Sara Bareilles: ‘I’m Terrified, but I’m Not Hiding’

A t this point in her life and career, Sara Bareilles has no time for anything that’s not real. “The decade of my forties has been all about stripping away artifice,” the singer-songwriter says. “I don’t want distance in my relationships, in my conversations, [with] fans, or the music. I don’t want artifice. I think it’s very easy to hide. And I’m terrified, but I’m not hiding.” It’s been nearly two decades since Bareilles broke out with “Love Song,” the 2007 piano ballad that was her cheeky response to her label (just think of it as the millennial version of Joni Mitchell’s “You Turn Me On I’m a Radio”). Ironically, “Love Song” became a hit and earned Bareilles two Grammy nominations, but she immediately found the life of a recording artist to be monotonous. Instead, she branched out into Broadway — beginning with 2015’s Waitress, which she wrote the music and lyrics and starred in — and television, notably Girls5eva, where she was a member of a rad fictional pop group. It’s fair to say that across the last 19 years, Bareilles has lived many different lives. “I think of us as Russian nesting dolls,” she says. “We carry those parts of ourselves. We just encase ourselves as we move forward in time.”  On Aug. 28, Bareilles will release Good Grief, her first new album in seven years. It’s a reflection on loss and the power of healing, paired with an accompanying documentary and tour. She detailed these upcoming projects and reflected on her career in her very first Rolling Stone Interview. On a rainy night in early June, Bareilles is sitting in a black velvet long-sleeve dress, greeting the crowd at New York’s Cherry Lane Theatre. She’s about to kick off Rolling Stone’s residency at the intimate and historic venue, where she’ll partake in an onstage version of our classic conversation series, followed by a stripped-down performance alongside guitarist Butterfly Boucher and keyboardist Misty Boyce. “There’s a part of me that’s worried that my vagina is going to flash,” she tells the crowd. “So if that happens at any point, I want two fingers separated to let me know, and we will adjust for the camera. Great. Thank you. Back to my grief.”

Good Grief is your first studio album in seven years. How did it come together? The genesis for this project started in 2020 with a little thing called Covid-19. The pandemic for me, as for many people, was like a seismic reorientation. My mental health, which has always been something that I’ve had to work really hard to maintain, took just a total nose dive, and I was in the throes of anxious, depressive episodes that I could not shake. I was so overwhelmed by the magnitude of the experience of the pandemic and the world shutting down. And then what we saw happen with our administration and how we were managing this enormous global crisis, I shut down. I would see all these artists having a lot to do and say and create from the impact of the experience, and I just really got quiet.

And then one of my best friends passed away in 2020. His name was Chad [Joseph], and he died of stage 4 lung cancer. He got diagnosed and was gone in eight months, and he’d been a part of my life for decades. And then I got on Lexapro, which I highly recommend, if you need it. There are a couple of songs on the record that were written in 2020, which feel like a bookend that were like the seeds of a very desperate, empty place within myself. And then moving forward in time, things got a little better. I lost another dear friend, Gavin Creel. I was on a very challenging fertility journey that I continue to be on, and just a lot of grief. And I feel like the vast majority of what I see happening and what’s coming out sideways in our world is unprocessed grief. So, yeah, it started in 2020, and it’s continued.

I feel humans have gotten to a place where we can talk more comfortably about mental health, but we’re still working through how to talk about grief. And sharing grief really helps us process it. Tell me a little bit about the conversations that you had with others about grief, and how it shaped the album. What I realized is that grief must be witnessed. You must share it. It doesn’t heal on its own. You can’t go to your corner and figure it out. The alchemy of it doesn’t change unless you share it with other people. And the recognition that is born from taking the time to share and unpack and just see each other in your grief is the thing that actually transforms and transmutes. And it’s crazy to say, [but] the pain of the last six years of my life, I almost wouldn’t change. Of course I wish my friends were still here, but I am a different person because of losing them and loving them. And I am more of who I think I’m meant to become because of it. So it’s wild. Grief is a miracle. It’s just love. It’s so beautiful.

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Once I started feeling a little bit better — not just with the help of medication, but meditation and therapy, and really doing some work with my husband, Joe — the more I started to understand what was unfolding. And then the music started to come. Most of these songs were birthed in the last three years.

When you announced the record, you released your magnificent new single “Home,” which was inspired by a conversation on Anderson Cooper’s podcast between him and Stephen Colbert. I know you said that you felt like you plagiarized the story, but— 100 percent. And I’m like, “I’m not giving you writing credits.” You have enough money, Anderson Cooper.

