Gracie Abrams has released the first single and video from her third album, Daughter from Hell.
"Hit The Wall" has upbeat music, but the lyrics paint a picture of someone in crisis, wrecking relationships because of mental health issues. "Sooner or later, you'll find out/ I live in a pattern of breakdowns," she sings in one line. "I barely deserve it if you do stay/ I wish you would anyway," she sings in another line. "I'm not a problem you can solve."
The chorus is, "Now you can watch me hit the wall."
The video takes one of the lyrics -- "I'm afraid that my fortress is a glass box" -- and makes it literal, with Gracie lying down in a glass box. She's also shown being examined by doctors, going in and out of doors, and standing in a hallway. At one point, a set of little girl twins appear in the hallway, like in that super-creepy scene in The Shining. The video ends with her singing in front of a burning tree.
Gracie shouts out one of her musical heroes in the lyrics, singing "'A Case of You' playing in the hallway/ Hallucinations that I downplay." "A Case of You" is a track from Joni Mitchell's iconic 1971 album Blue. Gracie loves Joni Mitchell so much that she even has a Joni-related tattoo.
On Instagram, Gracie's producer and co-writer Aaron Dessner wrote, "This was the song @gracieabrams and I wrote one day — when we were literally hitting a wall creatively — that broke through and brought everything else into focus. .... Gracie you're a genius and I'm so grateful for all the trust you put in me to help excavate these songs."
Daughter from Hell is out July 17.