After moving from Los Angeles to New York City in 1991, Buckley amassed a following through his performances at Sin-é, a cafe in the East Village, and signed a record deal in 1993.

He recorded Grace in Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, New York, with musicians including Gary Lucas, Mick Grondahl, Michael Tighe and Matt Johnson.

It includes versions of the jazz standard "Lilac Wine", the hymn "Corpus Christi Carol" and the 1984 Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah".

Grace did not meet Columbia's sales expectations, reaching number 149 on the US Billboard 200, and initially received mixed reviews.

After Buckley's death in 1997, its critical standing grew and it was praised by musicians including Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Bob Dylan and David Bowie.

In Los Angeles in the early 1990s, Buckley met the guitarist Gary Lucas and wrote the songs "Grace" and "Mojo Pin" with him.

[5] In the weeks before recording began for his debut album, Buckley assembled a band and delayed work until he felt he had found the right musicians.

He found the process of recording contrary to his improvisational performance style, and said later: "It's not like a live show where you play it and it just disappears into the air like smoke.

It's in a crystalized form, so it's very nerve-wracking: which brain cell do I put down here forever and ever?”[5] Recording was disrupted when Buckley was upset by a negative review of Live at Sin-é, which likened his voice to Michael Bolton and wrote that he was derivative of "black idioms ... awkwardly reach[ing] for a balance of emotion and technique, eventually relying on sheer voice of will, oversinging, flaking out".

It depicts Buckley with his eyes closed, holding a microphone and wearing a women's sequinned jacket he had purchased from a thrift store.

[5] Entertainment Weekly described Grace as a blend of "choirboy cabaret" and Led Zeppelin guitar, with vocals that "spiral into spasms of romantic despair".

According to the Mojo critic Jim Irvin, the performances "veered between delicate acoustic sets and full-scale sonic onslaughts", with Buckley "becoming increasingly interested in the harder end of the sound and the power of a band".

[citation needed] Grace did not meet Columbia's sales expectations and did not achieve wide popularity in Buckley's lifetime.

She felt his cover of "Hallelujah" was not "battered or desperate enough", but praised "Lilac Wine", writing: "His voice seems weighted down with tears that just won't come out the normal way.

"[21] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau wrote that Buckley was "beholden to Zeppelin and Nina Simone and Chris Whitley and the Cocteau Twins ... Let us pray the force of hype blows him all the way to Uranus.

"[23] Dimitri Ehlrich of Entertainment Weekly wrote that Grace was "dreamy and stunningly original", describing Buckley's vocals as "an angel and devil wrapped in one".

He felt that though Buckley encompassed "every cliché of the tortured bohemian artist", he was "aiming for a higher plane, musically and spiritually, than any other singer-songwriter right now, and he succeeds enough to matter".

[24] In the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot wrote that Buckley's voice had "a soulful intensity that sends chills", matched by the "rolling-and-tumbling dynamic" of the music.

[41] Bob Dylan named Buckley one of the decade's great songwriters,[41] and David Bowie considered Grace the best album ever made.