Grace Ives is Somebody's Girlfriend

Two days before the release of her third album, Grace Ives wedged in a Zoom call between therapy and a rehearsal to talk to Byline about Girlfriend, the highly anticipated follow-up to her beloved 2022 album Janky Star.

Girlfriend was recorded in LA on and off over two years, since Ives routinely paused production to return home to her native Brooklyn. This was the first time she worked with others, producing the album alongside Ariel Rechtshaid (HAIM, Vampire Weekend) and his collaborator John DeBold. The result is a polished rush of synths and expansive melodies reckoning with oneself and shame, capped off by the gloriously thunderous album closer “Stupid Bitches” and its ringing affirmations. “It doesn’t hurt me anymore," Ives demands in the chorus, and it feels like a shot of adrenaline.

When I talked to Ives, she was sitting on a Murphy bed in the back house she rents in North Hollywood, her halo of faded bubblegum curls surrounded by “Squidward green” walls on the 95 degree morning. Full of anxious anticipation at the thought of her album coming out, she describes having just talked to her therapist about navigating the line between dread and excitement and choosing to identify with the latter. “Maybe it will be someone's album where they’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is so important to me right now,’” she wonders. “The chance of that happening is pretty cool to me.”

In your New York Times profile, you talk about personal changes over the last few years in terms of getting sober and taking a break with your long-term boyfriend. Were there any musical changes as well?

I did a lot of car listening. I tried to not be in control of the music, just let things play or listen to the radio. My friend Sydney was like, ‘This is some kind of meditation,’ where you're open to all sound. In the studio, I was shown songs that I've never heard before for one reason or another. I hadn’t listened to “Tusk” by Fleetwood Mac all the way through. I was shown songs by Peter Gabriel and Nine Inch Nails I’d never heard. Now I feel way more open to dissonance and grit, which doesn't show everywhere on the record, but I mean, it does feel a little dirty all over.

In the first verse of “Dance With Me,” you mention the movie “The Hours.” What media or other art forms influence your writing process?

Movies for sure. I watched this movie called Wake and Fright. It's a niche Australian movie about a guy who goes on Christmas vacation and gets stuck in a cyclical alcoholic journey. It's really awesome to me. It was so beautiful and fun to look at, but it also showed the feeling of struggling to make it out of some cycle. I was reading a lot when I was working on this music and highlighting things and using that as inspiration for writing. I'm a big consumer, I always have a TV show on in my more anxious moments. I'll write things down that I hear in movies and shows and around in the wild, which comes into songwriting.

How did you decide on the album title?

I found the word “girlfriend” when I was thinking of a throughline in the lived experience in these songs. When I think of my own identity, and what I boil down to when I think about myself too hard, it's in terms of being a girl, or a daughter, or a partner to somebody, or somebody's girlfriend. It feels like a silly title to me, also, because I've been with my boyfriend for like 11-plus years. I call my cat girlfriend, like it's charming and positive. It's that deep, but it's also not that deep.

Who would be your ideal listener for Girlfriend?

Obviously, I think it's for everyone, and I think that the people who attach themselves to it and align with it will probably end up surprising me. I think if somebody is struggling with being comfortable with themselves, they might find something, because I am always going through that too. It's kind of inevitable in my writing. Or, if somebody's trying to come out of the other side of shame, they might find something too.

Is there anything that you never get asked about that you want to talk about?

I feel like some things are definitely avoided, but maybe that's good that they're avoided.

Like, what kinds of things?

I don't know, my body. It's kind of cool that no one's asking me about that, even though I'm not skinny, and people love to be like, “Why aren't you skinny?” or, “How do you feel about not being skinny?” That just shows that it's in my head and I'm just...

How could you possibly not be?

I want to wear this dress on Saturday, it doesn't have a sleeve on one side and I was like, that's so cool, I have to wear it for the people who would see it and be like, “Whoa, cool.” I remember one night I was on Pinterest and seeing pictures of bigger people in my size looking dope as fuck, and I was like, “Whoa, representation matters to me in this moment. That's crazy.” But yeah, I was thinking about wearing this dress, but now that I get closer to it, I'm scared. So, maybe it's just LA getting to me.

I mean, you’re a musician, but you have to think about your image all the time.

Right, the music is an internal kind of expression. It's really a lot of thinking and dreaming and pulling up memories and finding the right words in my head. So, the external product of it is the music, but now I'm in the phase where it's me. Presenting myself and showing myself and being in random little street interviews, and it's uncomfortable. But, first of all, nobody cares but me, and then second of all, if they do care, I have to show myself and be myself, because maybe it's important. Like, all these bigger people that I love are just losing weight, and it makes me so sad. But I'm also like, whatever, if that makes you happy, but like, why does that make you happy? But it makes me happy. It's complicated.

How are you feeling about playing live again?

I'm actually really excited. In rehearsals, I was nervous at first because I've never really played a show of my own music with other people. I always just press play [on a backing track] and go up and give it all I got. But now I have people, like I have an amazing drummer, Ben Lumsdaine, and John DeBold, who worked on the album with me, is playing too. And it sounds good. All I've been hearing for the past three years is the recorded versions of these songs or myself playing them alone, so it's crazy to hear them being accompanied by other people. I have actual help doing it, we have someone doing lights, someone doing sound. I'm kind of set up for it to be a new level of good.