In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath wrote: “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” It’s easy to draw the line between the quote and the work of Grace Ives,  who read the novel while writing her new album, Girlfriend. Here, Ives reintroduces herself. Not necessarily as a brighter artist—she ducked second album syndrome with 2022 standout Janky Star—but as a brighter person. This time around, she is wholly alive. 

Girlfriend touches on “~~themes~~ offfffff love, addiction (YAWN! jk), hurting the ones I love, being a bad girlfriend, feeling very alone, and trying to feel better,” per the native New Yorker’s blog. Listening to it is like reading a diary entry that you wish you were smart enough to have voiced yourself. It breeds sheer joy from moments you wish you didn’t relate to. And with spirited production from Ariel Rechtshaid and John DeBold, it's swathed in a jagged shimmer all her own. There’s a lot that she is, she is, she is. It all makes Ives the easiest artist to root for. 

We caught Ives before her tour rehearsals to chat about the art of getting dressed, the magic of the library, and the idea that music is for everyone.

First off, happy belated birthday.

Grace Ives: Oh, thank you so much.

Mine was yesterday.

Yours was yesterday? Oh my God, happy birthday.

Thank you so much. What'd you get up to? How'd you celebrate?

I did very little. I just did diner breakfast, then went to Greenpoint and got some cute pens and stationary stuff at this place called Yoseka, and then went out to dinner in Red Hook. Had a cute day with my boyfriend.

That sounds fabulous. I'm not a big astrology person, but because we have such similar birthdays, I figured I’d do some research for this. Did you know that your birth chart is on a database of celebrity birth charts? 

No way.

I really wanted to share this with you. It's called Astrotheme. It says you have two fans on there. I don't know what that means.

Oh, my God, I love that.

It told me you were born on the same day as the city of Tokyo, and also Amanda Bynes, Marlon Brando, Alec Baldwin, fellow musician Leona Lewis…

Haley Kiyoko is a good one. Wait, who do you share your birthday with?

I don't know, but my birthday is the day that Kurt Cobain died, and that's the one that always sticks with me.

Yeah, maybe you are him reincarnate.

I love him. There's a lot of stuff on this page that I don't quite understand. And there's a bio that doesn't feel written by AI. It feels as though a human wrote your bio on here.

That's amazing. Maybe someone did. Also, this chart is wrong.

That's why they're in need of your time of birth, I guess. I don't know what all of this means.

I always go through phases of being obsessed, and then I just forget everything.

While I'm doing the woo, woo, metaphysics stuff, do you feel any attachment to your name being Grace? Because I feel like you gave yourself a lot of really necessary and beautiful grace on this record.

Oh, that's nice.

Is that stupid?

No, no, no. I love that my name is Grace. I love the name Grace. It's so simple and beautiful. I don't think about it as a word enough, because it is a really beautiful word. I actually read that book, Gravity and Grace. Have you heard of that?

I haven't.

Well, it's like a chapter in a Simone Weil collection of essays. She says on earth, and as humans, gravity is always working against us. We're always fighting against gravity. But the only way to truly ascend is with grace. She says it much better than I just said it, but it's really beautiful.

I read that you worked on some of these Girlfriend songs in different libraries in LA. Which one was your favorite? I think you mentioned one in Glendale somewhere.

The Glendale brand library. It’s like an art center. The lawn is manicured and pretty. It's cute. It's on a little hill. It's really cozy and perfect. And it just feels like my liberal arts college fantasy.

Do you work well in a library because it's a genuine distraction free zone for you? Or do you work well at the library because that's what you're supposed to do while you're there?

Yeah, totally, It’s a good way to just trick the eyes and the brain into thinking that it’s time for work, because it is a space for solo, introspective work. You're not really supposed to talk, which I love and is very beautiful to me. I work well there, because it's just the most extreme version of doing your work. 

Is that ever how you feel about productivity in the studio? You’re there, so you got to get stuff done?

Totally. Towards the end, when I was going over to John's house or going to Burbank to work in LA on the record, I was getting dressed, not just in cozy clothes. I was kind of putting on a work outfit, and that made me take it seriously. It’s kind of how I feel in the studio. But like, you can talk and watch YouTube.

What were you guys watching on YouTube?

