Audrey Hobert's pop success is more than a lucky strike

Francesca Bermudez, Tribune News Service

Audrey Hobert isn't clowning herself anymore. She was meant to be a pop star. "I had been sitting on all of this music long enough that there was like a tiny man in my soul beating down the door of my soul," Hobert, 26, said on a recent rainy morning at Swingers Diner in Hollywood. Last week, the LA native set out on her Staircase to Stardom tour across North America, Europe and Australia. Intimate venues will see her perform from her debut album, "Who's the Clown?," released via RCA Records in August.

Though the "Bowling alley" singer has "so immensely" enjoyed her whirlwind year, music wasn't always in the cards. After graduating from New York University with a BFA in screenwriting in 2021, she fell into place behind the scenes, working in a Nickelodeon writers' room for the since-canceled "The Really Loud House."

Everything changed when she started penning tracks with childhood friend Gracie Abrams for the 2024 album "The Secret of Us." Hobert signed a publishing deal with Universal Music Group soon after and participated in songwriter sessions for a few months before setting her sights on something more personal. Initially writing for herself, it became clear her confessional lyrics couldn't be confined to her bedroom walls.

She teamed up with producer Ricky Gourmet to pin down the perfect level of bubblegum pop and determine when a song was in need of a good saxophone solo. Despite never being cast in a lead role during her "theater kid" tenure, Hobert's music exudes main character energy. The first single she put out, "Sue me," a high-voltage pop anthem about hooking up with an ex if only to feel wanted for a glimmer in time, reached No. 26 on Billboard's Pop Airplay Chart. The music video accompanying the release — directed by Hobert, as all her videos are — introduced listeners to an artist not afraid to dance like nobody's watching

Even though she's performed only a handful of shows, she already has a dedicated fan base at the ready to belt her most self-aware lyrics at her high-profile live shows — whether that be an expletive-laced chorus in "Sue me" or a line about a forgotten pizza pocket in "Sex and the city."

Over French toast and black coffee, Hobert mused about the career she never saw coming.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

As someone who likes to be at home in her creams and nightgown, how have you adapted to the life of an up-and-coming pop star?

I just still feel like a girl who likes to be in her creams and nightgown, and I also, in addition to that, really enjoy the feeling of working and sort of running on fumes. I think if you like that feeling too much, it dips into dangerous territory a little bit, but it doesn't ... feel much like partying. For instance, I've been shooting a music video for the past four days, and last night I was up until 3 in the morning with what we were referring to as the skeleton crew. It feels like I'm not even almost entirely there yet, and I will innately know, "Oh my God, I've arrived." But you can sort of protect yourself from it if that's what you want.

In your song "Phoebe," you open with, "I went to New York / 'Cause a man in a suit told me / You're gonna be a star." From a listener standpoint, it felt like " Sue me " dropped and everything took off. Can you tell me more about the process of writing and pitching?

I had just discovered that I like to write songs. It was simply that, and it was like a pastime. I had written all these songs with Gracie and signed a publishing deal as a result, and was sort of in this limbo of ... I was a child who knew exactly what she wanted to do, and now I'm an adult and am technically a signed songwriter, but I have not spent any of my life wanting to be a songwriter, so I can't imagine that this is the way my life is going to suddenly go, that I'm going to launch myself into a career that I haven't wanted my whole life in the same way I wanted to be a television writer.

But at the same time, the way that it all unfolded felt so cosmic and I knew that songwriting felt very interesting. So as it all unfolded, I just never, for a second, questioned it or let myself feel even a stitch of imposter syndrome because I knew better. I knew that to hold myself back from whatever this journey was going to be would be me doing myself a huge disservice.

Gracie and I were living together at the time, and that was kind of in the thick of her intense touring. So she was gone. I was living on the Westside of LA, which is not a very young area, and found myself sort of feeling like I was this Rapunzel type, living in this cement townhouse and very isolated.