Gracie Abrams reveals real inspiration behind 'Death Wish'

Gracie Abrams unveiled the actual inspiration behind her recent song release, Death Wish. According to some fans, it was about Taylor Swift.

In an interview, Abrams noted, “My love, you love your time machine, your power trips and diamond rings,” Abrams sang on the track, which was included in her recently released album Daughter From Hell. “The walls you built on teenage dreams, the well you dug for sinking things / Your words to kill are evergreen, so you must not feel anything at all.”

Her co-writer of the song, Dessner, said that the lyrics are “definitely not” about Swift, who he’s also collaborated in the past. As he explained in a Billboard interview published July 22, “Death Wish” was “written at a time when Abrams was writing about a friend’s ex, being in a bad relationship.” He explained, “So it was kind of about that person, I think,” the 50-year-old continued. “I wouldn’t even actually know who that person was.”

And Dessener would never ask Abrams or Swift, who toured together in 2023 and 2024, to explain their lyrics. He continued, “You don’t want to be like, ‘Well, you’re talking about this, right?’. It’s more mysterious not to.” Abrams herself has explained who inspired “Death Wish.” When the 26-year-old first debuted the track at a March 2025 show on her The Secret of Us Tour, she told the audience, “This song is about a friend of mine who recently was dating a mega narcissist.”

“A sincere friend of mine was recently dating someone who kind of sucked,” she shared at the time. “And I was listening to them talk about it a lot, and so this song is about that.” Though Swift was already almost two years into her relationship with Travis Kelce at that point, it didn’t stop fans from theorizing.

In fact, speculation of an alleged feud between the singers only heightened earlier this month, when Abrams shared a photo of the dress she wore to Swift and Kelce’s wedding in an Instagram carousel also featuring an image of the 14-time Grammy winner’s ex Joe Alwyn.

“Not congratulating Taylor – but posting her ex?” one commenter asked, while another remarked, “The screen capture of Joe Alwyn from The Favourite in the same carousel as the outfit you wore to Taylor Swift’s wedding is crazyyyyy (I say this with love).”

And while Abrams has not publicly addressed speculation of a friendship fallout, she did divulge some advice Swift had given her about creating music.

“The first thing that comes to mind when you ask that is, the encouragement to just never stop writing,” she said on the July 12 episode of CBS Sunday Morning. “For me, any time I had a feeling where I was like, ‘I would rather just cry about this for a while,’ [instead], just pick it up and write it down. And it serves you every time to do that.”