Grace Bowers is no stranger to music industry success: The 20-year-old has played the Grammys with Chris Martin, appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and toured the world. Having gained notoriety on the strength of her virtuosic guitar talents, Bowers has recently stepped into the ring as an artist, showcasing her innate ability as a vocalist and songwriter.
Bowers’ debut EP as a singer-songwriter, Grace, is a bold step forward, drawing from classic sounds of the riot grrrl movement, ’90s grunge, and modern pop sensibilities. These songs reflect Bowers’ roots: As a kid, she grew up loving Guns n’ Roses and learned guitar by playing Ramones and Ventures songs. “I picked up a guitar when I was nine years old because I love playing power chords with distortion on them,” she says. “And so I feel like these songs are my return to that and why I started in the first place—because I loved punk and rock.
“It’s the start of a new era for me,” she adds. “It’s definitely a big shift from what I was doing before. In a way, I feel like I’m starting all over again, starting from scratch. But I really believe this is what I needed to do. This is me doing what’s in my heart, and I’ve never been more excited about it.”
The propulsive lead single, “Eat Shit and Live,” embodies this inspired energy, pairing Bowers’ fuzzed-out hard rock riffs with an elastic rhythm groove and her smoky vocals. “It’s a sarcastic, angry song about me being fed up with stupid people, pretty much,” she says. “If Olivia Rodrigo were a punk—that’s the inspiration for the sound behind it. It’s rock with some pop approach to it.” Bowers had the title phrase in her Notes app “for the longest time” and knew it would make a song lyric someday. That time came during a songwriting session when Bowers was looking for the right words to go with a guitar riff she dug out of voice memos. “I scrolled through my Notes app, looking at all the random shit I have in there, and that was that one just stuck out to me,” she says. “And then that song came about in an hour or two. It flowed out.”
Elsewhere, Bowers had the 2024 sci-fi movie The Substance in mind while writing “Holly Wouldn’t,” a song “about the lengths people will go to alter or change themselves” that draws on pogoing melodic pop-punk with an explosive chorus.”
On Grace, Bowers also channeled strange-but-true moments from her own life into the lyrics. The Joan Jett and the Blackhearts-esque “Fleas” references several bizarre touring stories, including the time her bassist lost his ID and contracted bedbugs in the same night. “That one is probably the punkiest song I have,” she says. “And that one goes crazy live. It’s very heavy.”
The distortion-coated “Cigarettes For Breakfast,” meanwhile, calls to mind what Bowers calls “the girly grunge era” sound and vibes of Courtney Love and L7. The song emerged after Bowers, who is signed to IMG Models, attended her first Paris Fashion Week and had an up-close glimpse at the fashion world. “The stuff these models have to do is wild,” she says. “Like, I noticed no one was eating. They’re just smoking cigarettes and drinking Coke. It was such a scene, especially being in Paris and being out late at night surrounded by that. I’m like, ‘This has to be a song.’”
For Bowers, the moody “19” might be the most meaningful and personal song on Grace, as she wrote it about the disorienting experience of getting older and trying to find your place in the world when you’re on a different life path. “It’s a really weird time and I’m feeling a lot of different emotions,” she says. “I don’t have a full-time job. I’m still living at home, while some of my friends are totally moved out or living in dorms. I feel like I’m missing out. I’m not a teenager anymore, and that’s weird. It’s such a confusing time for me, honestly.” Poignantly, Bowers wrote the music for “19” in her bedroom, as she was ruminating on these weighty feelings. “I’m like, ‘Let me tune my guitar down low and write a riff that feels like how I feel right now,’” she says. “That’s what came out.”
Grammy-winning producer Mike Elizondo (Turnstile, Poppy) was the perfect fit to bring Grace to life; in fact, Bowers wrote many of the EP’s songs during writing sessions in his studio. “He can do everything,” she says. “He makes sure to capture what the artist sounds like. I love that about him. And he knows what a song needs. His brain thinks of things that my brain would never have thought of. We mesh very well together.”
But to gauge people’s reactions to the music, Bowers played her new tunes live at shows before recording them. Although this approach didn’t change the songs in a material way, it did show her she was on the right track—and inspired electric concert moments, like her recent live mashup of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Brutal” with the Runaways’ “Queens of Noise.”
Make no mistake, Bowers is grateful for the success she’s had with her music to date. But she’s also deeply excited about where Grace’s sound and songs will take her in the future. “A year ago on this day, I wasn’t even really singing live at my concerts,” she says. “And now, if you see my show, it’s a completely different thing than what I was doing before. It’s a real rock show. But if you like pop, you’ll like the show. If you like punk, you’ll like the show. I’ve never had more fun onstage than I have playing these songs. I’m having a blast.”
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