Oh, God. Everything. You find yourself quoting something and you're like, Oh, you've never seen that? Like Flea playing the national anthem on the bass. There’s a whole national anthem road you can go down. Fergie, and then Flea playing it on bass. 

Do you like starting a session with that type of stuff? Is it just popping up naturally as you think of things?

It pops up naturally. A lot of the work in the studio falls around referencing things, and being like, I want this bass tone to sound like this. And then you pull it up, and then all of a sudden, you're on YouTube. Ariel is really dangerous with that. 

I love what you said about getting dressed up. I used to be like that to take tests. I'm a jeans in the airport person. 

It's kind of magical thinking, but it also feels grounded in the reality of growing up and seeing what people look like when they go to their work, wearing a suit and tie. Jeans in the airport is real.

We used to dress up for the airport as a society. I think we've all gotten a little too chill about air travel.

I'm gonna look up airplane outfits of yore. How would I even phrase that? I'll look that up later.

Okay, more on the library. I love that The Bell Jar really moved you for this record. I've been thinking about the fig tree metaphor pretty much every day lately.

Dude. I'm literally getting misty. Just you saying that ... I have the tingles on the top of my head. I didn't grow up being recommended classics, or female authors. You’d watch Family Guy, and they make a joke about Sylvia Plath dying, and you're like, lol.

What a way to go.

Yeah, what a way to go. And, like, bitches be crazy. But that book was so moving. It's so relatable and current. The way that she describes sadness and othering yourself is actually timeless. It's beautiful to read something like that, and feel so not alone. Even if it's fiction, it's just so, so moving. It feels like a young adult novel. It’s dark, but it's beautiful.

Speaking of not feeling alone, I loved what you said when you posted about the Girlfriend release. “Excited for it to be yours and not just mine.” Why does it feel good to let it out into the world?

It isn't just for me, you know? I've never worked on something like this for so long. Not intentionally, really. It's just because things went right, and things went wrong, and people live in all different places. But when I was working on it for so long, it became kind of self-involved. I'm the only one hearing it. I have the power to change all the work. It's so mine, and it's so about me, me, me, me, me. And I think I kind of can get lost in that absorbing and clouding the whole process, where I realize that I wasn't thinking about how it's for other people to like and to dislike, and to have a reaction to.That's where the art is. I've had low self esteem for like, forever, so I've gotten so used to this whiny idea that nobody cares where I'm like, the music's for me. This is my art. But it's doing myself and my art a disservice to think like that, and to do it just for me, when music is really for the world.

That's beautiful. I'm wondering what other literary references are in the mix here. The only one I really picked up on paper, the only one I’m smart enough to pick up, was just Lonesome Dove. It was the one that was spoon-fed to me. 

Which I haven't read. That's like, verbatim title, yeah. But I want to read that so badly. I have a beautiful old copy of it, and everybody says it's the best book of all time. There are a lot of quotes. I'm going to be sued by the Didion estate. Play as it Lays by Joan Didion is another one that I really related to. Just a sad woman who needs all this external stuff to validate her.

Reading her in LA is really fun.

Oh, my God, it's so good. That's the only reason why I'm looking forward to going to LA tomorrow.

That's where I live. I really love it here.

Where do you live in LA?

I just graduated college in December, from USC, so I’m near downtown.

Oh my God. Congratulations.

Thank you. That's why I keep thinking about this damn fig tree all the time. I still live by my school, so I should probably sneak into those libraries sometime soon.

I remember calling a USC library and being like, can I just come here? And they were like, yes. But then there was some weird catch. I got a little too scared of going there, but the library looks so beautiful.

There's one called Doheny that's pretty gorgeous. We have a few nice ones.

Are you from LA?

No, I'm from the south. I'm from the Carolinas.

I just learned what G.R.I.T.S. stands for.

Girl raised in the south?

Yes, exactly.

I’m so glad you know that. That beautiful TJ Maxxism.

Wait, I threw you off.

No, it's okay. We were talking about Joan Didion’s estate suing you.

Oh, yes. She says, “If you can't deal with the morning, get out of the game. You've been around a long time, you know what it is, it’s play-or-pay." That's just so cool. Sounds so Old Hollywood. Like, Hey honey, get out of here. Yeah, there's a lot. I need to get back on my reading bullshit. I read two pages and then I fall asleep.

