WPGM Recommends: GRAE – 7 Minutes ‘Til Heaven (Album Review)

In the velvet hush before the dawn of something new, where synths shimmer like dewdrops on neon petals, GRAE emerges. Not from behind a curtain, but through it, tearing silk and silence alike. 7 Minutes ‘Til Heaven, is not an album. It is a séance. A storm in high heels. A diary doused in gasoline, each page lit by the match of self-discovery.

From the first breath of “American Dream”, a spell is cast. Apollonia’s voice, smoky and commanding, rides in like a whisper from a forgotten dreamscape. She doesn’t speak to you. She summons you. And in that invocation begins a journey through stardust and shadows, through the glittering rot beneath pop’s painted smile. This is not your usual indie-pop sweetheart. This is GRAE unbound.

Her voice, still laced with that signature dreamy melancholy, has grown teeth. On “Dark Energy”, basslines crawl like vines wrapping around your ribs, and you dance, breathless, to a beat that feels like dusk swallowing the sun. It pulses, it seduces, it warns. Here lies the album’s heart: moody, aching, electric.

Then comes “Cha-Ching”, Sin City’s smile in reverse. Here, GRAE winks at capitalism with a cigarette in hand, the glitz of Vegas melting into something raw and aching. It’s disco noir, a mirrorball cracked to reflect the currency of desire.

But then there’s “Motorcade”. Oh, “Motorcade”. A waltz with ghosts. Inspired by Jackie Kennedy, it’s less a song and more a freeze-frame of grief, a black-and-white photo that sighs. You hear her voice, soft as tulle, bleeding into orchestral shadows, as if mourning history itself.

Apollonia returns in “A(Rouse)”, not as nostalgia, but as necessity. Her words don’t fill the silence; they dissect it. This interlude isn’t a breath, it’s a reckoning, a surreal echo asking: What does it mean to feel powerful? To own it? To fear it?

Then “Fantasy” swoons into place, the confession we didn’t know we needed. GRAE strips back her glittering skin to reveal the fragile girl behind the gaze, the performance, the perfectly curated collapse. It aches in the most beautiful way.

“Scarlet” follows, a betrayal stitched into a lullaby, a haunting tribute to friendship lost and wounds that bleed in silence. This is GRAE at her most human, turning pain into poetry without once sounding pitiful. It’s a masterclass in emotional alchemy.

Then thunder. “God In A Woman”. The war cry in the temple. If this album is a church, this track is its sermon. A defiant, dripping ode to the sacred feminine, where holiness is not silence, but scream. The production surges like a revolution, with GRAE as its high priestess in velvet boots.

And then there’s “Wet Dream”. Wild. Free. Ferocious. It doesn’t apologise. It devours. A sonic joyride through synth-drenched fantasies, where control is surrendered and art is born of chaos.

“Pleasure Breeds Fame” arrives like a ghost at the banquet. Apollonia again, this time legiac, drawing the curtain on dreams bought and sold. Her words linger, bittersweet, tying the album’s madness into a single silk thread.

Finally, “Hollywood”. The goodbye we knew was coming. Soft, stripped, tender. It does not condemn the fame, it just unravels. Instead, it whispers goodbye with mascara-streaked grace, leaving you blinking under too-bright lights.

7 Minutes ‘Til Heaven, is not just GRAE’s most daring project, it’s her most alive. Each track, a pulse. Each lyric, a scar she’s not afraid to show. She channels Madonna’s chameleon, Prince’s sensual rebellion, and folds them into her own blueprint of what pop can be when it stops pretending.

This album does not beg to be understood. It demands to be felt. To be danced with in the dark. To be screamed into a night that never ends. With Apollonia’s iconic mystique and GRAE’s unapologetic evolution, 7 Minutes ‘Til Heaven, is both an exorcism and a coronation.

A fearless fusion of rebellion and reverence, this is not music you simply listen to; this is music that listens back. And it dares to ask: When the final minute strikes, and the smoke clears, will you still be who you were? Or will you, like GRAE, be someone entirely new?

GRAE’s 7 Minutes ‘Til Heaven album was released in May 2024. Listen to it below, and stream it everywhere else here.

Words by Danielle Holian

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