Gracie Abrams and Paul Mescal Did Not Write a Love Song

When a duo of young lovers sit together at a piano bench to write a song, you might expect it to end up being a basic love song. But that’s not the case for two sad sacks (complimentary) like Gracie Abrams and Paul Mescal. On her new album, Daughter From Hell, out now, Abrams co-wrote one song with her boyfriend called “Imaginary Friend,” and it’s just as morose as the rest of Abrams’s catalogue. “I felt you in the morning in the kitchen / And it spooked me ‘cause you weren’t there,” Abrams sings as the song opens. And suddenly, the listener realizes that she may have co-written a song with her current boyfriend about the specter of an ex.

Whether or not the song is about an ex, it’s certainly about someone in Abrams’s life who is no longer around anymore. “You don’t know even half of what you’re missin’,” Abrams sings on the second verse. “I’m cool now if you even care.” As she continues to sing, it seems like she’s talking to someone whom she wants to get back together with because she made a mistake before. “Promise not to laugh, I got it wrong,” she wails. “Let’s run it back / Don’t be a figment of my imagination / But you are, and I fucking hate it.” Overall, it’s a pretty emotionally masochistic song to imagine writing with your partner, but these are the people who wrote “Camden” and starred in Aftersun, respectively. Sadness is their specialty.

Abrams, for what it’s worth, didn’t set out to expressly write a song with Mescal. She told Popcast that she realized one day while with Mescal that she didn’t have many “strummers” on the album, so they just sat down to remedy that. “That wasn’t some groundbreaking event for us,” she added. “We have a very creative home, with friends who are so good at what they do. Everyone feels happy to share that with one another.” They ended up just sitting down and “trading lines” back and forth. Lines directed toward a person who isn’t there like “Is it me or is it so hot / Is it time to take our clothes off?” Sounds … thorny.