Chartbreaker: How Audrey Hobert Went From Writing Hits for Gracie Abrams to Creating Her Own ‘Brash and Bold’ Breakthrough

A few months ago, when speaking to Billboard for a cover story about her friend Gracie Abrams, Audrey Hobert pulled open her Notes app and read aloud the lyrics to one of the first songs the two ever wrote together: a parody version of Smash Mouth’s “All Star.”

“Hey now, shake your ass off/ Get some fuel now, propane/ Hey now, dance your ass off/ Break it down now, slow mane/ All that glitters is gold/ Even sexy ogres, they get old,” she sang to the tune of the signature Shrek soundtrack hit. After reciting the chorus, she immediately covered her face as the cringe of her college-aged self’s antics washed over her.

The childhood besties wrote the song roughly four years ago in Abrams’ basement as a joke. Now, the pop world is taking both singer-songwriters very seriously. In 2024, Abrams’ album The Secret of Us made Hobert a chart-topping co-writer, thanks to the runaway success of Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit “That’s So True,” which the pair crafted while drunk one night on the roof of Electric Lady Studios in New York City. This year, Hobert has leveraged that whirlwind entrance to the music industry into her own solo career, formally introducing herself in May with lead single “Sue Me” — an uber catchy dance-pop song about hooking up with an ex — before dropping her boisterous debut album Who’s the Clown? in August.

Today, she joins our Zoom call from the same kitchen table where she’d sat for our last interview, but this time, she’s the focal point of the story. Coming straight from another meeting, she signs on a few minutes late with her hair scraped into a sweaty ponytail, breathlessly devouring slices of apple — a visual representation of just how go, go, go her life has become lately.

Since debuting on Billboard‘s Pop Airplay chart last month, “Sue Me” has reached a No. 26 high, and the 26-year-old California native is now running back and forth — quite literally — to keep up with her blossoming music career.

It all started when Abrams nudged her friend to sign a publishing deal with Universal Music Group in December 2023 so that she would be “set up properly” for whatever royalties The Secret of Us accrued. Shortly after, Hobert started working as a session songwriter, an entirely different path from the one she’d originally charted after graduating NYU with a degree in songwriting and briefly working on Nickelodeon sitcom The Really Loud House. But after years of experiencing imposter syndrome — be it while working at a restaurant or as a CBS production assistant — she had finally found her calling.

“When I started going out to sessions as a songwriter, I just did not have one nervous bone in my body,” she reflects.

Even so, something was missing from her experiences penning lyrics for people she barely knew. “It wasn’t even a feeling of needing to prove myself,” she continues. “I just knew I loved to write songs because of my experience with Gracie — so I started writing at home by myself.”

From self-imposed solitude came future Who’s the Clown? songs “Chateau,” “I Like to Touch People” and “Wet Hair,” through which Hobert realized that she had something to say with her music — and that she was the one who needed to say it. After nervously calling UMG and getting its blessing to embark on her own project, she reached out to producer Ricky Gourmet, whom she’d met while working the session circuit.

By the time she teamed up with manager Sophie Lev and signed with RCA (one of several labels that came knocking on her door) in quick succession last fall, Who’s the Clown? was pretty much fully realized — as was Hobert’s vision for herself a performer.

“When I sat down with her, her message was: ‘I just want to make the young girl who’s too scared to go to school feel seen,’ ” says Lev, recalling their first meeting a year ago. “She knows exactly who she is. She’s one of one.”

“Sue Me” was one of the first songs Hobert and Gourmet made together, springing from a conversation in the producer’s kitchen about how the former had slept with her ex-boyfriend the weekend prior. Off the cuff, she said the phrase that would become the song’s hook (“Sue me, I wanna be wanted”) and realized it perfectly fit the melody of the track they’d just been working on. Other lyrics inspired by the song’s subject including “In my bones I know it’s platonic, but f–king your ex is iconic” soon spilled out — and while Hobert notes he is yet to reach out, she says there “was never a world in which I wasn’t going to be entirely brash and bold in expressing myself.”

As the full track came together, Hobert knew it needed to be her debut single — even if it was “the kind of pop song that people could potentially think is bad or stupid.

It’s good because it’s bad,” she continues with a laugh. “There are a lot of choruses of really, really successful songs that repeat one line. And my taste in music is hit songs.”

To promote the song, Hobert launched a DIY TikTok teaser campaign that saw her setting up her phone camera in her bedroom and interpretive dancing to the track with unabashed awkwardness, giving herself three takes at most to ensure that her videos always felt genuine. Through the clips, Hobert attracted the attention of thousands of followers — many of whom recognized her from her work with Abrams — who were fiending for the full version “Sue Me” by the time of its May 9 official release. As it steadily gained traction, Lev rallied the troops at RCA to throw more resources behind promoting the track on social platforms — and while its online following developed, it showed signs of growing an even stronger foothold on the airwaves.

“We all felt really confident in what [Audrey] would be able to do for herself by making her rounds with radio and program directors,” Lev says, highlighting Hobert’s recent station tours across the country. “[We knew] that everyone who met her would understand her and want to get behind her as an artist.”

“There is absolutely nothing surprising to me about the reception Audrey is getting,” Abrams agrees. “She’s a triple threat — writer, director, performer. The world has no idea what she has in store for it, and I will forever be by her side or in the front row as they discover what her oldest and closest friends have always known.”

That much is apparent just by talking with Hobert, who communicates her ambitions with sharp focus. The quirky, Gen-Z-coded anthems on Who’s the Clown? demonstrate how singular her perspective is, setting her solo work apart not just from the music she made with Abrams, but from everything else currently occupying the pop space. And though she isn’t opposed to writing for other artists in the future and would still like to put her degree to use on TV and film projects someday, she tells Billboard that her “entire focus and heart and body and ass” are in her own music for the foreseeable future. Right now, that means embracing her inner “control freak” as she meticulously designs a yet-to-be-announced tour, which she hopes will blend elements of the musical theater productions she grew up performing in with the feverish, colorful aesthetics she’s been curating for her album visuals and self-directed music videos.

It can all be exhausting at times, and none of this is what Hobert pictured for herself even a couple of years ago. But, as she says, “I would be a complete idiot to not grab this by the bullhorns and give it everything I have.

Opportunities like this do not come around often, and clearly this is what I’m supposed to be doing right now,” she continues, shaking her head incredulously. “I’m a very all or nothing person. As long as I’m always learning and keeping my eyes peeled and feet on the ground, I think it will all fall into place as it should for me.”