Grace Enger

“The story of my life has been telling myself I can’t do it, but then still doing it, and ‘it’ working out way better than I thought,” says singer-songwriter Grace Enger. The 23-year-old has built a career on that paradox, and on songs that make others feel less lost in their own contradictions.

Blending pop, folk, soul, and rock, she crafts songs that approach what she calls “stereotypically shameful emotions” — resentment, insecurity, the taboo of a forbidden crush — with the no-filter intimacy and levity of a heart-to-heart between besties. “I feel like I’m writing songs that I needed to hear when I was younger,” she says, “and maybe that I still need to hear now.”

Enger’s Your Favorite Record EP is full of songs you might need to hear, too. Early single “Give A Little” is a bright, piano-driven bop with forceful guitar strums and horn flourishes — a kiss-off you wish you’d given an emotionally deadbeat ex. The wistful “Running Back To You” explains why you can’t stop texting that dud back. The floating “Track 7” trades tough love for self-acceptance: “Well maybe I’m a deep cut / But aren’t those the best ones? / Ones that stick with you forever ever?” By the end, “Falling For You Anyways” finds her opening up again to new experiences.

The EP was written in the months after her first headline tour in 2025 (she was back in the studio that Monday) and captures a liminal headspace — between the afterglow of achieving a dream and the anxiety of what comes next. With her usual support system gone, Enger chose to take production into her own hands, making expansive demos with harmonies and strings instead of leaving everything to others. “I was telling myself I couldn’t do things alone. You give yourself all the reasons why you shouldn’t: ‘girls don't produce,’ ‘you should leave it to a guy,’ ‘you need a creative director,’” she says. “But by the end of it, I took the reins on my own project and therefore my own life.”

She wanted Your Favorite Record to feel like the soundtrack of her childhood — John Mayer, Sara Bareilles, Norah Jones, Stevie Wonder — everything her parents would put on during the morning car ride to school in Hoboken, New Jersey. She fell in love with songwriting at age 10 thanks to Taylor Swift’s Red and later attended Berklee College of Music’s teen summer program, where she was selected from a thousand applicants to play the institute’s annual student singer-songwriter showcase.

Enger began making trips to Brooklyn to collaborate with friends at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute and later enrolled there. During the pandemic she wrote with classmates Sadie Jean and David Alexander and posted music to TikTok. In 2021, a clip of her “19 and Lonely” went viral. Months later, a song she co-wrote — Jean’s RIAA Gold-certified “WYD Now?” — exploded.

Riding that momentum, Enger opened for David Alexander 23’s tour before releasing her debut single in 2022. “I had only ever played three shows in my life,” she says, “but it was like, ‘Just grab the parachute and jump.’ I walked onstage; me and a guitar in front of 2,000 people in Salt Lake City. You learn on the fly.” She toured with Maisie Peters and released her first EP, Well Here We Are, a collection of acoustic ballads. Her 2024 follow-up, The Alchemist EP, explored darker alt-rock textures inspired by Fiona Apple and Radiohead, with songs like “Habits Die Hard” and “A Year From Now.”

Enger sees Your Favorite Record as a “part two”: older, wiser, and more hopeful. “The girl who wrote The Alchemist thought she was healed and moved on, but hadn’t actually taken action,” she admits. “I was just self-soothing and telling myself that, whereas this version of me is a bit braver.” The sound adds theatricality and bigger instrumentation — live horns and piano layered with key changes and “weird chords.” “I hope people can see how passionate I am about it,” she says, “because I really eat, breathe, sleep, and shit this stuff.”

Grace Enger — Metro Music Hall (Salt Lake City)