Brenna Ehrlich
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Pauline Bonnke* Gigi Perez has always searched for belonging in a song. As a closeted teen in New Jersey, she learned covers by queer artists like Troye Sivan and Hayley Kiyoko, because their music felt like it held “the secrets that literally were about to pour out of me,” she says. “I remember walking through the hallways of my school, and it was like someone else at least knew. Obviously [those artists] didn’t know me, but I knew them and that was enough for me.”
And as an adult, she forged connections with her own music, like her hit “Sailor Song,” which has been streamed more than a billion times on Spotify. She’s learned that she wasn’t alone with her grief, her confusion, or her battle with faith. There were others there listening for the notes it seemed only she heard. And they’ve accepted her fully.
The children of first- and second-generation Cuban immigrants, Perez grew up surrounded by both music and the church. Discovering Katy Perry on VH1 went hand-in-hand with attending a Christian school, where her mother worked in the cafeteria to secure her spot. She thrashed away on an electric guitar at age seven; as she got older, she’d sit in church and wonder if God would smite her down for not being straight like the women in the Bible. Early on, she loved music — once going absolutely ham on a Costco piano display — but her older sister, Celene, was the real singer in her mind. It wasn’t until she was 14 and fully struggling with her sexuality that she got serious about learning to play instruments.
After a high school career of performing in musicals, Perez headed to Berklee College of Music in Boston. Not long after that, in 2020, her world cracked open with Celene’s death. Perez went from thriving to failing all her classes, and eventually dropped out of school. She found herself grappling with religion and a God that could take away someone she loved so much. “Having somebody who’s literally your best friend and your sister and a part of every single aspect of your life just disappear — the pain of the absence of her was so big,” she says.
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Nothing seemed to matter until her younger sister suggested that Perez try sharing the songs she was writing on TikTok. “I wrote a song about my sister that was kind of like a letter to her,” she says. The track, “Celene” — a gorgeous acoustic ballad that showcases Perez’s husky, honeyed vocals — went viral in 2021, along with the dreamy “Sometimes (Backwood).”
“It creates a sense of bitterness, that you can’t connect with anyone,” she says. “And then I shared the songs online, and it turned out there were a lot of people that were going through it. I took it as a little wink from Celene to go and get it. To do it.”
Perez went on to sign with Interscope in 2022, opening for Coldplay on their Music of the Spheres tour and Noah Cyrus on her Hardest Part jaunt. Her first EP, How to Catch a Falling Knife, came out in 2023. She hit another setback, though, when the label dropped her in early 2024. “It was a really big heartbreak,” Perez says. “I think about that song from In the Heights when Nina’s coming back home after just leaving college and dropping out. Her whole hometown and her family were so excited for her and rooting for her and then this thing happens, and she’s like, ‘I’ve not only I failed myself and my dreams, but I failed everyone around me.’”
Through it all, though, she kept writing, and taught herself to produce. She soon went viral once more with “Sailor Song,” a devastatingly beautiful rumination on faith in the face of loss that caused something of a stir over the lyric “I don’t believe in God.”
