Chartbreaker: How ‘Bloodstream’ & TikTok Took Alyssa Grace From Cheesecake Factory to the Hot 100
Categoria: Musica
The breakthrough hit has hit a No. 45 on the chart, as the folk-pop artist readies her headlining tour.
Por Billboard | 16/09/2026
Three months ago, Alyssa Grace was still working as a server at the Cheesecake Factory when her breakout song “Bloodstream” hit the Billboard Hot 100 . While her co-workers “were all freaking out,” the moment was a wake-up call for the rising singer-songwriter. “I was getting a little overwhelmed,” she recalls of juggling her day job with her burgeoning music career. “So I was like, ‘Let’s focus on this one thing.’ ” Soon after, she gave her two weeks’ notice. Such tunnel vision showed immediate results. Since entering the chart this June at No. 93, the aching and acoustic “Bloodstream” has reached a No. 45 high. The single — only the third of her career, all of which arrived this year — features on Grace’s July debut EP Spilling My Guts that includes the previously released “Dog With a Bone” and “Picking Petals.” Grace is now playing the first shows of her career to massive crowds, opening on tour for Alex Warren across Australia and New Zealand (his wife, Kouvr, was an early fan). Grace’s first headlining tour — a 14-date stint including shows in New York, Los Angeles and London at 500-capacity venues — kicks off Sept. 21. Related How Should ADÉLA Build Off Her Debut Album’s Impressive Chart Debut? How 'Chévere': ARIA VEGA 'Couldn't Be Happier' as She Earns First Billboard No. 1 With Ryan Castro Collab Calvin Harris Sets First-Ever Headline Tour of Australia Born Alyssa Grace Proffitt in Torrance, Calif., the 19-year-old artist was raised on Taylor Swift (whom she would listen to on the radio with her mom) and Sublime (whom her dad would play instead). “I got a little bit of everything growing up,” says Grace over Zoom on a Friday morning, having just woken up after one of Warren’s shows the night before. “Once I hit middle school, I started getting into Lizzy McAlpine when she [released] ‘Pancakes for Dinner,’ and Phoebe Bridgers — those were definitely my early inspirations.” Meanwhile, her grandpa was teaching her how to play the guitar, and by age 11, she wrote her first song. “I remember having my first anxiety attack, and I was freaking the eff out,” she says. “I wrote my first song about that. When you’re super young and have anxiety for the first time, you don’t really know what’s going on. You feel like you’re dying. Sometimes I still feel like that. And I didn’t know what the feeling was, so I had written this song and my parents heard me and that helped me get help.” That confessional style of songwriting has become an early staple of Grace’s growing discography. “Bloodstream” serves as the best example, with lines like “I am my father’s daughter but I’m nothing like him at all/ I hear him in the way I speak/ Or when I look in the mirror/ The anger’s grown in me it shows/ Could it be any clearer?” Equally about a toxic romantic relationship as it is family trauma, Grace believes the song resonates because of the wide net