Gayle Channeled Her Plano-Bred Teen Angst Into the Hit 'Abcdefu'

When Gayle wrote her breakout single “abcdefu,” the song surprisingly didn’t come from a place of hate. Rather, she was trying to reclaim the narrative following the fallout of a breakup.

The 17-year-old wanted to remain amicable with an ex, but he couldn’t help but besmirch her name any chance he had.

As Gayle sings on her alt-pop kiss-off earworm, her ex “told everyone [she’s] a bitch, so [she] became it."

“It wasn't even because I thought he was being an asshole or anything,” Gayle tells the Observer. “It just wasn’t working out. Then I heard through a mutual friend that he was talking mad shit about me.”

And thus, a top 10 hit was born. You've definitely heard it: "A-B-C-D-E, F-U and your mom and your sister and your job. And your broke-ass car and that shit you call art."

At the time of our phone call, Gayle is weeks away from the release of her debut EP A Study of the Human Experience, Vol. 1, out now. She is “nervous but excited” to share her project — filled with love and breakup songs and commentary on her generation — with the world.

Writing “abcdefu” was a long process. Gayle says she really cared about her ex, and was committed to maintaining a friendship with him even after their breakup. But finding out he'd spoken ill of her pushed her over the edge.

“I told them that I would never leave them, and I really wanted to mean it,” she says. “But he completely took me for granted, and was just shitting on me all the time. When I found out he never really cared about our friendship, all bets were off.”

If listening to “abcdefu" reminds you of a specific brand of teen angst only found in Plano, you would be correct. Born Taylor Rutherford, Gayle spent the first 12 years of her life in the Dallas suburb, getting her start performing at small venues such as Rock 101 and local showcases like the Wildflower Festival’s budding talent competition.

Gayle grew up captivated by powerhouse vocalists like Aretha Franklin, whom she learned about when her mother showed her a 30-minute compilation of Franklin’s performances on YouTube. Gayle’s first concert experience would later take place at the Winspear Opera House, where she saw Franklin perform.

Gayle attended Brinker and Bogart Elementary schools in Plano before opting to take online classes at home. She'd gone back to Brinker for a little bit, but Gayle wanted to pursue music and she didn’t get along with her classmates, so she and her mom opted for homeschooling.

“My mom was just like, ‘Fuck it,’ and she homeschooled me," Gayle says. "She took me into work with her every single day. I would do school on my computer, and she'd be on her computer, and I would feel like so fancy because she’d take me into her office. When she’d have meetings, I would have to put on my headphones and sit in the corner.”

When she was 12, Gayle and her mother moved to Nashville, where Gayle originally had plans to make country music.

“There's this soulful side to country music that I really loved and was exploring,” Gayle says. “But then I started doing pop music because I just loved pop music. I think both genres are great, but I think they just do different things, and I just felt more called to do pop.”

In 2018, when Gayle was 14 years old, she attended a songwriting pop-up event in Nashville. Kara DioGuardi pulled her name out of a hat, prompting her to sing an original song.

“I did absolutely terrible,” Gayle says. “I didn't enunciate, I was so pitchy. I was just scared shitless because I just wanted to impress [DioGuardi] so badly. But I also knew that she’s very hard to impress. But apparently, I didn't do as bad as I thought. She didn't hate it.”
DioGuardi later signed Gayle to a record and publishing deal with Arthouse Music Publishing.

Gayle’s soul influence is clear on the EP’s first track “luv starved,” which opens with a jazzy piano intro, smoothly transitioning into kickdrum and guitar-driven verses. On this track, she reflects on the mistakes she’s made in love, and how she “was never shown how to love, so [she] did [her] best to guess.”

“It’s a weird mix of being a love song and not knowing if it's a love song or not,” Gayle says. “I wanted it to have this overarching theme of ‘I want you to be great, I want to think you're great, but like, I don't know.’”

On “ur just horny,” Gayle reflects on a friendship on which she felt both parties “crossed a line” and he began to treat her differently after. When she wrote it, Gayle felt that the dissolution of their friendship was her fault, before later realizing the guy wasn’t sincere in his intentions.

“I realized maybe he just wanted to get into my pants the whole entire time,” Gayle says. “And now that he got what he wanted, it's not as interesting to him. And that really was more of the truth, instead of me fucking everything up.”

A Study of the Human Experience, Vol. 1 cements her status as one of the most promising artists of the moment. Clocking in at just under 20 minutes, the EP tells a cohesive story while leaving the listener wanting more.

Although she kicked off 2022 with one of the biggest songs in the country, Gayle is just getting started and promises to give fans more throughout the year.

“I'm going on tour this year, which I'm so stoked about,” she says. “And I'm currently working on another possible project this year. I'm just really excited to write songs and perform. I'm going to be performing unreleased songs and seeing how people react to them. I’m excited to just keep doing what I'm doing, but doing it in more different ways.”