New mini album

Hannah Grae is the pop mouthpiece of all teenagers

Not yet 22 years young, but already blessed with a lot of life experience: Pop-punk youngster Hannah Grae from the Welsh industrial town of Port Talbot

(Bild: Megan Winstone)

Hannah Grae is currently conquering the pop-punk world from the Welsh industrial town of Port Talbot. Her recipe for success? Making songs with themes from her own life authentic, honest and accessible to like-minded people without barriers. Her mini-album "Nothing Lasts Forever" is the next big step on an upwardly mobile career ladder.

The extent to which pre-existing pop culture is already taking hold in the hearts and souls of young people can be seen time and time again in the next generation, who let off steam in film, television, music or writing. It is no different with Hannah Grae, who is not even 22 years old yet. In Port Talbot, a provincial town of 31,000 inhabitants in Wales, the steel industry and an unemployment rate of more than nine percent dominate everyday life. Anyone looking for romance and an ideal world has to flee. Hannah, at least, is growing up in an artistic household. Her parents teach aspiring actors and Hannah Montana is the measure of all things in her childhood. The Disney double role of a girl who is a schoolgirl by day and a pop star by night, once so brilliantly portrayed by Miley Cyrus, would ultimately also affect Hannah. In the 2000s, of course, this is still a pipe dream.

Musician thanks to "Friends"
From Hannah Montana, the path inevitably leads to international pop kings. Taylor Swift impresses Grae with her feminist attitude, maneuvered into a matter of course, which leads to success without fighting and embracing everyone. Canadian Justin Bieber has the most irresistible and catchy pop hits and displays a very different image of women than pop stars before him. At ten, Grae is once again sitting in front of the TV and sees Phoebe Buffay, played by Lisa Kudlow in "Friends", write a song out of nothing. Thinking "I can do that too", the child in faraway Wales creates the "Chicken Song" and uses the few piano lessons she receives to shape her voice at the same time. The garden shed, which initially served as her father's office, was soon converted into an amateur studio and Grae began to cover and record pop and rock songs with the help of her teenage brother.

Inspired by the rather shallow 2009 film "Jennifer's Body", the Welsh girl created the song "Hell Is A Teenage Girl" and struck a chord with thousands and thousands of like-minded people. Like-minded in the sense of young girls who were ignored, verbally abused and/or physically bullied at school. "I didn't necessarily have the best time at school," the aspiring musician tells us in the Krone interview, "and there was hardly any music I could rely on. I felt left alone by pop culture and decided early on to use my music to support others in similar situations. Above all, I wanted to make the kind of music I would like to hear on the radio myself, so strictly speaking I am my own favorite artist," she adds with a mischievous smile. Her Austrian premiere took place last summer against a bleak backdrop in the uncharismatic VAZ concrete bunker in St. Pölten. Electric guitar, live band, punk rock with pop and teenage angst. Nothing new, but refreshingly performed.

Appropriating male clichés
"I see my music as a mixture of Taylor Swift, Paramore and real instruments. I have guitar sounds that mostly have a masculine connotation. I think it's wonderful when women appropriate such instruments or clichés and make them identifiable for themselves." Hannah Grae is far removed from staid feminism. She is a young woman who knows what she wants, where she wants to go and that she still has a lot to learn. She has been writing together with her songwriting partner Rob Brinkmann for around three years. During this time, her career has been given a turbo boost, which led to her playing at major festivals such as Frequency, Pukkelpop and Sziget last summer and, in addition to her first EP "Hell Is A Teenage Girl", she has been working on the mini-album "Nothing Lasts Forever", which has just seen the light of day.

The basic concept of the young artist's most ambitious work to date describes the ambivalence of the last two years. Grae moved away from home and to England. While her career is progressing steadily, the young artist feels lonely and lost at times. She gets so deeply involved in her musical project that she forgets to live alongside it. All of this is reflected in songs such as "Better Now You're Gone", the TikTok hit "It Could've Been You" or "Who Dunnit?", which oscillate between heartbreaking ballads, punk rock reminiscent of Sum 41 and self-empowerment pop from the American school. Hannah Grae is somewhere between Olivia Rodrigo, No Doubt and Alanis Morissette and talks about relationship worries, everyday overload, misjudgements and the harshness of life when puppy protection is a few hundred kilometers away.

No going back into the cocoon
"I was afraid of writing autobiographically for a long time," she explains, "the song 'Well I Hope Ur Happy' from my first EP was the first to go in that direction. It suddenly felt natural and I went for it. Now there's no other way, because once you go that far out on a limb, there's no going back into the safety cocoon." She has improved her songwriting considerably in the meantime. "You have to break down your feelings and emotions a lot because they're squeezed into a short song. That's why I get to the point during the creation process and concentrate on the essentials. That's harder than it sounds." With "Nothing Lasts Forever", Grae is already considerably closer to the big goal of a debut album. In addition to the content, the sound also captures the zeitgeist between late Generation Z and the young Alphas. The plan for the future? "I'll just keep writing and the rest will follow."