Gracie Abrams didn’t exactly know what Daughter From Hell was going to become when she wrote “Hit the Wall.” As it turned out, the song would actually help her figure it out, and ultimately introduced the album that would earn her first No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
During a recent appearance on Jake Shane‘s Therapuss podcast, Abrams vulnerably talked about the circumstances surrounding the creation of “Hit the Wall,” revealing that the song became the “north star” of her third studio album.
At the time, Abrams and longtime collaborator Aaron Dessner had about six songs they really liked, but they hadn’t fully produced them yet. She said there wasn’t much “glue” connecting the different pieces of the project, and it just felt incohesive. It left both her and Dessner feeling somewhat discouraged about where the album was headed.
“I think he and I were both sort of feeling a bit discouraged at that point,” Abrams said, recalling that they weren’t sure what the album was supposed to encompass, sound like, or talk about. They didn’t even know if they would make the pop star’s next album together.
That uncertainty coincided with a particularly difficult day for Abrams. She was feeling lonely and missing a friend “in a big way” as she made her way to the studio in New York.
“I was really sad going to the studio that morning,” she remembers. “You know when you’re [in New York], it’s the best here, and the kind of … when you’re quite sad or you feel very lonely and you walk [around] and the tears just are happening?”
Abrams said she was walking down Bleecker Street while crying when she finally arrived at the studio. Dessner had gotten there a couple of hours earlier, and when Abrams opened the door, the beginning of “Hit the Wall” was playing. Just the piano chords were enough to immediately resonate with her.
“It perfectly matched what my walk was,” she said. “I was like, this is exactly the thing that I’m feeling.”
From there, the writing process seemed to happen almost instinctively. Abrams described creating “Hit the Wall” as almost “trance-like,” comparing the experience to being on “some funny psychedelic.” She admitted that she barely remembers writing the song at all.
“I don’t remember writing it,” she said. “I just remember it being done.”
The song immediately felt bigger than a stand-alone track. Abrams knew she wanted it to introduce the album, particularly because its emotional trajectory mirrored what she felt she was experiencing creatively.
“It felt like it became sort of a north star for the album,” she explained.
That decision proved especially significant considering what Daughter From Hell would go on to accomplish. Released last month, on July 17, the 16-track album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, giving Abrams her first chart-topper on the all-genre albums ranking. The lead single, “Hit the Wall,” released in May of this year, also became a Billboard Hot 100 hit, peaking at No. 26.
For Abrams, though, the song’s central metaphor — hitting a wall, watching everything break apart and then trying to rebuild — reflected the emotional journey she wanted the rest of the album to take. Abrams described the feeling as reaching a point where “everything kind of shatters,” leaving you to figure out how to put everything back together.
That idea became a throughline for Daughter From Hell, turning the song that emerged from one uncertain, emotional morning into the record’s starting line.
Watch the exclusive podcast episode on Spotify or Netflix.
