How Gracie Abrams’ Gen Z ‘Superpowers’ Propelled Her To Superstardom

On the morning after her lauded — and extraordinarily well-attended — set at Lollapalooza, singer-songwriter Gracie Abrams is basking in the glow of a career-defining moment.

“I had absolutely no clue what to anticipate at all and I don’t know that you can imagine a crowd that looks that size even in your dreams,” she says. “Especially because backstage, it really feels like this tiny family of band and crew that is such stark contrast to the scale of what it ended up being. But doing it with these people? It’s overwhelming for a second and then it feels like home.”

It was almost a cinematic set-up: Abrams took the stage in the gloaming of a sweaty Chicago night, the crowd at Grant Park stretching from end-to-end as the sun dipped into Lake Michigan. And she capped it all dueting with the legendary Robyn on the latter’s “Dancing On My Own,” which Abrams had covered during her first Lollapalooza appearance in 2022, a crowd she said “looked a little different” than the throng that jammed in to to see her in 2025.

A career-defining performance, sure, for the not-yet 26-year-old Abrams, but also the centerpiece of a few weeks of sold-out shows and festival appearances that would count as a banner run for any artist at any point in their career.

There were two shows at Boston’s TD Garden, a stop at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage and two sold-out performances at Madison Square Garden. After Lollapalooza, Abrams hopped the border again for a performance at Osheaga in Montreal, then it’s off to the west coast for two hometown shows at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California; a stop at Outside Lands, a debut at Red Rocks and then two at Mexico City’s Pepsi Center WTC.

And then? Then Abrams gets a break.

Finally.

“This will be the first break that we’ve had since we started in 2021,” she says. “The longest break we’ve had between playing shows in four years has been maybe three weeks or a month.” 

Which isn’t to say she’s ready to get away from the people who have traveled this road with her: her band, her crew, her CAA agents Shirin Nury and Carole Kinzel, her manager Alex DePersia at By The Way (formerly of Laffitte Management). Abrams has real end-of-the-school-year feelings about it all.

“It’s a group project and I love that so much, I treasure it and I learn from the people who I get to do it with,” she says. “I’ve really been growing up alongside them over the past four years and four years isn’t that long of course but 21 to 25 (years old), those are some formative years. … It’s real earned friendship and earned trust.”

And celebrating that relentless, seemingly endless climb from her first show — according to Pollstar Boxoffice, it was Sept. 1, 2021, at the 250-cap. Constellation Room at The Observatory in Santa Ana, California — to now is what Kinzel and Nury, had in mind when they laid out “The Secret of Us Deluxe Tour.”

“We really envisioned this as a quote-unquote ‘victory lap’ to cover a limited amount of markets and center it around Lollapalooza, Osheaga and Outside Lands,” Nury says. “We wanted to put a bow on ‘The Secret Of Us Tour’ and celebrate the release of the deluxe album. But with the success of that album, we quickly expanded this into multiple shows in some of the markets and, frankly, it delightfully exceeded everyone’s expectations.”

Her promoter Lesley Olenik, Live Nation senior vice president, global touring, said the timing was perfect.

“She started in 2021 with intimate club and theater shows, steadily growing her fanbase with each tour and piece of music. The decision to launch an arena run came at the perfect time—her second studio album, The Secret of Us, was an instant success, her 2024 theater and amphitheater tour sold out immediately with multiple dates added, and opening for Taylor Swift introduced her to new fans. These factors made it clear that she was more than ready to headline—and sell out— multiple nights in arenas around the world,” she said.

DePersia says playing America’s great theaters — the Greek in Los Angeles, Radio City Music Hall in New York and others — was “hugely important” on the main part of the tour, but after the success of the record during the larger tour, it felt right to celebrate with a limited run of iconic arenas.

“With the success of the deluxe album, we knew we had to to do something to honor that as well,” she says. “We thought ending the year in arenas like Madison Square Garden and The Forum was essentially tying a perfect bow on The Secret of Us in the most organic way.” 

It’s been quite a journey for Abrams who, when the CAA team first linked up with her, “didn’t even have a Spotify page,” Kinzel says. Abrams, of course, now indeed has a presence on the streaming service; her song “That’s So True” is over 1.2 billion streams and two other songs, “I Love You, I’m Sorry” and “I Miss You I’m Sorry” are over 700 million. Her top five songs on the streaming service totalling more than 3 billion streams.

“She had a YouTube page where she was uploading these 30-second clips of her original songs,” Nury says. “And there was already such a robust fan base that these fans were taking those clips and looping them to create three-minute original songs, which is just incredible.”

That led to a deal with Interscope with a standalone single in 2019, followed by an EP in 2020 and two full-lengths since. 

But those early snippets and the guerilla production of a fanbase that lived online (and eventually included admirers like Lorde and Phoebe Bridgers) is evidence of the connection Abrams fosters with her listeners, primarily Gen Z and Alpha women and girls, for whom she is a sounding board, a spokesperson, an inspiration. Her songs tell tales of love and heartbreak, confidence and vulnerability, wisdom and innocence. They are earnest and they are never cynical. Hers is the voice of an older sister to many of her fans and of the smart, gracious and comforting roommate everyone dreams they’ll land in college.

It’s why her crowds feature so many girls with hair cut into her now-signature long-bob, adorned with bows that are the Abrams fan equivalent of Taylor Swift’s friendship bracelets and all the purple accessories at an Olivia Rodrigo show (Abrams, not coincidentally, opened for both; Swift on “Eras” and Rodrigo on her 2022 “Sour” tour).

