“After Cursing Her by Day, I Listened to Three of Her Songs at Night”: Gracie Abrams and the NePo-Baby Paradox

The artist and the question

Gracie Abrams is a fast-rising American singer‑songwriter whose confessional, slightly messy indie‑pop has won a young, intense audience. It has been reported that her 2020 EP Minor landed on Interscope Records — the same label behind Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and Kendrick Lamar — and that she later worked with Aaron Dessner, a longtime collaborator of Taylor Swift. Short career arc. Big industry backing. Two Grammy nominations, no wins. Why does this make people so angry, and why do they keep listening?

Nepotism, industrial muscle and the Grammy gap

Huxiu (虎嗅) frames Abrams as an emblem of the “nepo baby” debate — a shorthand for artists who benefit from pre‑existing access to industry networks, education, and tolerance for failure. The point is structural: an independent artist might see a single weak release end a career. A well‑supported newcomer can iterate, rebrand and be paced by major‑label resources. It has been reported that nominations can reflect label campaigning and industry networks as much as pure aesthetics; the Recording Academy’s voting rules, meanwhile, encourage members to vote within familiar genres, which some say privileges industry insiders.

Consumption versus condemnation

Gen Z is historically media‑literate and class‑conscious, but outrage hasn’t translated into mass boycotts. Why? Because cultural taste and structural critique often operate on different rails. People can denounce nepotism and still stream songs that feel personally resonant. Surveys cited by Huxiu — including research from McKinsey and Deloitte about Gen Z’s economic pessimism — help explain the psychology: many young listeners express a sense of dispossession, yet their daily behaviors are shaped by algorithms, convenience and emotional connection, not just moral calculus.

What this means for culture

So what should alarm the industry? Not visibility itself. It’s packaging: when privilege can be convincingly wrapped as authenticity, it tests an audience’s tolerance. Will future acts be forgiven for being born into advantage if they can still feel like “someone like me”? Huxiu’s take is a reminder that cultural legitimacy today is negotiated at the intersection of capital, curation and personal feeling — and that moral outrage and marketplace success can, awkwardly, coexist.