Hook & Reel: Gracey’s ‘If You Loved Me’ is a perfect pop song

Welcome to Hook & Reel, a series showcasing music that’s guaranteed to catch your ear.

Pop is such a fickle genre in the year 2019. Folded so deeply into R&B, alternative rock and hip-hop, and so sparsely celebrated in its purest form, pop fans often have to search through piles of algorithm-focused Spotify-pop to find truly exceptional music that calls to mind the great pop records of the past. But in a post-Melodrama and post-E•MO•TION world, there are still songs that feel just as perfect, that are so full of Great Pop Moments and bursting with so much energy that they feel isolated from the music climate of 2019. One such song came out last Friday, Gracey’s “If You Loved Me.”

“If You Loved Me” is actually a great contender for a radio hit, one that could easily gain momentum through the end of the summer to really take off in the fall. A passionate plea of frustration to a lover, Gracey embraces her exasperation and lets her anger build over the span of the song, kicking off the track with a sugary-sweet croon and closing it out with a gravely-melodic roar. Around her powerful voice, the production continues to bloom, gradually adding lush back beats, spacey synthesizers, and choirs of vocoded harmonies to match her sweltering anguish. “If You Loved Me” hits a celestial high in its final moments, Gracey employing the flawless pre-chorus (which she cleverly doesn’t bring in until after the second verse) and filling the backdrop with soaring ad-libs that evoke dizzying euphoria.

Gracey clearly has a nuanced understanding of pop, and she’s without a doubt an artist to follow as her discography unfolds and her career continues to blossom.

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