Grace VanderWaal: Growing up in the Spotlight, Speaking Her Truth, New Album ‘CHILDSTAR’

Zach Sang Show

Sangasong, LLC

Tv & Film, Music

4.7 • 658 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2025

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Back on the sofa for the first time since 2019 — this time without her trenchcoat — Grace WanderWaal joins us for a refreshingly frank conversation about her experiences in the entertainment industry. Now 21, VanderWaal won America’s Got Talent when she was just an improbably precocious, ukulele-toting 12-year-old. She discusses that experience, candidly sharing her feelings as she navigated childhood to early adulthood in the spotlight.

VanderWaal also unpicks the themes in her new album CHILDSTAR, sharing her thoughts on destructive archetypes and oppressive expectations — she’s rewriting her narrative as a newly independent artist, collaborating with the likes of Aliyah’s Interlude, getting playful with alter egos, and channeling the unflinching honesty of artists such as Fiona Apple. She also discusses her thoughts on acting, what it was like working with Francis Ford Coppola in Megalopolis (for which she also contributed two original songs), plus heartbreak, bad tattoos, moving through familial and childhood trauma, her disdain for black and white interpretations in areas that are clearly gray, and so much more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Crank it. It's the Zach Sang Show.
0:03.6	Hi, how are you today on this, I don't know, you can be listening to this on any day.
0:08.7	I appreciate you being here with us. We've got a great show coming your way. Grace VanderWall
0:13.5	going to be here. All right, Grace. I love Grace VanderWall. She is back on the show. Say hello, Dan.
0:20.2	Hi, Kelsey. Hi. You're back on the show today. It's hello, Dan. Hi, Kelsey.
0:21.2	Hi.
0:21.7	You're back on the show today.
0:22.8	It's been a minute.
0:23.6	Hi, Kelsey.
0:24.6	I know. I went to Florida.
0:25.7	Well, yeah, you experienced your dreams.
0:28.0	She did her yearly sabbatical to Florida.
0:30.4	Cameron, she achieved something over the weekend that you, I know you well enough now to know that your life really has been centered around the sport of women's college basketball for a very long time.
0:42.7	In specific to Yukon Huskies, your sister works on the team.
0:46.1	You make this pilgrimage to Tampa, Florida.
0:48.5	Yeah.
0:49.0	Florida.
0:49.7	And what happens?
0:51.6	And we want a natty.
0:53.0	We go into the ships. We're going to the ships!
0:55.6	We're going to the ships!
0:57.1	That is our cheer, right?
	...

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