[Laughs.] Tell me about writing that one. Oh, my god. I think what Anderson Cooper is doing with his podcast about grief is just masterful. It’s called All There Is. It is so bold and so courageous for him to continually dip back into his own well of grief and to be a very public-facing figure and to be willing to be vulnerable and to invite people into this very vulnerable space. He had this incredible conversation with Stephen Colbert. It’s these two men that I really love, and their tenderness with each other and about their loss was so moving to me. Stephen lost his father and two brothers in a plane crash when he was 10 years old. And he talks about his father being 53, and how profound the day was for him the day he turned a day older than his father ever got to be.

I’m lucky to not have lost my parents yet, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about that. When you outlive these people that you love, it’s a wild experience. And the theme of that song feels like it’s the sort of centerpiece of the record. We get to, and we must, go everywhere within ourselves and share it with each other in order to come back home. Home is about connection, it’s about recognition, it’s about catharsis. We just have to be brave enough to go into the dark corners to find the light.

Did Stephen hear it? What was his reaction to it? I played it for Anderson on his podcast, and I sent it to Stephen. They were so sweet about it. I think what they found remarkable was that anytime you put something out in the world, you can’t imagine it changing shape or changing form. They were like, “I can’t believe you wrote a song about that. You made a song.” It’s the way I felt when I saw Mia Michaels choreograph this dance to “Gravity” on So You Think You Can Dance. This was many years ago, but I was like, “Oh, my god.” It made it this whole other thing, and I couldn’t even believe it, and then I couldn’t unsee it. And it was just so special. The idea that art continues to transform and transmute and change.

I also want to talk about the song “Just a Kid.” Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with Chad, and how he inspired it? I know he was really pivotal to your career. The lyric is very explicit in this song. Chad and I met sitting on the steps of UCLA. We had both been gone an entire year prior; we studied abroad. I was in Italy, he was in England, and we both came back to UCLA in the fall. And we were friends, and I was like, “How was your time? I don’t think anyone noticed that I wasn’t here at all last year.” And he’s like, “Yeah, everyone’s like, ‘How’s your summer?’ I wasn’t here, and no one noticed.” And we became really fast friends. He was one of the funniest, most personable, most beloved people. 

He remembered everybody’s birthday. Literally, it’ll be like the clerk at the CVS told me their birthday and then it would go into his Blackberry at the time. But for years, every year, that CVS clerk would get a text from Chad Joseph telling him or her happy birthday. Very thoughtful, very messy. We were roommates for years. We developed a very codependent relationship that I ended up in therapy over.

He quit his job to join me on the road. He was working for a publicity firm, and I was going on my first tour. And I called him, panicked, from the East Coast. I was doing everything myself, and I was so overwhelmed, and he couldn’t get the time off work. So he quit his job and he flew across the country and saved my ass, and we were in lockstep for about 10 years. And then we parted ways professionally, but we were really good friends. And then he got that crazy diagnosis, and I’m just like, “You’re fucking 40 years old.” It was unbelievable. And then he was gone.

He sounds really amazing. You also have the song “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet,” which you released last year. That’s right. That’s the order it goes on your tongue. That’s not true. I couldn’t rhyme with umami.

It’s such a fantastic collaboration with the late poet Andrea Gibson and Brandi Carlile. It was even shortlisted for Best Original Song at the Oscars. Why did you decide to include it on the album? There are those people and those events in your life where there’s a before and after. And I am a different person after knowing Andrea and their work and being a part of that film, Come See Me in the Good Light, which is this incredible documentary that was made about Andrea and their partner, Meg Falley. It was a collaboration with Andrea’s unfinished work. We were given two documents with a bunch of couplets and unfinished verses, and I watched the film. And then Brandi and I collaborated to get it across the finish line. But it’s mostly Andrea’s words, which is part of why I wanted it on this record, because I just think their words belong absolutely everywhere.

“Grief is a miracle. It’s just love.”

And let’s talk about Brandi, because she’s collaborated with Elton John, Joni Mitchell, all these legends— I get it, Brandi’s everywhere! We love Brandi!

What makes her such a great person to work with, though? She’s really awesome. Oh, my god, she’s like a big electric neon yes. She is first and foremost a total music fan. She is, like, gaga over people. She’s not like, Gaga. She’s totally different than Gaga, but she is so unabashedly supportive of who she loves. She wants to highlight the careers of these incredible legacy artists, people like Bonnie Raitt and the Indigo Girls and Joni Mitchell. She champions and reminds us that these are the women that have shaped so much for those of us who are creating music and art in the world. It is just undeniable, and I think her love of them is deeply sincere. She’s very kind and very funny. And she’s just got a decent voice. 

