Backstage at the Berlin venue Huxleys Neue Welt, Audrey Hobert is showing me around her dressing room. On the 27-year-old pop star\u2019s second time outside the US, the novelty of having local snacks on the rider hasn\u2019t dimmed, although her enthusiasm for chocolate thins can\u2019t distract from what\u2019s going on across the room. A comically overlong beige trenchcoat hangs on a rail, the excess length puddling on the floor. Two sets of joke-shop Groucho Marx glasses sit on the dressing table, the original black brows and moustache replaced with orange fluff to blend with Hobert\u2019s vivid strawberry blond. \u201cThose glasses are not flattering,\u201d says Hobert. Having matching hair under the giant plastic nose, she says, \u201cmakes it more flattering\u201d.<\/p>\n
In a few hours, Hobert will start her set standing on a ladder that is concealed by the coat, wearing the glasses, miming on a prop banjo and singing a peppy song about charming strangers called I Like to Touch People. After it ends, the lights dim, Hobert climbs down and swaps to a regular-sized trenchcoat. Despite the changeover being entirely visible, the lights come back up as if to say \u201cHey presto!\u201d \u2013 the trompe l\u2019oeil of high-budget pop stagecraft remade as slapstick.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Steve Martin walked away from standup in 1981, but the wild and crazy guy\u2019s spirit<\/a> is alive in an admiring US songwriter born in 1999. \u201cI just wanna amuse people,\u201d says Hobert, taking the sofa, a live wire of delight and total focus in a pink T-shirt, vintage brown coat and dregs of nail varnish.<\/p>\n The jokey presentation \u2013 the long coat suggests the classic \u201cthree kids pretending to be an adult\u201d gag \u2013 might suggest this is just a lark. Hobert\u2019s pop career happened by accident. She had never written songs before moving in with her childhood best friend and pop superstar Gracie Abrams<\/a>. A collaboration they started on a whim ended up contributing six songs to Abrams\u2019 platinum-certified second album, The Secret of Us. \u201cIt was complete kismet,\u201d says Hobert. \u201cBest time of my life.\u201d Witnessing those songs blossom in the producer Aaron Dessner\u2019s studio made Hobert \u2013 a screenwriting graduate who was then working on a Nickelodeon show \u2013 wonder about pursuing songwriting. \u201cI\u2019d never had this feeling before.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018I just wanna amuse people\u2019 \u2026 Hobert performing in Berlin, February 2026. Photograph: Charlie Harris<\/p>\n She tried and disliked session writing and started writing songs that she knew she had to sing. Unlike the indie-pop melodramas she wrote with Abrams, Hobert\u2019s pop is breezy yet lyrically dense and funny, as if someone had unearthed a lost Stephen Sondheim musical set to the sounds of Y2K MTV. \u201cI\u2019m always trying to best myself,\u201d Hobert says of her addictive delivery. \u201cI have a lot to say and I\u2019m very rhythmic. I like flow. Taylor Swift, that bitch has flow.\u201d She signed to RCA for her debut solo album, last year\u2019s Who\u2019s the Clown?, in which Hobert lasers in on the absurdity of awkwardness and desire: \u201cTouching my leg \/ You don\u2019t have a headboard \/ Do that again \/ I think that I want more,\u201d she sings on Sex and the City of a very un-Carrie hook-up in a classic male living space.<\/p>\n Fans at Huxleys Neue Welt, Berlin, referencing Hobert\u2019s song Bowling Alley. Photograph: Laura Snapes\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Her fandom is cultish: on Reddit, one girl wondered, endearingly, what she should wear, because \u201cit\u2019s hard when the vibe is so new\u201d, although the queue outside the venue is full of young women in their own trenchcoats. One group have bowling pins on their heads, riffing on Hobert\u2019s song Bowling Alley. But all signs point to Hobert blowing up as the next big pop star. She\u2019s coolly pragmatic about how her career is exploding. \u201cI feel lucky, because I\u2019m in my mid-20s and so I\u2019m way more fully developed than a lot of people are when they start out doing this,\u201d she says. \u201cI think it should be illegal for a 16-year-old to go into a label meeting and pitch themselves as an artist. But I\u2019ve always felt with this that I have nothing to lose because I only wanted this career as of recently.\u201d<\/p>\n But she\u2019s also exactingly intentional, referring to herself more than once as a \u201cgood-natured control freak\u201d with a complete vision: \u201cWhat I have been working towards my whole life,\u201d she continues, \u201cis having a platform where I can express myself and inspire others.