Addison Grace Releases Debut Album ‘Diving Lessons’

The fluffy brown hair, winged eyeliner, heavy blush, and endearing smile of a wide-eyed, fem Addison Grace (he/they) often appeared on TikTok’s For You Page in 2019 and 2020. The rising star’s friendly demeanor and relatable queer experiences enticed an impressive 3.8 million followers. Grace used his growing TikTok fame as a musical springboard to launch his debut single, “Sugar Rush,” in August 2020.

The next two years were transformative for Grace, who discovered his trans identity, came out, and changed his pronouns and appearance, all while producing music that evolved with him. He released his second single, a trans lament titled “I wanna Be a Boy,” in January 2022 and noticed a distinct shift in his typical audience.

“It took people a lot of getting used to,” Grace reflects. “The people who actually cared about my music and cared about me and weren’t just there because I was pretty or something all stayed and defended, and they loved me, and it wasn’t a huge deal at all because it really shouldn’t be. But I’ve definitely noticed a shift in brands, and people, and conversations.”

Ultimately, that shift didn’t impact Grace’s blossoming career, and he released his debut album, Diving Lessons, on September 29 of this year. The record is a layered, metaphorical, and character-fueled work that explores his queer identity and relationships, and ultimately, his healing journey. For Grace, the album has been a long time coming.

“It sort of started with me being raised by a single mom,” he says, explaining what fueled his interest in songwriting. “I have two older siblings, and we picked up everything, moved to Utah and (my mom) was working, like, 80 hours a week. And because of that, she needed her kids to be busy somehow because we couldn’t always get a babysitter.”

So Grace’s mom enrolled him in dance and voice lessons, and by the time he was 12, he was nurturing an intense love for music. So intense, in fact, that Grace would practice ukelele and guitar until his fingers bled, and, with hands wrapped in ballerina tape, keep going. “I don’t know; I just got this really intense interest in music to the point where I stole my brother’s ukelele from him,” Grace remembers. “I would watch YouTube video after YouTube video trying to learn different songs and watching different online musicians. It sort of snowballed into me writing songs in my house and showing them to my friends and family and joining every choir and every performance thing I could get my hands on.”

As a teenager, he used social media as a platform for sharing covers of songs and posted ukulele videos (this time with his own instrument, not his brother’s) online, tagging other musicians, songwriters, and producers. But nothing was coming out of it, and when Grace was 18, he almost quit entirely and was more focused on growing his TikTok following than sharing music. “Right before I went to college, I got an email from my current manager, and he was like, ‘Hey, I manage all these artists that you love.’ And I thought he was catfishing me, so I didn’t respond,” Grace says. “And that’s sort of when my career went from being just an idea I never thought would take off into being my career.”

“It felt like a weird fan fiction that someone wrote,” he adds. “I don’t think I can describe enough how that was exactly what I wanted in life, and how if I could have asked for anything at that point, it was exactly that … And when people are like, ‘What’s your next dream? I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I’m doing what I want. This is my dream.'”

The album’s title, Diving Lessons, is a nod to one of Grace’s formative childhood memories—jumping off of the high dive during his final swim lesson. “I remember just crying and sobbing and wanting to get down,” he says. “And after, like, 10 minutes, I kind of realized they weren’t going to let me down. And so I had to jump. But the lifeguard didn’t catch me, and I started going under more and more and they had to swim and get me and push me to the side.”

For Grace, being forced to jump off the high dive at 6 years old is an analogy for healing and how messy and difficult that process actually is. “That’s what (healing) felt like for me,” he says. “It felt like hitting the water and choking on the water and being forced to swim to the edge. It’s not something that you want to do, but you have to do it if you want to keep going. That’s why I ended up naming it Diving Lessons.”

The first two songs on the record, “FISH” and “Pessimistic,” are Grace’s favorite tracks, and to him, exemplify everything he is as an artist. Both have incredibly intimate lyrics but still remain uptempo and light. Grace is also a fan of fun sound effects like the bubble pops sprinkled throughout “FISH,” and reveals that in “Ghost in the Attic,” one of the effects is actually Grace popping his back, reversed, and layered with reverb.

“FISH” is just an emotional scratch compared to “Say Sorry to My Brother,” a mournful, yearning tune about drunk driving inspired by one of Grace’s parents. The track is ultimately about those who are supposed to protect you but hurt you instead, and the inner turmoil of still loving them despite it all.

Although some tracks have distinct themes, his trans identity and exploration of his own body and existence are formative parts of the album and interwoven throughout all of his music. “It’s a part of who I am, and it’s not something I can really disconnect from myself,” Grace says.

“But for lack of a better word, it’s so badass to identify this way and to still be killing it,” he adds. “To be in Utah as a small musician and to still sell out a show or have thousands of people hear something from me and have people be excited by me. And I think that’s 10 times more powerful than anything I did when I identified a different way, and when I was in the closet, and when I wasn’t honest about myself.”