I was with my husband, and we were in Canada at a wolf sanctuary where we were sleeping in cabins near wolves. I love wolves, I always have. And we got the demo, and Brandi had added her vocals. And popping in the new MP3 of fucking Brandy Carlile’s voice on his song, it’s the greatest. It’s the greatest thing.

Wait, can we talk about the wolves, though? 100 percent. I would love to.

What made you want to do that? That’s amazing. Well, it was his birthday. His birthday’s in March, and I used to be really bad at his birthday and now I’m trying to be better. So I usually take him on a trip somewhere, and we were going up to Montreal and Quebec City and there’s a wolf sanctuary up there. You can sleep in cabins and they howl at night, and it is wild. We would sit in the morning, have coffee and watch wolf TV. It’s these big picture windows, and you’re just watching these sleepy wolves.

How long were you there? Just one night.

That’s probably as much as you can do. Yeah. I don’t want them to throw in, like, a baby deer. I don’t want to watch that kind of wolf TV. I just want to know they’re there, listen to a howl, and then go shopping.

I’m so down with that. Well, I’ll pivot away from the wolves. There’s a documentary coming out alongside this album. I loved watching it. It’s really just you in the studio with these incredible musicians. Your dog Louie is there. Highlight. Highlight. Yes.

Why did you want to document this process, and what was that like for you? In a huge way, being a part of Come See Me in the Good Light really informed that decision. I was so moved by Andrea and Meg’s bravery and Ryan White, who’s the director, and Jess Hargrave, the producer. The tenderness with which they were able to hold something deeply intimate I think made me feel like this was possible. And I knew I had been hemming and hawing about going back into the studio. I think like anybody, you stop doing something for a while and it’s very easy to lose confidence and to feel irrelevant. I mean, the music industry moves so quickly. Young artists ask me, “Tell me how to …” And I’m like, “I don’t fucking know. Are you kidding me? We had MySpace! Good luck losing your mind!”

“I want more tenderness from everybody. Can we just be a little softer with each other? Except for the Knicks. You just keep going.”

I wanted to invite being seen, and I felt like I was finally ready to not put on a dog and pony show for the camera. I mean, I’m a ham. We all know this. [But] I wanted to bear witness to what felt like was going to be a profound experience, and it was.

You can see you going through this in real time on screen. You produced this on your own, right? Well, what I’d say is that I definitely am the producer of the record, but it was all about deep, intentional collaboration. So I share production credit with the band members that came in and were in the studio with me, and I did some songs with Aaron Dessner up at his studio Long Pond [in upstate New York]. So it’s not that it was like … I’m not Lauryn Hill. You know what I mean? Don’t we all just listen to that record [The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill] and go like, “This bitch, she’s just the best.” 

But for me, there was something really liberating about affirming that I was worthy of making the decisions. It’s taken me a long time to kind of let go of being deferential, that someone else knows better. And I’ve been doing this a really long time, and I think I’ve earned my stripes at this point to at least be like, “I know what I like.” It feels like making my first record [2007’s Little Voice]. It’s so handmade. I know every little nook and cranny of this record. I poured over the details. I have spent hours and hours — thousands of hours — on this with wonderful collaborators, but it is so mine. It feels so mine.

Let’s talk about working with Aaron and going to Long Pond. What made you want to work with him? Well, Brandi Carlile was like, “You got to try Aaron.”

Always Brandi. Yeah. All roads lead back to Brandi. I had been talking to her about producers where I was just like, “Oh, I’d had a couple meetings, and it just didn’t feel like I was finding the right fit.” And she’s like, “I loved working with Aaron. You should check him out.” And I have a house upstate, so he was not far away. We just spent a little time together. And the thing that I love about Aaron is, he’s not asserting himself or his aesthetic onto anything. He really feels like what I think a great producer does, which is trying to clear space and trying to just augment and uplift the artist in their most sort of essential self. And he’s just really lovely, really gentle. Makes a wonderful latte, serves really delicious wine. It was classy and easy, and it felt really fun.

So many amazing albums have come out of Long Pond. I’m curious what your favorite might be. Maybe Noah Kahan’s. Yeah.

That record’s so good. I really loved that record. Did you guys see his documentary? I love a tender guy. I feel like I want more tenderness from everybody. Can we just be a little softer with each other? Except for the Knicks. You just keep going.

You are obviously someone who does so many things. You’ve been on Broadway, television … it makes me feel tired even listing these out. I’m tired, too, to be honest.

