Gracie Abrams explains how Taylor Swift’s kitchen fire started

Apple Music

Gracie Abrams and Taylor Swift caused a sensation when they teamed up for their new collaboration “Us” – literally.

Abrams sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to discuss how the songwriting session The secret of us The track led to Swift putting out a fire in her apartment after a night out. “It’s dramatic. We almost burned her house down. Literally. (…) We went to dinner and drank a lot of alcohol and we talked about our lives, and then we talked about our albums, and she was in the middle of Tortured poets and I was right in the middle of it (The secret of us),” the 24-year-old singer recalled. “We were so excited talking about all of this. And she was like, we need to go back to the house and I want to play you the songs and blah, blah, blah. So we went back to her house, opened a bottle of wine and played one song after another in the kitchen and were like theater kids, standing and running around the kitchen island. It was so funny. The whole time I was thinking, ‘This is ridiculous. This is crazy.'”

She continued, “At that point, it was about two in the morning, and after playing song after song after song after song for I don’t know how long, we were listening to sketches that Aaron (Desnner) had sent us, and when the guitar part for ‘Us’ came on, we immediately ran to the piano, and we had no plan to do a (song), but it felt like a writing session in Nashville. We sat at the piano, just found the key, and then wrote the whole song from two to six in the morning. We filmed the whole thing, not because we were like, ‘We have to film this,’ but because we just had to get it all done, whatever. It was so full-bodied, it was dramatic, but it was so much fun.”

Abrams recalled hearing a “cracking” sound coming from the other room, which Swift thought was her cat. “We finished the bridge and went into the kitchen to probably get wine. There was a bonfire on the kitchen island. Really a huge fireball. When we got home, we had lit a candle that was so hot it burst. And the candle base was made of wood, like a log,” she said. “I don’t know how she knew where that was, but she runs out and grabs a fire extinguisher and tries for minutes to get it to work, but it doesn’t work. And I was like, I’m crying, but I’ve had a similar problem before. Oddly enough, I had a candle burst and I learned that you can clean it with water because wax, oil and water… Anyway, she eventually put it out. Put it out.”

She continued, “We both had a horrible chest cough for weeks because the whole kitchen was full of smoke. ‘We’ came from that night. That was a really good night. Nobody got hurt. We both got burned from the wax and all that stuff. It was nasty, but it was fun.”

Last week, Abrams posted a video on Instagram of the duo playfully composing the song, calling the evening “one of the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.” She also included a video of Swift putting out an apartment fire. “Now we know how to use a fire extinguisher. I love you,” Abrams wrote.

Abrams, 24, spent the summer opening for Swift’s The Epoch Toura role she will reprise later this fall on select dates in North America. She will begin her very own headlining tour of major theaters across the United States beginning September 5 in Portland.

The secret of us contains the previously released tracks “Risk” and “Close to You”, which debuted at number 49 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and is the follow-up to Abrams’ debut album Goodbye forever, which was released in February 2023 and peaked at number 52 on the Billboard 200.

Watch the full interview below.