\u201d She actively wants to be a role model for outcasts. \u201cI think I\u2019m well suited, because I do have insecurity and question myself, but I believe it is less than other people do.\u201d<\/p>\n Growing up in Los Angeles, Hobert craved validation as a writer: her screenwriter dad worked on shows including Scrubs. She recognised that she had an ear for language. \u201cI would listen to people try to express themselves and I could repeat it back to them in a sharper, articulate way,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s still my favourite thing to do.\u201d She looked up to showrunners such as Lena Dunham, \u201cwriting, directing and starring in a fantastic show about what it\u2019s like to be young in New York\u201d \u2013 namely Girls, which inspired Hobert to move there to study screenwriting.<\/p>\n Hobert turned 21 in February 2020, weeks before lockdown hit, and had to finish her studies at home. At first, hanging out with her three younger siblings and parents was a dream. When that faded, \u201cit was really suffocating\u201d, she says. After two years at home, she spent a year moving around, also dealing with the trichotillomania \u2013 hair pulling \u2013 she developed in high school, so severe that it was only a year or two ago that she started to feel \u201cnormal about the state of my hair\u201d again. Back then, she says, \u201cI was dealing with bald spots, living next to a freeway and wishing life would improve. I would ask myself: how are you going to get smarter, push your life forward?\u201d When she moved in with Abrams, she says, \u201cI felt like I\u2019d arrived\u201d.<\/p>\n Hobert and her stage wardrobe of trenchcoats. Photograph: Charlie Harris<\/p>\n Despite starting out collaborating, Hobert never had to work to discover her own songwriting voice, happily writing songs alone in her flat for days at a time. \u201cWhat came to me was knowing that it could be whatever I wanted, and that as long as I was tickled by what I was saying, that was all I needed,\u201d she says. Idiosyncratic artists such as Steve Martin and the playwright Annie Baker showed Hobert her path. \u201cCould anyone else do what Joe Pera<\/a> does? What Nathan Fielder<\/a> does?\u201d she says of the offbeat US comedians. \u201cThat is what draws me to other artists \u2013 only this person can make this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n There was, however, a gulf between writing her wordy lyrics and actually singing them: Hobert is still learning breath control. \u201cThe beast inside me wants to move, but I know that I have to pick and choose my battles,\u201d she says. Taylor Swift famously prepped for the Eras tour by singing the three-hour set list running uphill on a treadmill. Hobert has not yet been able to do that, \u201cbecause I go to a public gym\u201d.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot of dutch courage in Hobert\u2019s songs as her introverted protagonists try to let life happen to them: \u201cWhen I\u2019m drunk at the club I wanna be felt up,\u201d she sings on Shooting Star. It counters the image of the pandemic generation as phone-addled hermits in a sex drought. \u201cThe generalisation that people don\u2019t go out, don\u2019t talk to each other, is bullshit \u2013 and it\u2019s also not,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s the thing that makes me most existentially worried for people my age and younger.\u201d That\u2019s why she curtails her phone usage. \u201cI would rather stare at the wall, because I feel like it\u2019s a better use of my time.\u201d<\/p>\n Hobert says she has experienced social anxiety, but always forced herself to \u201cconquer those feelings and go out. I think it\u2019s kind of lame when you can\u2019t do that. If you struggle with anything that might prohibit you from being alive in the world, the world\u2019s not going to make things more comfortable for you, and you\u2019re never gonna grow unless you throw yourself into something hard. How free are you gonna let yourself be? Doesn\u2019t matter who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n She seems to have an enviable ability not to limit herself. Her song Phoebe is about happily relating to the Friends lead who got the least romantic storylines. \u201cFrom a young age, I didn\u2019t feel desired in that way,\u201d says Hobert. \u201cMy fix for that was never to change myself, but to figure out how to like myself more. It\u2019s the one true mission of this career for me, to help others with that. It sounds corny, but you can be the best version of yourself, and you can live a life that feels free of suffering, by complete acceptance.\u201d<\/p>\n