Audrey Hobert on Wanting to ‘Scare’ People with Album Artwork, Writing with Gracie Abrams

Audrey Hobert knew that when it came to her debut album, she wanted to “scare” people. 

For her, that meant featuring a prosthetic-sporting clown in a sinister smile lurking behind her on the album artwork. “Just knowing that I was a new artist… I would have to capture people’s attention,” Hobert giggles, as she tells PEOPLE over Zoom from her Los Angeles apartment. 

But the sound of Hobert’s debut album Who’s the Clown? couldn’t be further from what someone would consider scary — hooky alt-pop anthems primed for the intro to a Y2K era rom-com-meets-Lilith Fair-core. Still, she knew that she had to make her mark. 

“I thought that [the clown imagery] would be funny because the album itself is full of upbeat pop songs,” she said. “I thought someone might look at that cover and go, is this ambient music or something?” Hobert wanted to pique listeners’ interest.

To the chronically online, the interest was already brewing around the rising musician. The 26-year-old musician who infamously befriended Gracie Abrams at her fifth-grade graduation, had been mentioned in a handful of her songs like “21,” “Hard to Sleep” and “Good Luck Charlie” and co-wrote several songs on her 2024 album The Secret of Us, including “That’s So True,” which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Pop Airplay and Streaming Songs charts. 

“To have a song in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, it means the entire world,” she says. “It’s the coolest thing that’s ever happened. I’ve been a pop music fan my entire life, so it feels sometimes completely unreal, and to have done it with my most treasured friend, it’s literally my favorite thing.”

Hobert’s affinity for the arts isn’t too surprising — she grew up between Los Angeles and New York with a screenwriter father who loved comedy albums and a mother who would fill a minivan commute with musical soundtracks. She loved listening to The Beatles, Steve Martin and Norah Jones, as well as Justin Bieber‘s 2010 LP My World 2.0, the 2007 double-sided Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus album and Taylor Swift.

But a music career wasn’t exactly the plan. Hobert had long found herself inspired by characters in TV shows like the Power Rangers, Hannah Montana or The Wizards of Waverly Place‘s Alex Russo. “I have always felt so charged-up by female characters and always loved books, movies and TV from the time I was so, so young,” says Hobert. That passion from an early age led her to study screenwriting at New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she ended up moving home to L.A. to finish the program. Soon after, she began working as a writer’s personal assistant at CBS and then landed a two-season stint as a writer for a Nickelodeon show until it was unceremoniously canceled. Not long after, Hobert and Abrams, who were roommates for six months, began writing songs together. 

“It was truly the most fun I’d ever had,” says Hobert. “Writing together for her album [The Secret of Us] is one of the most special, most influential, treasured times of my entire life, and I feel like she feels the same. Life is better when we’re physically in the same room.”

Soon, a publishing deal followed, and after the success of The Secret of Us, Hobert decided to pursue her own music career. 

By early 2025, Hobert signed to RCA Records, where she immediately felt “supported and recognized as an artist.” She also found a producing partner in Ricky Gourmet, who has collaborated with Finneas. “In the music industry and in life, I had not met someone so specifically endearing, funny and cool, and I knew as soon as I had a handful of songs that I’d written and loved that I didn’t want to make this album with anybody else,” she says of Gourmet.

Roughly a month before its release in May, a snippet of “Sue Me,” what would become the lead single for Who’s the Clown?, was seemingly inescapable on TikTok, with Abrams, MUNA’s Katie Gavin and Jake Shane sharing themselves dancing to it. The sugary, Sky Ferreira “Obsessed”-like breakup anthem about feeling “validated for one night only” was the first song she and Gourmet had made together during the summer of 2024.

“It’s about feeling like you’re just going to throw caution to the wind with this person who you care about, have a history with and know that, perhaps, he still is in love with you, and you’re aware, and you’re not in love with him anymore,” she says.

As soon as the track was completed, Hobert knew it needed to be the first single. Luckily, her label agreed, too. “I thought, this is how I want to introduce myself as an artist,” she says.

For Hobert, it was “imperative” that the playful, acoustic ditty “Bowling Alley” followed “Sue Me.” “‘Sue Me’ has something kind of undeniably pop and big about it, and ‘Bowling Alley’ is entirely who I am as an artist and as a person,” Hobert recalls. Soon, she shared “Wet Hair,” an inner monologue about the awkwardness of dating. Also featured on the album are songs like the deceivingly sweet “Don’t Go Back to His Ass,” which features a lush, layered ABBA-like harmonizing, the wistful “Sex And the City” about feeling invisible and “Thirst Trap,” which details the crippling self-doubt that comes with taking saucy photos. 

While Hobert wears her heart on her sleeve (with a dry sense of humor) when it comes to penning songs, she is admittedly a little nervous about her ex-boyfriend hearing the songs she’s written about him, which happen to already be released — “Sue Me” and “Wet Hair.” “I feel pretty bad sometimes late at night, but not really besides that,” she deadpans.

While Hobert has shifted her focus to music, her filmmaking background has continued to play a pivotal role. She was responsible for the visual world-building of the project, writing and directing all of her music videos. “The fact that I’m getting to dip my toe into filmmaking is sort of what the package deal was for me when I signed my record deal,” she says. “There’s just no world in which I don’t totally conceptualize and then direct these videos.”

Following the release of her debut album, Hobert plans to remain creatively open — focusing on music and filmmaking, as well. One day, she’d love to create her own “perfect version of a show about high school” like Freaks and Geeks, Gilmore Girls, or The O.C.

But in the more immediate future, she’ll be heading out on tour to support her debut album. Could Abrams — with whom she’s sang on stage before — perhaps join her at one of her own shows? “Only time will tell,” she says coyly. “She is the busiest woman in America, and I’m starting to get busy, as well.”

For Hobert, the expansion of her creative endeavors feels fitting. “I’ve always felt like my head is swirling around with a million ideas,” she says. “Now to get the opportunity to have them realized with a really incredible team, a budget and an audience. I just feel truly blessed.”

Hobert’s debut album Who’s the Clown? is out Friday, Aug. 15.