You keep a master doc of book passages, right? What's the last thing you wrote down?

This is so sad. Here's the last thing I wrote down: "Yes," he gasped into the dark, like a boy seeing his name in ink for the first time, "there's so much room in a person, there should be more of us in here. There shouldn't be just one." And above that, I wrote “gasoline sweetness.”

I like that long quote because it does remind me of what you were just saying. About the music being for everyone. The Girlfriend cover references The Hug by Nan Goldin. Is the way you felt when you saw that photo how you want people to feel when they hear the music?

Oh, that's a good question. Yes, in that my reaction to that image, and I think most people's because it's kind of iconic, was strong. I would hope that somebody has a strong reaction to my music as well. It's mysterious, it's exciting.

You're wearing Miss Claire Sullivan on the cover, right? Why did that outfit feel right?

I think it's just such a party dress. It looks like the end of the night. It's also a white dress, so there's some wedding themes. It's just girly and something I wouldn't normally wear. It's interesting from the front and the back. It kind of looks backwards in the hug. There's something young and hopeful and party, prom, celebratory about it. 

I love that. You look like an angel in these press photos. They were fun to look at. How'd you arrive at the pink hair?

I've gone down this road of changing my hair color constantly. My natural hair color is that dirty, dirty blonde, kind of mousy brown. I was red for a while, and whenever I'm blonde, it isn't right. I saw a picture of myself in high school, and I had pink hair, and I was like, Oh yeah, that looked normal on me. It looked like that could actually be the color of my hair, whereas I dye my hair red and all these strawberry blonde colors, and it looks fine, but something about the pink feels more natural. It's not crazy. I don't know how, but there's something pretty tame about it. 

It does feel right on you. Have you heard about the hair theory? I'm always hearing people on TikTok talk about how certain celebrities only cement their superstardom once they adopt a very distinct hair style or color.

Bro. Yes, of course. That's always the hope every time I change my hair. Maybe this is the one. 

Was it fun to create the visual world for Girlfriend? So much of a rollout is content nowadays. How do you keep it feeling like art, even when team members are kind of telling you to make things?

It feels less like content and more purposeful video and photo when I'm doing stuff with people who I really like, and who have work that I like. It was hard for me to come up with ideas for what this music looks like, because I'm making it, and I'm thinking so much about what it sounds like, and I can close my eyes and see random little vignette memories when I'm listening and when I'm making. It's personal. And then I'm thinking about me and my hair and my body, but I don't naturally think beyond that. I'm not really naturally coming up with brand ideas, yeah. So I think it was kind of difficult, and I'm still finding my footing, but I've gotten really lucky with who I've been able to make things with. Even Maddy, who took the album cover photo. Maddy Rotman. I really like her work, and I feel lucky to have been shot by her.

Maybe that was the wrong question for you, because it's not like you're peddling your wares on TikTok in the way that a lot of people are doing nowadays.

I go back and forth between feeling so bad about not doing that. I tried to make TikToks, and I'm just like, I feel insane doing this. This can't be right. There has to be another way, please.

I was really surprised to hear that “Stupid Bitches” had so many scrapped rounds of lyrics, because it's such a cathartic song. What did it feel like to finally get things right there? 

It was such a breakthrough. The lyrics are kind of my simplest. They feel really simple. And it's just the feeling of beating around the bush, and then finally saying what you wanted to say. That’s how I felt in writing that song, where I don't have to speak in so many metaphors, and try to make it all flowery, and try to make it beautiful. I think I just stopped trying to make it cool and trying to make it beautiful. Then finally I was able to write a full sentence. It feels like an accomplishment, a personal achievement.

What's the oldest song on the album? What's the most recent song? Can you even keep track? Does it even matter?

Melodically, I've had a lot of these melody ideas in my phone or on my computer since I was in high school. That melody in the chorus of “My Mans” is something I wrote my senior year of high school. But as songs, the first one that we worked on was “Trouble,” and the last one was “Stupid Bitches.”

I'm really charmed by the way you speak about your collaborators in interviews. You're very quick to give them their flowers, but is there a particular moment on the album that you can attribute solely to yourself, or your own instincts or talents, that you're that you're proud of?

