The Secret Of Us Tour: A Concert Review

The Secret of Us Tour ‘24, Gracie Abrams’ highly anticipated fall American tour, took place from September through October and wrapped up just recently. I had the opportunity to attend the second night (Oct. 5), out of three of Gracie’s shows at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. As a longtime fan of Abrams, seeing how much she has grown as an artist was surreal. It was great to see the crowds she was drawing in and the ability to spot fellow fans by just the bows in their hair. The last time I saw her was a year ago, for her Good Riddance acoustic show held in NYC with a capacity of around 300. In contrast, the capacity of the venue where I saw her most recently was around 6000.

Gracie’s opener for this tour was ROLE MODEL, someone I was ecstatic to see. I had wanted to attend his tour in 2022 but wasn’t able to, so getting to see him then felt like a great bonus. His setlist consisted of old songs and new ones, since this past summer, he released his latest album, Kansas Anymore. His set was amazing, a lot of people in the crowd were singing along and dancing to his music, and the energy was already high. ROLE MODEL even did a bit where he covered part of Sabrina Carpenter‘s “Espresso,” something he has done at every show he has opened for. 

When I first saw Gracie, the set up of her stage mostly just consisted of lights and her instruments, seeing her stage for this tour was a huge difference, having screens that displayed different visuals and a mini-elevated stage. The backdrop that surprised me the most was the short clip of the T (the trains used in Boston), passing through, included as part of the introduction to “Tough Love,” which mentions Boston. As someone who grew up going to Boston all the time, I was so excited and loved the little details. I could even hear myself in the video I took during the show yelling “THE T!” Abrams opened up her concert with “Felt Good About You,” the opening track on her album. It was very obvious that she spent a lot of time planning this tour as the details were immaculate and very well thought out, she played homage to music videos she released earlier this year, such as including clips of “Close to You” and the backgrounds of her lyric videos. Every single song she played fellow fans had such high energy, screaming every lyric and dancing with their friends, there was never a moment where the crowd’s energy changed.

I felt nostalgic hearing some of her older music but very excited too, as she finally added a single she released in 2021 to her setlist after previously stating that she does not like that song. After seeing her three times previous to this tour, this was the first time I heard it and I couldn’t have been more excited as “Mess It Up” one of my favorite Gracie songs. It was so surreal seeing how much she had blown up in a year. When she sang “21,” I remembered being at the Eras Tour at Gillette Stadium as one of the only people in my section singing along. A tradition at Gracie’s shows is to scream the word sorry after a specific line in “21,” I was shocked after hearing how loud the crowd was for this part. 

Since Gracie had been touring for a little while by the time I went to her show, I did not go in blind, meaning I knew what songs she would play beforehand. Although I kept waiting for her to play a song from Good Riddance, she did not and it made sense later on in the show as she played two songs that weren’t normally on the setlist. Abrams played two unreleased songs and was revealed to be coming out on the album’s deluxe version, which was released approximately two weeks after my show. For one of the songs, I had a feeling she was going to play it as she had played it the night before with full production rather than acoustic with just her guitar, it is the song Gracie is currently promoting right now, “That’s So True.” The second unreleased song Abrams played that night was called “Packing It Up.” It was her first time playing it live, and she revealed that it was about falling in love. This song and performance were everything, it felt so comfy, like curling up in front of a fireplace with some hot chocolate.

Once the show concluded, my sister and I both were talking about our immense luck with attending Gracie shows, because for both the Good Riddance Tour and Secret of Us Tour, we got multiple surprises. I was so sad after my show ended since I had been looking forward to it for so long and I was having so much fun dancing and singing along, but as Gracie said “had a good time, but I guess I’ll see ya” (3:00-3:04). 

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• entertainment
• Gracie Abrams
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• role model