Audrey Hobert On "Sue Me," Songwriting With Gracie Abrams & New Music

Someone had to say it. “Your life could completely change tonight,” I tell Audrey Hobert. She laughs. “I can’t believe the day has arrived,” she says. “I’ve been working on this stuff technically since June… I just got rock-solid chills. I cannot believe today is the day. I have nothing to lose.”

It’s a sunny morning in Los Feliz when we meet at local favorite All Time for breakfast and Hobert’s first-ever interview. In just less than 10 hours, Hobert will release “Sue Me,” her debut as a singer-songwriter. To say anticipation is high would be an understatement; fans have been clamoring for a taste of the 26-year-old’s musical world ever since her songwriting abilities hit a fever pitch on collaborations like “I Love You, I’m Sorry” and “That’s So True” with her best friend, Gracie Abrams. “She is brilliant and deserves all the ears and eyes,” Abrams told me previously. “The music she’s making right now is my favorite sh*t ever. You’ll love it.”

She’s right. With “Sue Me,” Hobert hits a home run right out the gate, a fearless, capital-P pop song that will be stuck in your head all summer. And she’s just getting started. “I’m very proud. I have this overwhelming sense of ‘I have everything to prove, nothing to lose,’” she says. “I’m not a naturally competitive person, but when I’m good at something, I give a sh*t. I want to go for it. [With this music], there’s no persona, there’s no shtick. I’m just rocking what I’ve got and who I am. And it’s all in the hopes that someone might see me putting myself out there in such a way that they go ‘I can put myself out there.’”

It’s not Audrey Hobert Summer. It’s Audrey Hobert’s World.

Hobert didn’t grow up dreaming of being a pop star. Growing up in Los Angeles, dance was her main passion, before moving onto musical theater in high school. (“And then I was in collegiate a cappella, to be honest,” she says. “I would say there were two bad a cappella groups, and I was in one of those.”)

“I loved to sing; I just never thought I liked writing music,” she says. “I used to tell people in high school that I hated poetry, but what I think I meant by that was flowery language. Just say what you want to say! You don’t have to fluff it up.” As a freshman at New York University, she shifted gears slightly, following in the footsteps of her father, a writer/producer for shows like Scrubs and The Middle, as a screenwriting major. “I loved it so much,” she says. “I had a feeling in high school that what I wanted to do was kick it with the writers. Writers are the coolest people on Earth to me.”

The transition to songwriting came organically, and perhaps even gravitationally. One night, while hanging out with her then-roommate Abrams (they met at their fifth-grade graduation), something unexpected happened. “We just started writing a song together at the same time,” Hobert says. “And we finished it that night.” Hobert, who would go on to co-write several songs with Abrams and direct three music videos for her most recent album, was ignited. “I was so set on fire by the whole experience and also enthralled because it was completely new and I was doing it with [Abrams], who you just can’t really ask for more when you equally love and respect and know this person all at the same level,” she says. “We wrote a lot of songs for her last album, and then it was finished, and we weren’t writing songs for her album anymore. And I was like, ‘I don’t feel like I can just stop doing this thing.’”

“Writers are the coolest people on Earth to me.”

Off the success of the songs she’d written with Abrams, Hobert signed a publishing deal with Universal Music Group, where she was tasked as a songwriter to work with musicians and producers on creating hits. “It’s a crazy job,” she says. “You just go and you meet people for the first time, and then you sort of gab, and you’re like, ‘OK, let’s write a song about that.’” The experience made one thing clear: Hobert was ready to do this for herself. “And then I just didn’t stop.”

Through her time at UMG, Hobert met producer Ricky Gourmet, an artist and producer who most recently worked on Finneas’ solo album. From the get-go, it was clear to her that he was someone she wanted to make music with. “Every time I had a session with him, I felt like this is by far the most interesting person I’ve met doing this,” she says. “I found that when I would work with him, I wasn’t bored on the couch, on my phone, or on Instagram. I was engaged because he was really funny and really smart and seemed to have the same ethos about this, which was ‘Let’s have fun,’ instead of ‘Let’s make a hit.’”

“Sue Me” was the first song they worked on together, and the fourth Hobert wrote with the intention of releasing a full solo project. “I had written three songs at that point by myself on the acoustic guitar, two of which I was excited about,” she says. “But then the third one took me two weeks to write. When I finished it, I was like, ‘I have no choice in this life. I have to do this. I have to do this job.’ Because that third song I wrote, I had never been so happy or proud of anything in my entire life. And then came ‘Sue Me.’”

I was like, “I don’t feel like I can just stop doing this thing.”

The debut track, out now via RCA, is an unflinching ode about the desire to feel wanted post-breakup (even if it means sleeping with your ex). For Hobert, it was “pure relief.” “I knew when I started working with Ricky, I wanted to make a pop project,” she says. “I want to make pop music. And when we made ‘Sue Me,’ I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to make pop music.’”

A lover and self-proclaimed scholar of pop — “88.5 SoCal Sound,” she answers when pressed to pick her pop-star Mount Rushmore, but easily declares Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” as the perfect pop song — she, even one song in, has already established what will soon become known as the Audrey Hobert touch: straightforward, arresting lyrics (a throwback to her anti-poetry days) that don’t take themselves too seriously. “My favorite line in the song is ‘When he’s all in his Amazon Basics,’ because my ex always wore Amazon Basics. My goals are to make them laugh and tell the truth,” she says. “I’ve studied pop music my entire life, and the craft was the most important part to me. There is a craftsmanship and somewhat of a formula to an amazing pop song, and I didn’t have to study it to know it. I think it’s just in my soul.”

It’s hard work, she admits, but it’s also about having a good time. “I see [this project] as two things,” she says. “I see it as me discovering I could really write songs. And then [Ricky] and I becoming really good friends. We made the entire thing together, the two of us. And it was the hardest we’ve both ever worked. And it was the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire life.”

“The project” presumably means an album, though Hobert is tight-lipped on a release date or title — or even confirmation of its existence. What she is serious about, for now, is bringing the Hobert-verse to its full fruition, starting with the music video for “Sue Me,” which she self-directed and edited. “There was never a doubt in my mind I was going to direct every single video for this project,” she says. She’s also starting to think about her live shows and how she wants to bring the music to the audience. “I am really inspired by the suspension of disbelief that happens when you go to see a play,” she says. “When I play my shows, I want everyone to leave and go ‘I was just entertained.’”

The through line is clear: Authenticity and, in particular, what that means to Hobert at her core, is the key. “I think something I’m proud of in this whole project is there are no references,” she says. “So much of going into sessions as a songwriter was ‘Let’s make a song that sounds like this artist’ or ‘Let’s make a song that sounds like 2010.’ With Ricky, it was ‘What makes us crack a smile?’”

“I just think that’s what excites me so much about putting my music out and people discovering me,” she continues, acknowledging that she’s in a “lucky position” due to people’s awareness of her because to her work with Abrams. “This is my vision entirely, and there’s no one in my ear telling me what to do, and hopefully it lands. I’ve never had a choice in this life to be anyone else other than myself. I really tried when I was younger, but I think I feel lucky because I’m waltzing into this as a 26-year-old, so I’m as fully formed as I’ve ever been.”