Love Letter to a Record: Baby Cool on Jeff Buckley’s ‘Grace’

February 13, 2023

Music Feeds’ Love Letter to a Record series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, Baby Cool’s Grace Cuell raises a glass to Jeff Buckley’s 1994 debut, Grace.

Grace Cuell has spent several years co-fronting the Brisbane psych-pop ensemble Nice Biscuit. More recently, Cuell turned to the solo project, Baby Cool, to enact emotional and physical abreaction. The project’s debut album, Earthling on the Road to Self Love, is out now and Cuell will hit the road for an album launch tour through March and April 2023.

Baby Cool’s Love Letter to Grace by Jeff Buckley

Grace Cuell (Baby Cool): Dear Grace,

You were the first album I bought with my own money. I remember strolling down to the CD shop on the main street of my sleepy country town, with my first $50 pay cheque burning a hole in my pocket.

I didn’t know a lot about music then. I only knew I was intrigued by sound, and I loved to sing whenever I was alone. The CD shop offered a world of possibilities. I loved the smell of the plastic wrapped around those shiny discs and I loved trying to imagine the kind of soundscape that was magicked into them.

There you were in the J section, with a handsome man on the front that made my teenage self uncomfortable. I knew nothing about you, only that we shared the same name and one of your songs was a Leonard Cohen cover that Rufus Wainwright also covered for the Shrek soundtrack.

Something changed in me after the first listen. Suddenly I understood heartache, although my heart had never been broken. Your lyrics and melodies showed me what it was like to suffer such a fate, and I felt it down to my bones. Looking back, it was probably the teenage hormones, but at the time it felt so real.

Thank you, Grace, and thank you to the beautiful soul that created you. My musical journey began with you, and this fills me with gratitude beyond words.