I mean, all of it. These are my ideas. These are all my words. There's like two words total that were suggested to me to use instead on this whole album. If you listen to the demos, it's pretty close. I think I know what I want. I can hear it in my head. I'm lucky with who I got to work with, yes, and I love to praise people.

How do you feel about the pop label? Is it accurate? Is it reductive? Do you even care about genre?

It's funny. People ask me, Oh, what kind of music do you make? And I do say I don't know, I guess pop. I think we all think of pop as Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, but pop is also Lorde and her new album. Blood Orange is pop to me. All the cool, weird stuff is pop. Pop doesn't feel wrong. It feels kind of true. I don't know how there could be one word for all of it, but if it has to be pop, I'm not saying it's not. I guess people can listen to it and judge themselves. People are like, this is anti-pop. And I'm like, Okay, I don't know what that means.

People always think it needs some type of qualifier, like alt or indie. We've strayed so far from the original definition of popular music that I don't know if we need to do all this defining.

I guess pop music is music that's supposed to be for the mainstream, and I feel like most people make their music for whoever's gonna like it. Nobody makes music thinking everybody's gonna like it. So maybe we need a new word.

You said that “Trouble” was probably the first song y'all worked on. Again, I love that song. It's sort of a love song to me. A love song about shared history. Do you feel that way?

It's definitely a love song. It's like, I love you so much, and I'm sorry that I’ve been an asshole, and I would love it if you hurt me back in some way, so that we could both be assholes, but whatever, God, I love you so much. It's like that. It's all about love. It's about all the different ways I think about this person in my life.

I thought something you said in your liner notes was incredible. “Without you there is nothing.” I'm assuming that’s about your boyfriend.

Yeah, my boyfriend. I mean, it's true. It’s true thematically in this music. Without him, there's nothing to say. And then also in my life. I mean, it's not literally true. Obviously, life is everything and everyone around me. But I don't know who I would be without him, and I don't want to think about it.

It felt like a book dedication.

Yeah, that's nice. That's good. Thank you.

On “Avalanche,” you say “sorry not sorry,” and on “What If,” you say “sorry is not enough.” What's your relationship to the word sorry? Because isn't an apology so much more than that—is that what you're getting at?

Yeah, right. I think on “What If,” it's not just sorry in that case. It's not an explanation, and it doesn't really signal that you understand what's gone wrong, or that you're trying to change. On that song, it's more like, Sorry isn't the right word here. It's not about an apology. It's not about what I've done to you. It's about who I am, and what that feels like for you to have me in your life. It's bigger than that. On “Avalanche,” I'm kind of being like, Oh, I just go around wanting and taking and not feeling bad about the things that I'm messing up. Avalanche is a cuter, cheeky “sorry not sorry.” “What If” goes a little deeper.

I'm just really grateful you didn't grovel for 11 songs on the album. I would have enjoyed that a lot less.

Totally. Me too.

You're a yogi, right? You do a lot of yoga? Do you have any rituals that keep you happy and healthy on the road?

I'm all talk these days, but yeah. The intention is to be a yogi. I'm gonna have to do at least 20 minutes a day of light yoga, just closed mouth stretching and breathing. I haven't been on tour in so long. I'm gonna have to find new rituals. It's so hard to be in and out of a car and then playing a show and then being at rest. I'm gonna have to figure something out. I really like traveling with this thing called a Shakti mat. It's cool. It's like an acupressure mat. It hurts, but it's really great to hurt. I like to stand on that.

I'm excited for you to play with Robyn. That's gonna be crazy.

Me too, me too. That's gonna be trippy as fuck. She's my favorite.

I'll end on this—I feel like people have called you “buzzy” for three album cycles. And to me, that always seems to imply that so many people are talking about the music that the artist will reach critical mass and become really famous, really suddenly. As a person of the buzzy experience, what do you actually want to be on the precipice of?

I want to be on the precipice of more people listening to my music and responding to it. I've never been the kind of person who's wanted to be famous or anything like that. I don't think about that, but I do think that it would be nice if more people were listening and talking about me. That would be awesome. Just so that I could keep doing this.

That's the tricky thing about music. You can always make it, but you can't always make it in the way that you want.

Yeah. And maybe those limitations are good, but the goal is to reach people. I'd like to just be on the precipice of reaching way more people.