"PROUD explores the dangerous combination of toxic positive reinforcement and a child's deep need for validation. It tells the story of a kid slowly abandoning themselves in order to do anything to make someone proud.". (
interview with Numéro Netherlands, April 2025)
Grace talked about the song in interviews with
Nylon Magazine, and
Billboard, and was quoted in an article in
Rolling Stone.
"Proud is the story of the ‘golden child’ archetype. A child who neglects their needs in order to be seen as valued, loved, or mature. As a kid, you have an undying need for validation. In some cases, you abandon yourself, and you aren’t granted what you need mentally. You’re choosing to be strong only because it’s your responsibility to be strong. You’re adopting strength when it’s not appropriate. It was important for me to use phrases like, 'Cause you’re so special’ because they’re weaponised words to control children. Since you’re young, you want to feel strong, mature, and grown up, but no kid should have to do all of those things." (Rolling Stone)
"I wanted to talk about subliminal conditioning and how nothing is black and white. What makes something so complicated is when there’s no one to blame — that would be so easy. If you’re getting exposed to millions of people who are saying, 'You’re great at this, you’re doing good,' while your brain is literally forming, of course, there would be repercussions of that. But no one did anything wrong." (Billboard)
"Promise I'll be small. I won't take up space at all" That lyric is really personal for me. It relates to my experience in the industry, too. I always had an odd and unhealthy relationship with my identity. As a little girl, I was scared of growing up. I was terrified of puberty and womanhood. Emotionally, it’s about feeling like there wasn't room for me in the spaces I existed in." (
Interview with Vestal Magazine, May 2025)
In an
interview with Chris Cantada on his "Once and always a fanboy" podcast, Grace explained that
"The song is about taking on weight, and kind of putting yourself through pain or hell or these like exaggerated experiences, to feel like you’re deserving of someone being proud of you. I think that it was a really important song to introduce, "Childstar" because that’s kind of the heart of everything that I wanted to do. When you develop a relationship with validation like that, it really stems into every single side of you. So, there are a lot of different songs that are still based on the mentality of Proud. There is not really a message; it's more just a story."
In an
interview with Zach Sang in April 2025, Grace explained:
"The song is about not taking up space, being humble … It started with a poem of those positive words I personally felt has aged badly for me, like ‘humble’, ‘grateful’. Grateful was huge because I was very – like America’s sweetheart vibes, and there was a lot of shit going down at home, and I just became famous, so ‘gratitude” is a word that holds a lot of negativity to me because that word tortured me for a long, long time. I had to completely separate myself from emotion, neglect, pain, grief – these terrible, deep feelings I was feeling, because – how dare I have those feelings when people I love in my household are struggling with their life."’
In April 2025, Grace posted a short clip of an early draft of the song on Instagram. The title of the song then was "You're so special*
CelebMix wrote this about "Proud" in their review of the album: “Proud is a delicate unraveling of the “golden child” myth. The track begins with a wistful, music box lullaby—an eerie prelude to what unfolds. But VanderWaal doesn’t just sing here—she aches, whispers, and claws her way through the wreckage of perfection. It’s a song that captures how praise, when laced with pressure, can calcify into emotional imprisonment.
“As a kid, you have this undying need for validation,” Grace reflects on her song. “In some cases, you abandon yourself, and you aren’t granted what you need mentally. You’re choosing to be strong, only because it’s your responsibility to be strong.” She points to the phrase, ‘Cause you’re so special’, as a weaponized kind of love—one that tricks children into thinking they must earn it by being palatable, mature, and self-sufficient far too soon. “‘Proud’ tells the story of the golden child archetype—a child who suppresses their own needs in order to be loved, to be valued, to be enough. That was me,” she says. “And that’s why it had to be the first track on my new album CHILDSTAR.”
Source: Grace Vanderwaal