By the time you hit 28, you’ve likely convinced yourself you’re “too old” for something — too old to chase a dream, too old to reinvent, too old to start over. For Grace Davies, that fear became fuel. On her long-awaited debut album The Wrong Side of 25, the Blackburn-born singer, songwriter, and producer delivers a raw and unapologetic coming-of-age document that’s equal parts self-reckoning and pop spectacle. It’s the sound of a woman staring down her insecurities and making them sing.
Years in the making, this 15-track opus is vulnerable, fiercely honest, and unafraid of its own contradictions — pairing orchestral ballads with disco bangers, gentle introspection with giant choruses. Davies has said this is her most authentic work to date, and it shows: every lyric feels lived-in, every note weighted with experience. From the haunting opener Welcome to the Wrong Side through the euphoric, ABBA-tinged single Hotel Delilah and the gut-punch closer 25, she’s turned the messiness of her twenties into something magnetic.
At its core, The Wrong Side of 25 is a conversation about growing pains — the ones nobody warns you about. The fear of time slipping away. The ache of watching your grandparents fade (Butterflies, perhaps the record’s most tender moment). The sting of labels and industries that dismiss women “past 25” as past their prime. The record’s thesis comes early in Youngest That I’ll Ever Be: “I tell myself I’m out of time, I’m scared I’ve crossed the finish line.” Yet what Davies does here is prove, track after track, that she’s not just in the race — she’s shaping it.
Musically, the album veers between extremes in the best way. The string flourishes and stormy production on Nothing’s Forever Baby and Look How You’ve Grown feel cinematic, while Super Love Me and Hotel Delilah practically beg to be played in a sweaty, joy-drenched club at 1am. Even at her most polished, she keeps the writing painfully human. On Butterflies, written about her grandparents’ Alzheimer’s and dementia, her restraint makes it all the more devastating: “When memories disappear I’ll still hold them dear, ‘cause butterflies don’t fly away with years.”
This is also Davies fully stepping into her own as a producer — she co-produced every song, alongside Paul Whalley (known for his lush, organic style). That creative control is part of what makes The Wrong Side of 25 feel so specific to her. It’s an album that doesn’t just sound good — it feels like her.
It’s been a wild road to get here: from viral X Factor standout to self-released indie artist, weathering label closures and the pandemic stealing years of her twenties. But the result of that turbulence is a record that feels alive, self-aware, and truly fearless.
Grace Davies isn’t afraid to write about being afraid — and in doing so, she makes it clear that being on the “wrong” side of 25 might just be where the real story begins.
The Wrong Side of 25 is out now on all platforms. Watch the exclusive Hotel Delilah video dropping July 15, and catch Grace live at her headline show at The Jazz Café on November 6.
