Analysing Amelie by Gracie Abrams

 by Anya Shankar

Gracie Abrams is an American singer-songwriter who recently released her debut studio album Good Riddance which revolves around themes like personal accountability and reflection on the fallout of complex relationships. Amelie is the seventh song on the album and one of my personal favourites. It is, in many ways, a simple song with just Gracie and an acoustic guitar and faint piano chords which gives it a particular sense of closeness and makes it all the more bewitching. The song explores the meeting of a girl, Amelie, of whom Gracie reflects on loss and longing.

Verse 1 

I met a girl once

She sort of ripped me open

She doesn't even know it

She doesn't know my name

We sat on the sofa

She asked me a million questions

I answered and by eleven

Memorised her face

The speaker recalls meeting Amelie in the first verse and instantly accounts the impact she made on her. The colloquial and simplistic language of this verse is what I think makes Gracie Abrams so appealing to many people, she makes her songwriting accessible yet, the stripping back is what makes it more meaningful and raw. Amelie makes an immediate impact on Gracie, she ‘sort of ripped me open’, leaving the singer vulnerable and exposed. The violent nature of ‘ripped’ suggests it happened quickly and almost with no control over. The girl having a lasting impact on the speaker is suggested through ‘memorised her face’.

Chorus 

Where did you go

Amelie, Amelie, Amelie?

Where'd you go?

Or were you all in a dream

Amelie, Amelie?

I don't know

The repetition of language in the chorus represents the desperation of the speaker to learn and understand what has happened. The ending on ‘I don't know’ suggests that there was no resolution, after all the questioning the speaker never actually found answers. Perhaps through the narrative of writing the song, that could have given some comfort in not knowing. The repetition of her name infers an urgency and a longing, as if the name cannot escape her mind and is trying to wish upon it to bring her back. The fact that Amelie could have been ‘all in a dream’ creates an ambiguity to the memory of the girl. She is unsure if she even existed, suggesting the delicacy of the memory.

Second verse 

Why'd it feel louder

When all of it went unspoken?

All I can do is hope that

This will go away

She had her hair up

She cried about her obsessions

But she doesn't know I'd let her

Ruin all my days

The second verse grapples with the tension of miscommunication and unaddressed feelings. Gracie uses an oxymoronic image with ‘why’d it feel louder / when all of it went unspoken?’ creating that sense of tension between images. The rhetorical question further addresses the ambiguity of the memory which is then contrasted with the line ‘she had her hair up’. This is a distinct image as though the speaker can recall the small details of Amelie that made her so profound. The speaker is so enticed by Amelie that she would ‘let her ruin all my days’ which suggests a willingness to endure any pain for the sake of being close to her. 

Bridge: 

Tell me more, I would give all my time

All your words felt like a nursery rhyme

Comfortable, handing you my whole life

When all your words felt like a funeral rite

In the bridge, Gracie addresses the trust and comfort in Amelie. The speaker implies that her inner child is healed with Amelie; ‘all your words felt like a nursery rhyme’, the speaker felt a solace in the girl which she wanted to cling onto. The speaker expresses her trust in Amelie in ‘handing you my whole life’. The willingness of the speaker to give away her ‘whole’ life, suggests a fullness and satisfaction that they feel with Amelie. The song could read as a craving for that solace back. The dynamic shifts through ‘all your words felt like a funeral rite’ suggesting the speaker now feels heavy and oppressed in the relationship. This gives a sense of mourning and grieving for Amelie and for the relationship that it once was. 

Amelie is a melancholy balance of the universal and the personal, which intertwine perfectly to make the listener feel the aching beauty in Gracie’s voice and lyrics. The song almost reads as a desperate wishing for a feeling back and a questioning of a memory with moments of clarity as well as evasion.