When Grace Ives appears on NME’s computer screen from her San Francisco hotel room, head framed by an untidy halo of pastel pink hair, it’s a few days after some big news has been shared with the world. The former bedroom pop artist and current indie-pop darling will open for Olivia Rodrigo in 2027, getting her first taste of arena crowds at already sold-out shows in Stockholm, Amsterdam, Munich and London next March and April. Right now, she’s feeling “pretty ecstatic”, she beams, her eyes looking off into the distance as a grin paints her face.
“It feels like the biggest present I’ve ever gotten in my life,” she continues. “I don’t know what the appropriate reaction is. I’m overwhelmed by the vision of what that looks like when I close my eyes. It feels so massive and exciting, like what I’m doing right now, but times 200. It’s the final stage artists work towards, and I get to try it out for a week or two. It’s the ultimate validation, like the biggest person in the world being like ‘I fuck with you.’”
Big things have been bubbling up for the 31-year-old Ives, even before this announcement. Her third album ‘Girlfriend’, released in March, was met with new levels of critical acclaim, following the release of her second studio album ‘Janky Star’ in 2022, and her debut ‘2nd’ released in 2019. It’s a peak moment for the artist, who got her start releasing music from her dorm, first sharing ringtones, then an EP of nursery rhymes.
Her current headline tour might be taking her to smaller rooms than the upcoming dates with Rodrigo, but still reflects the demand for her live show – her London date next month is already sold out. At these gigs, she’s playing a mix of songs from her past three albums – music that, in her opinion, is a bit messier than Rodrigo’s sonic palette, something she sees as positive foreshadowing for the pop star’s impending third album, ‘You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love’.
“I’m excited to hear the rest of Olivia’s new music because it feels like this [opener] lineup is pointing to something a lot dirtier and grungier than I would associate with her and her work in the past,” she says, pointing to fellow tour openers like Wolf Alice and Die Spitz. Though Rodrigo’s music of late leans into the rock category, the ‘Driver’s License’ singer got her start with purely pop hits. “It’s cool that this is the music she’s excited by. It’s not super clean, and the landscape is sonically pretty diverse.”
It’s not surprising that Ives would be drawn to a “dirtier” sound from Rodrigo, since ‘Girlfriend’ came about thanks to a period of life she bluntly refers to as “gross.” In a manifesto written about the album, she identifies as a bad daughter, shitty girlfriend, and a disaster who had abandoned herself and her music. That “crash out” outlined in her statement followed the success of ‘Janky Star’, which served as a critically-acclaimed introduction for most listeners and saw the Brooklyn act merging the synth and electro-pop of her homemade debut, ‘2nd’ with pianos, guitars, and her ethereal vocals claiming “what a mess, what a lovely mess,” like in the standout track ‘Lullaby’.
With her third album, rather than sitting in that mess, she was pulled towards the idea of cleaning things up, brought on after time spent “in a desperate search for a sense of self”. “I would find myself catapulted into things that have nothing to do with me,” she says. “But I needed to test things in order to see who I am. It’s the whole writer joke of doing it for the memoir. I feel like that might just be a thing that women go through.”
But doing it for the bit got old for Ives, and the decision to stop drinking and to be honest with herself and others felt like relief. “I didn’t realise how uncomfortable [I was]. I think it’s so much nicer to tell the truth, for me personally,” she says. “I’m an anxious person, and adding a fakeness on top of anxiety is just a recipe for bad art. I’ve definitely done that. I’ve made music from a place of not wanting to be true to myself, and it hasn’t turned out the way that I personally wanted it, you know? The best version of it.”
“[Supporting Olivia Rodrigo is] the ultimate validation, like the biggest person in the world being like ‘I fuck with you’”
Ives worked alongside Ariel Rechtshaid (Charli xcx, Vampire Weekend) and John DeBold (HAIM, Dijon) to bring that hard-fought “best version” to life, penning her shift from murky morals to a clearer conscience and embracing a more expansive sonic palette. “John and I definitely did a lot of playing, we’re like two kids in the sandbox,” she says when asked about the album’s sound – one that’s delightful and light, but still holds the weight of its sometimes heavy lyrical content. “There was a lot of joy and a lot of acceptance between the two of us. And Ariel, he has a relationship with John where they’re like brothers, and I fit into that dynamic really well.”
Still, she shares that at times the recording process felt like “vulnerability bootcamp”. “All of a sudden it’s like, ‘Hey Grace, what were those lyrics that you were saying earlier that no one really liked, including you? Can you read them to everybody?’” she says while shifting her voice into a deeper octave and miming the scene. “I’m reading my bad poetry. That’s where the vulnerability came in. That’s the test of breaking through that wall. If you go through with it, then suddenly you are free to say anything.”
That no-holds-barred ethos can be heard on tracks like ‘Drink Up,’ where Ives calls herself a “little bitch” while she takes little hits of this and sips of that, her voice shifting from confident to petulant, over bouncy, then distorted, then lush walls of sound. “‘Drink Up’ exists in three parts and includes tempo changes, starts and stalls. When you try to record that, it can feel heady or like pretentious music theory. I feel like we got it to feel natural, and this song in particular, with all the mood changes to feel natural, it’s ambitious.”
The album plays out that way, never insulting the listener’s intelligence by taking a suspected route. That’s evident on ‘Stupid Bitches’, as her distorted vocals spin out the words “it doesn’t hurt me anymore” over clashing percussion and strings, or on the glitchy ‘Avalanche’, where she admits to “feeling sorry not sorry for the mess I made”, before releasing a siren-like call. On ‘My Mans’, her voice stands out against the track with the steadiness of a religious chant before she leans into the full pop prowess of her vocals at the chorus. It’s feminine and feral, alluring and scathing, and as she sings “Every single guy I meet completes me/ I need a lover who can love me back” over swelling keys, you’re in total agreement with the narrator, despite knowing she may not be a trustworthy one.
After creating an album from the fertile debris of a short-lived self-sabotage spiral, Ives is decidedly pro-crash-out. “I think crash-outs show people who you are. Or, even if it doesn’t, and it feels like a weird toddler version of you, tantruming that you wouldn’t wanna claim as your own… It’s easy to be like, ‘Oh my god, I was so crazy!’ But that was you. It’s good to lose your composure every now and then because you got it out of the way. People are complicated. And people should be allowed to be complicated.”
And even impending success can be complicated. For instance, the buzz around Rodrigo introducing Ives to a new audience has led some publications to name her among indie acts who are about to “blow up”. For an artist who has put in the work to shed false pretences, that proclamation is a reminder to remain as authentic as possible. “I have to be very careful to be true to myself and nice to myself and let myself be who I am,” she says. “Because I think that the realest version of myself is what people respond to.”
Grace Ives’ ‘Girlfriend’ is out now via True Panther Records/Capitol Records. She is on tour now and will support Olivia Rodrigo in 2027.