Signed by RCA Records and working with producer and guitarist Ricky Gourmet, Audrey Hobert released her debut album “Who’s the Clown?” on Aug. 15. Hobert’s album dishes out relatable and comedic internal monologues about navigating her experiences in a landscape of awkward parties, social media habits, unreciprocated crushes and the pursuit of joy.
To address how Hobert deals with uncomfortable parties, she begins with “I like to touch people,” followed by “Drive” and “Chateau.”
“I like to touch people” gives a glimpse into Hobert’s extroverted side, as she sings the title in a metaphorical sense. She patiently explains that even with strangers she enjoys catching “the look in their eye / like whеn they double over” or “when they nod, wide-eyed, screaming.” Hobert receives external validation for her humor from these social interactions, because, whatever she’s sharing, it’s as if her audience has “had that thought before.”
Hobert thus finds that her humor and affability hang on relatability, a common strand of the album. Hobert also contextualizes that she “grew up with a people-pleasing mother,” to which she attributes her “problems.”
In contrast, listeners learn in “Drive” how Hobert deals with a “disappointing night” where her social interactions fall short. When she doesn’t “even wanna see it in a nice light,” she decides she’ll “put it in drive again.” Readers can identify driving as her form of therapy in response to a bad party, with details like wearing “a little black dress, trying not to cry / in a stupid dark room with a bunch of guys.”
Listeners get imagery of her late joyrides from “top down on the 405” at 5 a.m. and “the traffic’s light” until she’s “all the way to bed,” thinking “in another life” to comfort herself about the night gone bad. To close off her statement, Hobert seems to aim for bringing back outros in the form of the nostalgic 2010s spoken punchline, as she does with the imperative “Drive!”
“Chateau” opens with a bit of satire. A faint affected male voice pontificates, “I am so over the summer, I went to this place with, like, 2 Milch –– Michelin stars, it’s like so —” before fading to pointed lyrics that place Hobert at an upscale party. Likely regarding the male from the intro, Hobert complains, “he sucks, but he’s rich,” and expresses her boredom “with the whole A-list” because she “can’t lie” that “high school was better than this.” At this party, she wonders, “Are we legally bound to stand in this circle looking around?”
Hobert was born and raised in Los Angeles alongside her childhood best friend and fellow pop singer Gracie Abrams, both of whom have fathers working in television and film. Perhaps relatedly, Hobert further ponders, “How’d I even get in? And I’d love to get out.”
Hobert exposes her own participation in and insecurities with social media in “Thirst Trap,” a picture of her wrestling an all-consuming crush. She confesses, “I’m in the trenches, fightin’ for my senses” along with “[I] can’t read, or write, or do what I like to do.” Instead, Hobert spends her “days 4/20 blazed just thinkin,’ ‘What’s he gonna do?’”
In this track, Hobert attains a relevance to today without forcing it: “I’m takin’ thirst traps in the mirror in my room / I think I look bad, so I take a hundred.” Instead of shoving a social media reference into her song without explanation, she continues to detail her relationship with it. Specifically with lines like “I’m wakin’ up at noon,” followed by “I think he’ll text back when I’m in the shower,” Hobert relates how communication and self-presentation in this digital age easily manifests into her overwhelming loneliness.
Hobert mourns her former self who “used to kick back, watchin’ movies and the news” and “used to be so super cool” before she developed this crush. She even touches on parasocial relationships with “now I listen to my playlist and pretend I’m you.” Is Hobert talking about her crush, or has she developed an aspiration to become the kind of girl he would want, another bottomless pit to fall into on social media?
Making peace with all these worries occupying her mind, Hobert closes her debut album with “Silver Jubilee,” a catchy pop record determined to stay positive. Hobert transitions from complaining, “all these guys in L.A. aren’t my type,” to deciding, “I’ma live it up like my life starts now.” She even throws in a reference to “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” with “blink and you could miss it, it’s over, it’s all night.”
Perhaps taking a page from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” Hobert also breaks the fourth wall in her song and says, “Well, baby, for the sake of the story, I’ll throw it back to the chorus, oh, here you go.” In referencing the movie “Annie,” Hobert repeats the line “it’s a hard knock life.” However, Hobert concludes she’ll “dance to the music” anyway. Finally, Hobert asserts her desire to become a hit, conflicting with her fear of fame as she sings “I wanna make it, but it’s fun to be a normal girl.”
In her debut album Hobert admits to plenty. Especially in her last song that she does want her music to reach many, circling back to the admission in the first track — Hobert wants to touch people. Her gossipy lyrics, airy vocals and punchy delivery land like dialogues a listener could easily have with a best friend, whether it’s an animated discussion in person or an exchange of quippy text messages. Armed with such wit and sincerity, Hobert uses the title and artwork of her album “Who’s the Clown?” to address anyone about to judge her unrestrained authenticity.
Carmen Lin is an Arts & Entertainment Intern for the summer 2025 quarter. She can be reached at carmnml@uci.edu.
Edited by June Min, Julia Kremenetsky and Joshua Gonzales