It’s been eight years since Grace VanderWaal was the bashful 12-year-old girl who wowed and won America’s Got Talent with her ukulele playing and textured, breathy vocals. Now 20 and all grown up, Grace is back with brand new music and a scandalous Megalopolis role, and she’s checking in with Audacy’s Bru to chat about it all.

Despite some admitted “ups and downs” throughout 2024 thus far, Grace told Bru she currently feels “like I have some strong footing right now, I feel very confident in what we're brewing up.”

Newly signed to Pulse Records, Grace shared a bit of insight into some of the changes this year brought, that had her feeling those “ups and downs.”

Starting off with a positive, Grace admitted the decision to sign with Pulse has been “the best thing that ever happened to me.” Going on to note, “There were so many things that happened that was like so destined and just me writing ‘What's Left of Me,’ and then Columbia dropping me, and got rid of everyone around me,” which she admitted, “wasn't planned.”

“I was already getting rid of everyone around me,” she continued, “and then I got that call and they were like, ‘oh you can't have any of the music that you've made in this long time.’” Which Grace revealed was around “40 songs.”

Feeling determined to rise above, Grace decided, “I’m going to f***ing write an album, I'm going to write an album and I'm going to do this right… the way that I knew it always should be.”

Comparing the way things went down to a bad relationship that you’re being gaslit about, Grace expressed, “I feel like every single day for the past six months, at least once a day, I'm like, ‘I f***ing knew it was real. I knew it was real, and I'm doing it right now, and I knew that people could work like that.'”

Feeling invigorated in this new chapter, Grace confessed, “I was so afraid of change for a really, really long time because I've been doing this for so long,” so much so that the people she surrounded herself with evolved to feel more like family, “like I've known you since I was like 12 years old.”

“So you can feel so trapped and stuck… but I knew that a change needed to happen because things weren't really working. Also my personal life was weirdly exactly mirroring this as well," Grace added, “like the similar parallel of things are going wrong because I can't let go of things and staying in places for the mere fact of staying there, but not for any other benefits.”

Deciding to “pull the trigger,” and make a change, “five great things happened,” and she realized, “good things are happening when I do that,” and she understood it was time to let go.

Delving into those exciting things she’s got brewing, which includes that album she mentioned, and intended to do right, Grace expressed, “it turned out better than I could have ever imagined.” Adding, “It ended up being way more of this conceptual thing,” and “way bigger than I was expecting.”

Noting she didn’t want to give too much away, Grace did offer that, “From there… I started tweaking it more, and being like, okay, let me lean into what's naturally happening here because this is really like abstract and cool.” Additionally revealing the project should be expected in early 2025.

In the meantime, Grace has other exciting things going on, which includes plans to release “acoustic versions of the singles,” as well as her role as Vesta Sweetwater, "a virginal pop star who gets snagged in a deep-fake sex scandal,” in Francis Ford Coppola’s film Megalopolis, which Grace also wrote a song for.

Grace talked a bit about the experience of working with such formidable titans of industry, admitting that while it was “intimidating at times,” it was a “kind environment," and everyone was “very nice and funny.” Also sharing about how writing “Pledge” was quite different that when she’d contributed to the soundtracks of Disney movies she been in in the past.

Discussing her album a bit more, Grace described the new sound it will bring, saying, “I feel like it's very rich in writing. So I wanted to produce the songs around the writing, so some of them are more abstract in that way,” she added, bringing up Frank Ocean’s production style as example of what she loves. "I would say that that's one I can listen to and I genuinely feel like he wrote it first and then put emphasis from the words with music. But then some of them are more funzy, whatever. So I would say an equal balance of that. Some are more artistic and weird, and then some… you can sing in the car.”

Expanding more about her songwriting process, Grace shared, “I'm obsessed with the Mellotron, I basically write everything on it like I always have.” So her songwriting “normally starts there and then words and then… you just take it from there.”

To wrap up the conversation Grace discussed how she wants to read more, how she’s “basically like a reinvented person weekly," plus a few other random topics you won't want to miss. To catch it all, check out the entire Check In above.

Words by Maia Kedem Interview by Bru