Valencia Grace isn’t a traditional singer. Coupled with her powerful and captivating voice, the 20-year-old singer-songwriter uses music as a creative outlet for her honest and raw thoughts.
Grace has been singing for most of her life but recently became an artist many can’t get enough of thanks to her sharing snippets of original music on social media. With 2.6 million TikTok followers, Grace has established a significant online presence that’s continuing to grow. “I started uploading stuff online of me pouring my heart out, and then people resonated with it,” she tells Her Campus in an exclusive interview. “I just naturally found my groove with that.”
Grace is inspired by soulful singers like Etta James and Aretha Franklin, and began embracing her unique sound when she was just starting to write songs at 15, making her the powerhouse singer she is today. “I’ve always been told that I’m loud, that’s why I really resonated with [James and Franklin]. [And] I learned as I started singing more that I was developing into my own sound. When I found Motown and jazz, I was mirroring that until I started writing more of my own material and becoming more invested in my own career.”
Music serves as a therapeutic release for Grace. Her debut EP, Roses, draws inspiration from personal experiences, including her estrangement from her biological mother, which she sings about on the album’s title track. “I created [Roses] as a way to heal from all of my trauma around [my relationship with my mom],” she says. “I was going through my grieving process and ended up with an EP.”
The response to Grace’s music from fans has been overwhelming, mainly because the experiences she sings about aren’t just unique to her. “Everyone feels things,” she says. “We all feel and have gone through very similar things. I’m just the one to sing about it and put it out there.”
While connecting with fans online has been great, getting to perform live for them is what Grace cherishes the most. “I just did my first headline show [on March 19] and it was such a beautiful experience,” she says. “Fans were crying, screaming the words, and showing so much emotion. It really highlighted how music is not just a personal journey but a collective experience that unites and heals us.”
For Grace, the best part about performing live is “[looking] at the fans and [seeing] where’s everyone coming from,” she says. “What I noticed with [my shows] is that it’s a lot of young alternative queer people,” the 20-year-old singer says. “It’s beautiful, just looking around.”
When it comes to her future plans, Grace is determined to continue staying true to herself and to her loyal followers. “It’s important to remember your fans and why they fell in love with you in the first place,” Grace says. “They want to hear the stories, they want to see the process, and they care about the little things. They appreciate realness. They like authenticity.”
Grace also hopes to “perform for bigger crowds and keep growing my audience because it was such a beautiful, humbling experience,” she says. “I feel really connected to fans, so to be able to do that on a greater scale would be phenomenal.”
Longterm, Grace is looking forward to putting more of her music out into the world, but her biggest goal of all is to “keep evolving as a songwriter and as a person.”