“It’s Gut Wrenchingly Personal”: Grace Woodroofe Unpacks A Toxic Relationship In Her Return To Music

If conventional success is measured by constant momentum, Grace Woodroofe has had an unconventional journey. Like many aspiring musicians, her songwriting started with a love of The Beatles, a guitar and an innate need to write things down.

At just 17 years old, the Perth singer-songwriter’s career accelerated quickly. She released a critically celebrated debut album of bluesy ballads produced by Ben Harper and backed by her “angel” Heath Ledger and swapped sleepy Perth for high-octane L.A.

Bright-eyed and optimistic, the singer-songwriter wrote music, toured with the big dogs and “ran around California like a ratbag going to warehouse parties and drinking underage”.

But at just 20, she retreated from the spotlight and left her growing fan base wondering what the hell happened. 

Coming Out The Other Side

15 years on, having processed complex emotions, Grace Woodroofe returns to music with enough distance to finally name what happened. 

This time, ready to invite her fans into the relationship that splintered her formative years through what she describes as a “series of emotional paper cuts”, while documenting the radical process of rebuilding her life.

Set for release in early 2026, the musician's second album is structured as a sonic evolution, unfurling from dreamy and beautiful to eerie and disconcerting. 

The narrative mirrors the traumatic journey of a relationship that has weighed heavily on the Perth-born singer-songwriter since it ended in her twenties—one she describes as "insidious", “isolating”, and “emotionally abusive".

So far, Grace has released three powerful tracks that capture being “drunk in love”: ‘Happy Again’, ‘I Love You Babe’ and ‘Promise of Everything’, which ponders the carelessness of youth and the blissful naivety that marks the beginning of a relationship.

 “The album starts romantic and cinematic,” Grace tells us. 

The remaining unreleased tracks dive into deeper territory: ”the eerie, disconcerting parts of the relationship, the point where I feel like I’d lost everything and finding the strength to pull myself out of it,” she adds.

“When people ask what it sounds like, I say I’m the main thread throughout it all. I wanted the music to sonically mirror the feelings—the emotions—as they change. So it’s alive. It’s a journey.”

Making Lemonade

Looking back more than a decade later, Grace can now identify the profound effect the relationship had on her psyche—and she’s using the album to help other women recognise the warning signs.

“I always wanted to make something beautiful out of the horrendous experience,” Grace tells us. 

“Beyonce’s Lemonade came out a few days after I'd gotten out of the relationship. I was so profoundly moved by the film and the music together. I thought, what an amazing way to catalogue that experience in your life and move through it.”

Connecting With Other Women

While the full album is yet to be released, the response to the first three tracks has already made the vulnerability worth it—and justified the long wait for her loyal fans. 

“As hard as it is bearing your soul on the internet, there's definitely a reward to it. There's a reason why it's hard. It's because it's really, really personal things that I'm sharing,” Grace tells us. “The fact that people, women in particular, can connect with it is the best part for sure.” 

For fans who have followed her since the early days, the new music has offered something they didn’t realise they were waiting for: resolution.

“People have reached out on social media and said, ‘Now I know what happened to you,'” shares Grace. “Because ‘Promise of Everything’ goes back to when I was 17 or 18, when I put that first record out.”

 “It seemed like I was everywhere back then and had this fairytale story with Heath and Ben. I was playing around Perth a lot at the time. The fact that those people have still stuck around since then and wondered where I’d gone, it's just so cool”.

“I feel like they're understanding what happened and why I disappeared. A lot of things are clicking for people.”

As for what’s next, Grace’s moving forward quietly, deliberately, and finally on her own terms.