Taylor Swift disclosed that she and Gracie Abrams reacted with uncontained excitement upon learning that their song “Us” was nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 2025 Grammys. During her third Eras Tour concert in Toronto on Friday, the 34-year-old pop star shared her emotional response to the news of their nomination, which came from The Recording Academy the previous week.
Reflecting on the significance of the moment, Swift told the audience, “The Eras Tour has been ongoing for about a year and a half, and a lot can happen in that time—both in life and in art.” She continued, acknowledging Abrams’ talent, “I think you’ll remember the brilliant young lady you saw earlier tonight, Gracie Abrams. So, here’s the story—Gracie was opening for me on the Eras Tour a year ago.”
She further elaborated, saying, “We created so many wonderful memories during that tour, one of which was celebrating Gracie’s nomination for Best New Artist at the Grammys. We had an inordinate amount of Cosmos, returned to my house, and began writing a song.”
The Fortnight artist then expressed her excitement about their track “Us” from Abrams’s album The Secret of Us, which recently received its own Grammy nomination.
“You can’t even begin to imagine the phone call between the two of us when the nominations were announced, and we saw that our song was nominated,” Swift described. “It wasn’t even a conversation—just pure screeching. It wasn’t words; it was simply feral screeching for the entirety of the call.”
As a gesture of gratitude to their fans for making the song a success, Swift and Abrams performed a mash-up of “Us” and Swift’s 2014 track Out of the Woods.
Abrams previously shared a humorous yet memorable story from the songwriting session, revealing that they had to extinguish a fire after a candle in Swift’s kitchen tipped over. The two were enjoying drinks and dinner “well past 6 a.m.” following their lengthy session when the fire started. Swift, demonstrating quick thinking, grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the flames. “She was such a legend—I don’t know how, at that hour and in our state, she knew what to do,” Abrams recounted to Billboard.
She added that they both had “an insane cough from the fire extinguisher fumes for weeks.”
During that eventful night, Gracie recalled that they listened to tracks from Swift’s Tortured Poets Department: Anthology, dancing and singing along to “But Daddy I Love Him” like “theater kids.” They later found themselves lying on the floor in disbelief as they listened to Swift’s “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.”
The songwriting process itself began with listening to instrumentals provided by Aaron Dessner.
“Something caught our ear at the same time, very hard and fast. So we ran to the piano and started writing this song,” Gracie Abrams told Billboard, adding, “I used to fantasize about that type of thing as a kid.”
Billboard also spoke with Aaron Dessner, who expressed his admiration for the songwriting chemistry between Gracie and Taylor. “It was just really fun to watch the chemistry of Gracie and Taylor bouncing off each other, Gracie in total wonder and awe watching how Taylor records and produces her vocal performances and builds the world,” he said.
Abrams served as Swift’s opening act on The Eras Tour for about a dozen shows in 2023 before rejoining for the full 2024 leg of the tour.
Swift received multiple other Grammy nominations for her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, including nods for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album. Additionally, Fortnight featuring Post Malone, the lead single from TTPD, earned nominations for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Music Video.
