Gracie Abrams puts her heart in the line of fire on her latest single, “Close to You,” released seven years after she first teased it with a 20-second snippet on Instagram in 2017. The completed version of the record will appear on her forthcoming studio album, The Secret of Us, out June 21.
“After seven years of sitting with the ‘Close To You’ demo, it finally felt right to rework and include on this album,” Abrams shared in a statement. “I’m really grateful for the encouragement from everyone online who let me know they still want to hear song after all this time — it makes me want to dance with them, and I can’t wait till we get to do that.”
A few days before releasing “Close to You,” Abrams explained how it ended up on her second album when many fans were beginning to lose hope that they would ever receive it in its entirety. One audio for the unreleased version of the song has been used in more than 11,000 videos on TikTok, many of which were accompanied by captions pleading for it to be released.
“I wrote Close To You seven years ago and we made a demo that i posted 20 seconds of and you somehow cared about it enough for us to revisit the song seven years later,” she wrote on Instagram. “Close To You was not initially a part of TSOU — it’s from a different time entirely, we had finished the whole record top to bottom, but i heard you loud and clear. consider this one a bonus track pre-deluxe.”
Abrams produced “Close to You” with Sam de Jong, with whom she previously collaborated on “Stay” and “Minor.” In her post, she wrote, “Reuniting was so sweet! @itssamdejong, thank you for doing this with me!!! @electricladystudios, I love you forever, and I mean it.”
The Secret of Us follows the release of Abram’s debut album Good Riddance and was introduced with the lead single “Risk,” which was produced by the Nationals’ Aaron Dessner. “We had real, true fun writing this album,” Abrams shared when announcing the record. “There were also the occasional tears.”
