Maeve McDermott

USA TODAY

Playing under an umbrella as the rain whipped by wasn’t how Grace VanderWaal expected to preview her new music.

But standing on an NYC rooftop surrounded by fans on Thursday night, the 13-year-old star was in high spirits, celebrating the release of her Moonlight music video

“I’ve been checking the views all day, I can’t help myself,” she said about the video, the first official clip she's ever done.

Next month, VanderWaal celebrates her one-year anniversary of winning America’s Got Talent, where her ukulele strumming and husky voice immediately went viral, famously inspiring judge Simon Cowell to call her "the next Taylor Swift."

After winning the competition's million-dollar prize VanderWaal signed to Columbia Records and Cowell's personal label Syco Music, releasing her debut EP Perfectly Imperfect in December 2016, which debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard charts.

As VanderWaal told USA TODAY, her stint on AGT was “the hardest part” of her past year, recalling a tough conversation she had with Cowell after her win.

“I told Simon, when he was asking me to be on his label afterwards — I was so relieved for AGT to be over, not that I didn’t love it, but...you know," she said. "So I was just like, ‘Simon, if it’s like this, I don’t want to do it. If this was my life, I would hate my life.’ And he said that you’ve gotten through the hardest part, and that was so the truth, and I realize that now.”

Competing on AGT may have been a grueling process, but to VanderWaal, the show provided essential training that helped smooth her transition to her post-win career.

“It helped me learn how to deal with nerves, how my body reacts to nerves, know how to react to stress, how to work while keeping my health and mental health stable, and it literally just was the best steps to this foreign world.”

VanderWaal is currently working on new music for a forthcoming album (release date TBD) and planning a subsequent tour. With her schedule ramping up, VanderWaal stressed the importance of setting time aside to de-stress.

“Don’t be afraid to cry, everyone needs a good cry sometimes. Sometimes I’ll feel it in my throat, like, ‘Today I’m going to cry about something stupid,’ so just to get it out of the way, I’ll watch a sad movie or something, accepting that that’s totally fine and feels good. And then just having down time, quiet time. And screaming in pillows is totally fine. Just like, overall acceptance that that’s fine, you can go do that, it’s normal.”

Moonlight may be an upbeat, wistful pop song, but the video’s melancholy story was inspired by a friend’s battles with depression, showing VanderWaal running through Brooklyn and visualizing a crowded party awaiting her at her destination, only to break down in tears on an empty rooftop.

“The story is someone going through depression and seeing the way they’re changing and that fake altered personality,” she said in an Instagram video, thanking her fans for their supportive response. “A lot of people go through depression and if you know someone please talk to them and try and reach out.”

VanderWaal didn’t want to overstate the weighty matters behind the song, saying it was simply something happening in her life. “I wrote about it because, I don’t know, it was something happening at the time," she said. "And I always write about whatever’s happening in the moment in my life.”

Similarly, she balked when asked whether writing about depression, and showing its representations in her video, took any bravery.

“Yeah, but I never thought I would write this to build awareness, or anything like that,” she said. “I was just writing from my own personal heart, to get it out," she said.

The video gave VanderWaal a chance to pursue her lifelong goal of acting — and to show off her impressive fake-crying talents.

"I actually really wanted to be an actor when I was younger, and I taught myself how to cry when I was like four," she said. "This was actually the first time I used it in my entire life."