User:MoltenuniverseSL/Laura Jane Grace

Article body
Career

2006-2011
Against Me!'s first major-label album, 2007's New Wave, brought the band mainstream success: It debuted at no. 57 on the Billboard 200; featured their first charting single, "Thrash Unreal", which reached no. 11 on Billboards Modern Rock Tracks chart; and was named as Spins album of the year. The song "The Ocean" directly referenced Grace's gender dysphoria, with the lyrics "If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman / My mother once told me she would have named me Laura / I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her / One day I'd find an honest man to make my husband". Though Grace anticipated "completely outing myself" with the song, no one involved with the band seemed to pick up on the lyrics' literal meaning. She also wanted to cross-dress in the music video for "Thrash Unreal", but the label's A&R representative vetoed the idea.

2012–present
Grace released Stay Alive in 2020, her debut solo studio album. The album was written and recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Grace was left without the ability to record with her band Against Me!, and thus made a solo album instead. The album was recorded over three days in Steve Albini's studio in Chicago. Stay Alive was released as a surprise album with no promotion.

Writing

In 2015, Grace wrote a column called "Mandatory Happiness" for the Vice Media publication Noisey.

On November 15, 2016, Grace's memoir Tranny: Confessions Of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, co-written with Noisey editor Dan Ozzi, was published. Much of the book is based on Grace's journals, which she had kept since third grade. The book was known under a working title of Kill Me Loudly or Killing Me Loudly in 2015, when Grace was working with a different publisher.