Being earnest doesn’t make you an interesting artist

There is a widespread conflation of sincerity with depth or insight. But as the mid response to Gracie Abrams’ new album shows, good art requires more than just self-exposure

By Bea Isaacson.

As the modern adage goes, “I think you guys might be thinking about yourself too much.” Jemima Kirke’s response during an Instagram Q&A went instantly viral for its total contradiction of a dominant cultural belief: that introspection is inherently productive, and expressing our innermost feelings is inherently meaningful. Sincerity has always had its place in art, particularly the singer-songwriter tradition, but it can’t be the entire point. Feeling something deeply and expressing it honestly are not enough to guarantee an interesting final work.

In recent years, earnestness has come to be elevated as an artistic quality above all others. That elevation has likely been shaped by the grip Big Wellness has exerted over the past decade, with its animating belief that vulnerability is the key to both successful relationships and art. This plays out in our everyday social media usage, from the carefully edited Get Ready with Me videos, where creators speak intimately to their camera like a beloved friend, to the TikTokification of therapy. It was inevitable that this curated candour, which tends to be rewarded in both algorithmic attention and people calling you “brave”, would shape how commercial pop is marketed and received. Sincerity is hardly new to pop, but vulnerability has come to be viewed, now more than ever, as proof of authenticity and artistic depth.

Last week, Gracie Abrams released her third studio album, Daughter From Hell. Many critics, whether professional or online, were not impressed. Personally, I don’t think it’s bad at all, at least in terms of the music. Abrams sounds as good as she usually does – somewhere between The Summer I Turned Pretty soundtrack fodder and Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore albums. Her hushed, yearning vocals detail melancholic and melodramatic revelations about her personal life and how she was, allegedly, a “daughter from hell” as a teenager (even the popular girls at school had dark Tumblrs). The Aaron Dessner production adds electric tension to lyrics that don’t necessarily deserve it: “And I wanna say / How much I owe ya.”

“This Gracie album is so bad, I’m sorry she has absolutely nothing to say, she has no story to tell, it’s BORING,” one X commentator wrote. Perhaps the frustrating thing is that Abrams does, actually, have a story to tell: it is just unfortunate that the songs rarely transform those experiences into anything surprising or genuinely revealing.

This is by no means exclusive to Abrams – it’s more a condition endemic to culture today. The allure of relaying your truth within art, specifically within the singer-songwriter genre, has taken on a life of its own: artists want to be known for relatability. But when you’re deliberately selecting the most palatable aspects of your personhood to write about, offering only a slick, flattering form of self-exposure, it can render the earnestness hollow. The opposite is also true: revealing the least flattering parts of yourself does not automatically produce depth, either.

This trend towards earnest self-exposure has also taken root on Substack, an important addition to the media landscape that allows a generation of writers to self-publish amid increasingly limited opportunities elsewhere. But the boldness of self-expression, the curiosity and wit that define the figures the Substack scene praises as their forebears – Eve Babitz, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron – are often found lacking in these well-written but not hugely interesting personal essays. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion chronicled her grief with a clinical coolness that stands as the antithesis of today’s earnest culture, while Babitz explored themes of heartbreak and betrayal with a detached humour. Neither writer assumed disclosure meant depth; their writing was powerful because it revealed something beyond their own experiences (Didion, who wrote long essays about Latin American politics and California’s water infrastructure, was hardly a navel-gazing blogger). That kind of writing demands more than just overwrought self-exposure. It requires the writer to transform personal experience into something that expands beyond the self.

“Writing like Babitz and Didion demands more than just overwrought self-exposure. It requires the writer to transform personal experience into something that expands beyond the self”

When artists successfully convey a sense of honesty, it’s usually because they’ve found a novel, potent way of expressing an idea or theme, rather than an indication of their sincerity. Lorde’s collaboration with Charli xcx on “Girl, so confusing” is a generational anthem from two artists whose lyrics resonate precisely because they are so specific. “I was trapped in the hatred / And your life seemed so awesome,” Lorde admits. The admission turns a private insecurity into something larger: an account of how admiration and resentment can exist simultaneously between two women. On the same album, Charli bares all: “George says I’m just paranoid / Says he doesn’t see it, he’s so naive / I’m embarrassed to have it, but need the sympathy,” she sings in “Sympathy is a knife”. This is not an artist aspiring to be relatable in her confession. The lyric is interesting because of the unresolved contradiction within it: Charli is ashamed of wanting sympathy, yet still wants it. Relatability emerges from the precision of the thought, and the willingness to embrace ambiguity, rather than simply from her lack of inhibition.

And last month, Olivia Rodrigo released you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. Earnestness has long been Rodrigo’s game, but it is her ability to turn her emotions into a vivid drama that cements her status as her generation’s leading confessional pop singer. Rodrigo’s breakout single, “Driver’s License”, could be taught in school for songwriting: “I just can’t imagine how you could be so okay now that I’m gone,” Rodrigo wails. While Charli’s lyrics are effective because of their specificity, and the way they embrace contradiction, Rodrigo’s writing works differently: it’s the direct, unvarnished articulation of an almost universal experience. Both artists show that earnestness can work in very different ways. It’s not about how vulnerable a lyric appears, but how that vulnerability is expressed. This is what Abrams’ weaker songs often lack: not a lack of vulnerability, but a distinct perspective that gives that feeling shape.

There is more than one way to be interesting, and artistic themes do not need to be new nor spectacular; there is nothing wrong with contributing to the infinite canon of musings on love, heartbreak and insecurity. Earnestness itself is not bad; it is the backbone of many of our generation’s zeitgeist-defining tracks. But honesty alone is not enough to make art interesting. Personal experience, no matter how honestly or “bravely” it’s articulated, must offer the audience more than the knowledge that it was sincerely felt.