At just 21, Grace VanderWaal has lived more lives than most singer-songwriters twice her age—and on her latest album CHILDSTAR (released April 4 via Pulse Records), she’s no longer asking permission to tell her story. She’s taking the mic, reclaiming the narrative, steering it herself and burning the old script.
Once known as the wide-eyed ukulele prodigy who won America’s Got Talent (2016) at just 12, Grace VanderWaal is no longer the girl the world remembers. Her latest album, CHILDSTAR, makes that unmistakably clear. In her place stands an artist unafraid to confront the uncomfortable—willing to unravel the emotional wreckage of growing up commodified, controlled, and hyper-visible. With just nine tracks, CHILDSTAR is a hauntingly poetic excavation of identity, autonomy, and the aching complexity of coming of age under a spotlight you never asked for.
CHILDSTAR opens with “Proud,” a delicate unraveling of the “golden child” myth. The track begins with a wistful, music box lullaby—an eerie prelude to what unfolds. But VanderWaal doesn’t just sing here—she aches, whispers, and claws her way through the wreckage of perfection. “Promise I’ll be small / I won’t take up space at all… Ground yourself. Remember your place. You don’t have a voice yet. You don’t get to say,” she croons, peeling back the quiet agony of invisible expectations and internalized performance. It’s a song that captures how praise, when laced with pressure, can calcify into emotional imprisonment.
“As a kid, you have this undying need for validation,” Grace reflects on her song. “In some cases, you abandon yourself, and you aren’t granted what you need mentally. You’re choosing to be strong, only because it’s your responsibility to be strong.” She points to the phrase, ‘Cause you’re so special’, as a weaponized kind of love—one that tricks children into thinking they must earn it by being palatable, mature, and self-sufficient far too soon. “‘Proud’ tells the story of the golden child archetype—a child who suppresses their own needs in order to be loved, to be valued, to be enough. That was me,” she says. “And that’s why it had to be the first track on my new album CHILDSTAR.”
Next comes “Brand New,” the album’s focus track—a whispered manifesto on self-objectification, desire, and the aching blur between performance and possession. Built on haunting minimalism, the song is gorgeously restrained yet emotionally overflowing, with Grace’s voice barely rising above a breath. It’s delicate, devastating, and courageous in its complexity. “It’s a love-hate relationship and a commentary on the patriarchy,” she confesses, speaking to the experience of being sexualized before fully understanding what that even meant.
“Brand New” is arguably her most vulnerable track yet—and perhaps her most unflinching. “It’s important to talk about all of the different layers,” Grace says. “You wonder, ‘What if I dream of being a sexy woman? What if that’s something I want? Am I still just a girl at the end of the day?” These aren’t just rhetorical musings—they’re a confrontation of the tangled expectations placed on young women navigating visibility. And in that tension, the track becomes a quiet rebellion—one that refuses easy answers.
Then comes “Homesick,” a hushed elegy to a childhood that never quite was. Over gently plucked acoustic guitar, Grace’s voice trembles with raw longing as she murmurs, “I’m homesick for a day that never happened.” It’s a confession wrapped in melancholy—a yearning not for what was, but for what should have been.
“You’re romanticizing an unattainable memory,” she explains. “Nostalgia is painful. We always look back at a moment we considered to be the epitome of perfection, but… was it ever real?” It’s a stunning realization—one that lingers and echoes into the rest of the album.
On “Behavioral Problems” and “Call It What You Want,” Grace dives headfirst into the chasm between how she’s seen and how she feels. The push and pull between perception and reality becomes its own kind of battlefield. Across CHILDSTAR, the production remains hauntingly minimal; strings stretch, melodies ache, and silence becomes its own language—deliberately sparse, so there’s nowhere for her to hide. But that’s the point. She’s not hiding anymore.
In the end, CHILDSTAR is more than a comeback album—it’s a reckoning. Speaking about the album, she reveals,
“I felt for a long time I was a walking shadow of myself. I felt stolen. My name, my face, my body. While writing CHILDSTAR, I realized, I have something no one can take away, and that’s my story. This album gifted me something I’m eternally grateful for, and that’s my power. To you reading, thank you endlessly for listening. I hope this album grants you a gift as it did to me.”
To bring CHILDSTAR to life beyond the music, Grace VanderWaal unveiled CHILDSTAR: Final Act—a choreographed short film she co-directed with Luca Renzi and Jacob Boehme. Visceral, interpretive, and emotionally unflinching, the visual piece features five performances pulled from the album’s core: “Proud,” “Brand New,” “Homesick,” “Fade,” and “Behavioral Problems.”
But this isn’t just a companion video—it’s part performance art, part soul exorcism. With every movement and frame, Grace crafts a reckoning in real-time, shedding the polish and playing in the raw. It’s the kind of visual statement that makes it clear: she’s not following the rules—she’s rewriting the entire playbook.
Next month, Grace brings CHILDSTAR to life onstage, marking her return to the road with a six-city North American headline tour—her first since 2019. Kicking off May 4 in Chicago, the tour weaves through Toronto, Washington D.C., and New York City before arriving in Los Angeles for a double feature and closing out in San Francisco on May 21.
But the girl taking the stage isn’t the one audiences remember. This is a new chapter entirely—a bold, blazing debut of the artist she’s fought to become. CHILDSTAR is a rebirth, a requiem for the girl who once was, and an anthem for the woman who now dares to take up space.
For tickets and tour details, visit gracevanderwaal.com/tour.
Listen to CHILDSTAR here — available on all digital streaming platforms!
