Because the singer-songwriter Audrey Hobert descended into the Gutter, a Decrease East Facet bowling alley, the opposite day, she shared a confession. One of many singles on her album, “Who’s the Clown?,” known as “Bowling alley,” however that was largely incidental. “I see all these individuals on-line who’re into bowling and are, like, ‘This implies a lot to me,’ ” she stated. In fact, she had used the phrase “putting” when writing the primary part. “So I had ‘strike’ in my head and was, like—bowling,” she stated. “There actually was no deeper which means.”
Hobert, who’s twenty-six, had on a unfastened all-black outfit, and her strawberry-blond hair was up in a messy bun. After slipping on a pair of rented bowling footwear, she rolled her first ball, then excitedly spun round. Solely two pins stood. “I simply blew myself away,” she stated.
She was having fun with a quiet day on the eve of her first tour, in help of the album, a set of loquacious bops about twentysomething life (thirst traps, boys with out headboards, Uber-driver heart-to-hearts) which led NPR to declare her “pop music’s funniest newcomer.” Two years in the past, she was working in a Nickelodeon writers’ room. Solely this previous October did she do her first full-on, non-acoustic stay efficiency—on “The Tonight Present Starring Jimmy Fallon.” She didn’t thoughts trying inexperienced: “It’s the reality of the place I’m at.”
Hobert placed on an olive bucket hat with safety-orange lining and knocked down a couple of extra pins. “After I acquired into this, no person in my private life was shocked,” she stated. “However I used to be, and nonetheless am.” She has all the time been an instinctive entertainer—“When my dad and mom would have associates over, I might, like, stand up on the desk and dance,” she defined—however her aspirations have been elsewhere. Her father, Tim, writes and produces sitcoms (“Spin Metropolis,” “Scrubs,” “The Center”), and he or she aimed to write down, too. Narratives got here naturally. “Even in highschool, I’d have a crush on a man, and we’d hang around, however nothing would transpire,” she stated. “So I might go house and write out the night time going the way in which I wished it to.”
“I simply suppose the good factor you may be is a author,” she went on. “I like the thought of not needing to be checked out. I don’t suppose it’s a really cool high quality to wish to be the star, however I can’t battle that that’s additionally part of my persona.”
Between frames, she admired the alley’s brick wall and stained-glass chandeliers. “Those in L.A. are very dimly lit and have L.E.D. lights all over the place,” she stated, of her home-town bowling scene. “I really feel like I can lose myself there.” She had lived in New York for 2 and a half years, primarily to attend N.Y.U.’s dramatic-writing program, but additionally out of a love for the HBO collection “Women.” “I walked in on my mother watching it once I was a freshman in highschool—some form of intercourse scene,” she stated. “I used to be, like, ‘I would like to look at this,’ so I watched it behind her again. By senior 12 months, we watched the entire final season collectively, each week on the sofa.”
Hobert utilized some hand sanitizer and recounted how, whereas working at Nickelodeon, she took up songwriting on a whim whereas dwelling along with her childhood finest good friend, the singer Gracie Abrams. After a heartbroken good friend had complained, “It’s simply ache as of late,” the roommates repeated it as a melody. Quickly, they’d a full music, after which one other. Since then, Abrams has launched seven of their collaborations, together with the chart-topper “That’s So True.”
“She would principally stroll within the door from the Eras Tour”—the place Abrams opened for Taylor Swift—“and I’d be there, ready to write down,” Hobert recalled. “Typically she was, like, ‘I’m gonna take a nap.’ And I used to be, like, ‘Don’t take a nap!’ ”
Hobert’s writers’-room expertise helped when pursuing her personal music. She advised document labels that she already had an album title and a canopy design (Hobert along with her fingers in pockets, a clown leering by a window), and a presentation thought: no make-up, sporting her personal garments. “There’s no shtick,” she stated. “There’s no ‘That is the form of factor she is.’ I simply don’t wish to be described.” She’s since realized that no frills has its snags, too. “There are occasions I’m, like, God, somebody ought to have advised me to repair my hair earlier than I took that image,” she stated.
Hobert rolled one other body, then checked her rating—eighty-two. “My deceased uncle’s soccer quantity!” she stated. Her rising fame has introduced a conundrum. “Now that I’m being seen and I really feel revered, it’s this bizarre factor of, like, I wish to return to feeling unnoticed,” she stated. “Nothing is kind of like locking myself in my house, actually trying like shit, not seeing anybody, and writing one thing. It’s the place I really feel finest about myself. It’s form of all I would like.” ♦
