Gracie Abrams says her relationship with Paul Mescal has made her a better songwriter, not a more cautious one — pushing back against how earlier comments of hers were read.

In a Rolling Stone cover story published on 4 August 2026, Abrams said the romance "has held a mirror to me" and given her fresh perspective on past relationships, her family, and her friendships. The singer told the magazine she was surprised that some people had taken her earlier Vogue remarks to mean her career was "threatened" by Mescal.

The Vogue interview, published in June 2026, quoted Abrams saying she had initially "worried" that being in a steady relationship might dampen her drive to write music. Two months on, she is clarifying the point: the worry was temporary, and the reality proved the opposite.

Abrams and Mescal were first spotted together in the summer of 2024 and made their first public appearance as a couple at the Gladiator II premiere in November that year, Billboard reported. As of July 2026, the relationship was reported to be going strong, according to Elle.

The pair are now based in London, sharing a house while Mescal films Sam Mendes' The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event, in which he plays Paul McCartney. Mescal has been teaching himself to play left-handed bass for the role — the instrument McCartney made famous.

The Beatles connection does not stop there. Mescal's sister, Nell Mescal, signed to Atlantic Records — a major label under Warner — and released a new EP, with a Billboard feature last August touching on Beatles-related themes. The family household, it seems, has music running through it from more than one direction.

Abrams, for her part, has had her own chart momentum. Her song "That's So True" spent a second week at No. 1 on the U.K. Singles Chart in November 2024, the Official Charts Company's weekly ranking of the country's best-selling and most-streamed tracks.

For songwriters, the tension Abrams described is a familiar one — the fear that happiness dulls the edge that unhappiness sharpens. Her account, though, is that the opposite happened: clarity arrived, and the songs kept coming.