It would be unfair to saddle Abrams with the tag that she’s the Zoomer Swift — it’s unfair to saddle anyone with such a comparison and besides, the Gen Zers and their Alpha younger sisters have proven stubbornly chimerical, difficult to coalesce into monolithic pronouncements about taste — but, Nury, says, Abrams really is committed to “creating a safe space for young women specifically.”

“I think that will have ripple effects for many generations to follow,” Nury says. “There’s a point in the show where she takes out her notebook and just reads this statement that brings the whole audience together and reminds us all of our humanity; how everyone is deserving of love and joy. It’s just amazing to witness the artist and the woman that she’s grown into, how she’s able to use her platform to speak such an authentic, powerful and necessary message to her fan base.” 

That notebook moment is one manager DePersia finds powerful as well.

“It’s raw, heartfelt, and utterly sincere. That type of vulnerability is celebrated with this generation,” she says. “You can feel her words land deeply with the young crowd —most of whom are women. Gracie speaks with a quiet confidence, fully aware of the weight her voice carries and the impact it has on everyone listening.” 

And those dates opening for Swift — 49 of them, more than any other artist on the world-historical “Eras” tour — were seminal to Abrams’ development as a touring act.

“Taylor has forever in my life been such a North Star artist and writer,” she says. “Being asked to be on her tour, I feel like my posture changed and I said, ‘I want to treat this like college.’”

The learning parts of college, that is.

“I wanted to try to be a sponge,” she says, “and absorb as much as I could, not just from her when she was on stage but also from her team and her crew and her band, because they are the bar in terms of how you run a touring business and the way that they take care of each other, acknowledge each other, respect each other and hold everyone to the same standard of excellence. That all comes from a shared passion and an understanding that every single person who is there, is there because they are required to make this thing run.”

Abrams says she “could talk about the experience for the rest of time” and it doesn’t feel like hyperbole.

The change and the growth from those months of playing on a stadium stage, backing the biggest artist of the century, were noticed by those closest to her.

Take her tour manager — Mac Dunster — who’s been on the road with Abrams for all of those four years.

“She learned what it was like to have to command the stage with that gigantic audience and what being in that room feels like and getting to watch how Taylor navigated it,” says Dunster. In the last two years, (Abrams) wholly evolved into this power performer which is so cool to see.”

The veteran agent Kinzel, who is a Pollstar Women of Live Hall of Fame Honoree, agrees.

“She saw what it took to perform on a platform like that and she did it,” she says. “She learned how to really control the stage and that audience and shine. Everything has a learning curve but she progressed really quickly and it helped her immensely.”

But in that evolution, she’s never lost her connection with the audience. There are early recordings of her live shows where the crowd is so intimate, it’s possible to literally hear them whispering between songs. That’s a big difference from a stadium support slot for Taylor Swift or trying to sing to the back of the crowd at Lollapalooza or Glastonbury. Dunster says maintaining the connection despite the size of the room is Abrams’ “superpower.”

“Honestly I don’t know another artist that I have witnessed that has been able to do it as well as she has,” she says. “She can make a massive room feel incredibly intimate. A lot of the feedback we’re getting and in my experience watching it is just how insane it is that she can make it feel that way. We just did Madison Square Garden and our first show in New York was in her first two weeks of performing ever at the (relatively nearby) Mercury Lounge which is so tiny, so compact … and then to see her just play Madison Square Garden and not only be able to command this huge stage, this huge audience but then be able to suck them into these like tiny little moments where they feel like they’re in her bedroom or where she’s alone on the little C-stage.”

The “superpower” sentiment is universal on Abrams’ team. Olenik used the same word.

“Gracie’s superpower is her ability to make any room feel intimate,” she said. “Her music also lends to this environment. She has a deep understanding of her fans and designs her show with intention—making even the biggest arena or stadium feel personal and connected. That feeling of closeness that started in theaters still comes through in every moment.”

And DePersia says Abrams truly focuses on building those connections, no matter the size of the building.

“She always prioritizes her interaction with the fans and making sure that they feel at home with her.  Whether it’s her movements between stages or sharing their beautiful faces on the IMAGs, she appreciates and respects them,” she says.

Her ability to recreate the small-room feel even on the biggest of stages may explain why her favorite show, even after playing stadiums, festivals and the world’s most famous arenas, is still a small one from February 2022, where she played for 1,150 people and grossed $21,320.

“Chicago’s a city I’ve only spent time in for shows,” she says. “The first time we played Chicago was The Metro and it was my favorite show immediately and it’s remained my favorite show. …I always go back to The Metro show when I remember how I hope a show will feel.”

It’s not just that Abrams has been able to hone that superpower at every venue level, it’s that she’s been able to do so while moving through the steps so quickly. From small rooms to clubs to theaters to her first arena dates on a tour of New Zealand and Australia in May that sold out, often with multiples, including three nights at Sydney’s Qudos Bank Arena (43,349 tickets, $3,757,628 gross). The story was the same in Europe and now North America.

Abrams didn’t skip steps; she sprinted up them.

“She has an incredible work ethic. We knew that from our first meeting,” Kinzel says. “She was so serious and intentional about what she was doing and we sensed that right away. We don’t like to skip steps, but we had to step up the pace to catch up with her success.”

They’ve caught up now, with this grand hurrah in the prestige arenas, at the big festivals and the Red Rocks show. Abrams has never been to the picturesque amphitheater, not even as a fan. It just so happens her dates coincide with the peak of the Perseid meteor shower.

“I have this fantasy that we’ll be able to turn all the lights off maybe and just pause the show and watch because I can’t even begin to imagine how crazy magical that will be,” she says.

Don’t doubt her. Her timing hasn’t been wrong yet.