hiding.\u201d While Ives had been candid in the past about her difficult relationship with alcohol and drugs, things had reached a new low.<\/p>\n

    \u201cIt\u2019s so crazy,\u201d she tells me, clearly on the other side of that turbulent period. She\u2019s sitting, fresh-faced and with cotton candy-pink hair, in the home office of her Brooklyn apartment, surrounded by bric-\u00e0-brac. \u201cEven just trying to close my eyes and think about what happened\u2026 it feels like I wasn\u2019t myself. It doesn\u2019t feel like a true part of me, or who I am right now.\u201d She likens the experience of being holed up at home to water sitting still for too long: \u201cthings just got stagnant and murky and disgusting.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cI stopped working and performing and didn\u2019t have to be in the studio, and I wasn’t taking care of myself,\u201d Ives goes on. So how does she feel today? \u201cI feel like I\u2019m just now realizing what my life is\u2014or just now feeling like I\u2019m living a real life,\u201d she replies, before breaking into a smile. \u201cIt\u2019s a little like opening all the windows in the house and letting the fresh air come in.\u201d<\/p>\n

    You can hear it in the music. In lieu of the hyperactive, tightly wound tracks on Janky Star<\/em>\u2014like pop songs bitten off in chunks and chewed up into strangely elegant new forms\u2014the first track of the three released last week, \u201cAvalanche,\u201d lands with an epic sweep. \u201cI want, want, want and I take, take, take \/ Feeling sorry not sorry for the mess that I make,\u201d she sings over a frenzied, ping-ponging beat before launching into a thrilling chorus packed with thundering piano chords, Enya-like synth stabs, and Ives giving it all she\u2019s got vocally.<\/p>\n

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    The song is accompanied by a delightful video of Ives road-tripping through the California desert\u2014dancing in front of the Trona Pinnacles, doing karaoke through the window of a seedy bar, singing in the darkness of a motel room illuminated by a cheap disco light, and dangling an alien figurine out the window of a speeding car. \u201cIt has a sense of humor, I think, which is important,\u201d says Ives of the visual. \u201cI can feel so serious when I\u2019m writing. My music is really serious to me. And I think that\u2019s another thing that\u2019s different this time around: I\u2019m like, \u2018I\u2019m not fucking around in my bedroom anymore. This is my life, so let\u2019s take it seriously.\u2019 But it\u2019s nice to have those moments, like the video, where I remember that making things can be light and fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Where Ives is often described as a bedroom pop artist\u2014a labeling that is partly just factual, given the majority of Ives\u2019s previous music was written with a Roland MC-505 and a guitar at home, before being taken to a studio to be \u201cbeefed up,\u201d in her words\u2014the new songs point towards something bolder and more expansive, like she\u2019s finally opening her music (and herself) up to the world. \u201cThat more spacious sound also came about through needing to have a bigger life,\u201d she explains. \u201cI needed to have a more full life. It can\u2019t just be me. I\u2019m not the center of the universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Immediately after her life in New York came crashing down around her, Ives headed for Los Angeles, where she spent much of last year working on the material that she\u2019s now releasing\u2014and which points towards a third, as-yet-unannounced, album. She recalls spending much of her early weeks there in libraries around the city. Reading and just sitting with herself, she realized that being productive doesn\u2019t always have to mean actually making things. \u201cI can so easily be like, \u2018Man, I didn\u2019t do anything today. I didn\u2019t work on anything,\u2019 and beat myself up over that. I think I really had to keep in the spirit of just getting out of the house, and exploring this new uncharted territory, and being around people who are on their laptops doing God knows what.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    Eventually, Ives joined forces with the cult-favorite producer Ariel Rechtshaid to begin writing a new record in earnest, and inevitably, the dramatic changes that had taken place in her life were reflected in the music she was making\u2014not just lyrically, but also in terms of their scale and ambition. Working out of a studio packed with an array of weird and wonderful instruments, she played them all\u2014a Mellotron, a tack piano, two different kinds of organs\u2014and let that noodling inform the direction of the songs.<\/p>\n

    Vocally, too, she felt emboldened to head into new territory. On past records, Ives\u2019s hushed, husky voice has been dialed down to a whisper, or twisted into something almost abstract. Now, on \u201cDance With Me,\u201d she lets her voice glide and swoop with a silky flutter, firmly at the front of the mix, while on \u201cMy Mans,\u201d she launches into a full-on belt in the chorus, evoking the drama of an \u201980s power ballad.<\/p>\n

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    \u201cI think the old me would\u2019ve cringed at it a bit,\u201d she says. \u201cOh, you\u2019re actually trying to sing. How embarrassing!<\/em> But now I\u2019m like, well, why wouldn\u2019t I?\u201d She remembers being in the studio with Rechtshaid, working on \u201cMy Mans,\u201d and telling him, \u201c\u2018This sounds so big and dramatic. What are we doing?\u2019 And Ariel was like, \u2018This is the song that you wrote. It\u2019s this.<\/em> And listen to how you\u2019re singing it. You\u2019re belting, it\u2019s your ballad. Shut up. Enjoy it.\u2019\u201d She breaks into a hearty laugh. \u201cThat was cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s in keeping with a wider lesson Ives has learned and is now putting into practice. Instead of waiting for things to get better, she\u2019s making it her responsibility to change the things that aren\u2019t serving her. \u201cIn therapy, I was talking about how I really struggle with self-promotion. I think I have this weird thing where I associate promoting myself with arrogance, and I have shame around that. And my therapist was like, \u2018Dude, you\u2019re bad at self-promoting in general.\u2019 I\u2019ve stayed at horrible jobs where I\u2019m being completely mistreated and I\u2019m like, \u2018It\u2019s okay!\u2019 And everyone\u2019s like, \u2018Girl, quit.\u2019 That kind of self-promotion, too, I find uncomfortable. But I\u2019ve realized the antidote to that is actually just doing it.<\/em> And I need to keep doing that now that I\u2019m taking this seriously and I\u2019m taking my quality of life seriously. And it\u2019s helpful. Sharing myself is helpful\u2014to me, and hopefully to other people.\u201d<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s a valid instinct, though one that doesn\u2019t necessarily come naturally to her: Even over the course of our interview, I can sense her hold back, and then realizing it\u2019s healthier to let it all spill out. \u201cThis, right now, is the first time I\u2019ve talked about my music in, like, two years,\u201d she acknowledges at one point, after struggling to think of an answer right off the bat. \u201cIt\u2019s a little surreal, because I haven\u2019t done it in so long.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    If the caliber of Ives\u2019s new music is anything to go by, there will be plenty of new heights to scale on the self-promotion front. \u201cThese songs definitely feel like the start of something totally new. I think that you can feel in these songs that there is something bigger happening\u2014there\u2019s more life and more energy. I think that when I listen to them, I can feel that.\u201d I reassure her that, as a listener, one can feel it too\u2014and that I\u2019d like to picture her finishing our conversation, shutting the laptop lid, and going over to throw her windows open, ready to receive that invigorating rush of fresh air.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

    Source URL: http:\/\/vogue.com\/article\/grace-ives-singles-interview<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Music Grace Ives Is Opening a New Chapter\u2014and Releasing Her Most Expansive Music Yet By Liam Hess November 13, 2025 Photo: Clare Gillen In the fall of 2023, Grace Ives returned home to New York. After spending most of the previous year touring her critically acclaimed second album, Janky Star, within a matter of weeks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":690970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50],"class_list":["post-690969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-vogue-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=690969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/690970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=690969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=690969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=690969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}