But you have this really amazing way of creating so many different outlets. Is that intentional? I don’t think it was originally intentional. I think what happened was I got a little spooked on my second record, [2010’s] Kaleidoscope Heart. After I finished touring that record, I got a little spooked by how predictable the cyclical nature of being a recording artist is. And I’m a Sagittarius, so I really like when things change a little bit. Not too much, but just a little bit. And I started to feel claustrophobic. I was like, “Oh, you go on tour, you come home, you take a break, you write a new record, you go back in the studio, you go back on tour.” I was just like, “I can see the rest of my life. That’s just what it will look like.” And I wasn’t that interested in that. 

I took a year off [from] L.A. I had a cute little house in Venice. I was pretty comfortable there, but I came to New York, and the way I describe it is just that the version of myself that I encountered who lives here is so much more interesting. I feel like this city carries so much depth, richness, and variety, and art, food, culture, and people. I was so turned on by New York City, and then I started working on Waitress, which was the project that changed my life. I would never have thought that writing a musical about pie would actually finally bump my artist profile where people are like, “Oh, Sara Bareilles, what are you doing?”

You wrote a memoir 10 years ago [2015’s Sounds Like Me], which is so good. It’s very short. When I was on the book tour, people were like, “I read your book in line.” I was like, “I wrote a pamphlet.”

You wrote so candidly about breaking out with “Love Song,” and how you worried “the big, bad pop monster would eat me.” I’m curious how you look back on that era now. Oh, man. I just feel like the number of times I’ve prepared myself for being consumed by fame is hilarious. I remember before “Brave” came out. [Turns to audience.] I have a diary entry, you guys. I was like, “Get ready, Sara. Your life is going to change.” No, baby. No. I feel so much tenderness towards that girl. I think of us as Russian nesting dolls. We carry those parts of ourselves. We just encase ourselves as we move forward in time. And I was so scared of losing myself. I was so terrified that something would happen and I would be unable to find ground to stand on again. And many, many years later, and medications and ketamine trips and all kinds of shit later, I’m like, “Oh, that home thing, you just carry that.”

“The number of times I’ve prepared myself for being consumed by fame is hilarious.”

That’s just everywhere you go. You are your own home. You can go anywhere, because you can come back. But it took me so long, and I don’t regret the fear that I carried, because I think it made me cling to my own vulnerability. Telling the truth makes me feel safe. This no interest in artifice and telling the truth was something I clung to as a young artist, so I’m just going to tell you the truth. So when I wrote “Love Song,” I was writing it to the record label thinking I was going to get in trouble because it was so obvious. I was saying, “I’m not going to write you a love song,” and they didn’t know. They didn’t know! And I was like, “What is this life?” It’s wild.

“Brave” is this incredible LGBTQ+ anthem. When you’re performing songs like “Love Song” and “Brave,” what goes through your mind about the young Sara who wrote these? I love her. And I love those songs, because they’re totally sincere. They’re totally sincere proclamations of wanting myself and the listener to just get closer and closer to themselves, to trust that they are enough. “I want to see you be brave.”

What I like about that lyric is that it’s not about the outcome. It’s not about winning. It’s just like, can you find courage? Can you touch courage and hold that with you as you move through your life? Because that’s the only thing you can really reach for. There’s nothing that is guaranteed about an outcome. I mean, losing a friend. Sometimes we die at 40 or 48 or 52 or 16. There is no guarantee. So it’s just about, how do you move through this life in a way that has integrity and generosity and kindness? That’s really all there is.

Early on in your career, you opened for Maroon 5. What are your memories from those years? Oh, my god, it was crazy. I saw cocaine for the first time. Went to use the bathroom at a party and there was a little — this does not even belong to the band. This was just one of those things where we’re out. And I was like, “Oh, my God, that’s cocaine!” Couldn’t believe it. Still never done cocaine, guys. I don’t do drugs, except with therapists. [But] those boys were so wonderful to us. They felt like big brothers. They took me and my band on the road. They took us under their wing. They shared everything they had. It was really awesome. I could not get over seeing all the girls. There was literally a lot of throwing underwear. I was like, “I thought this was like a trope that happened,” but it’s real. They just throw their underwear. “Did you bring two pairs?” is the first thing I think about. Because if you’re wearing a skirt and you sit down on a surface, your vagina is touching the chair. This is where my mind goes.

I’m going to let that sit for a second. You asked.

Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever heard one of your songs play? Well, this is not exactly that, but it’s making me think of one time I was getting a pap smear and I think it was the vagina. I’m sorry to be talking about vaginas so much. No, I’m not sorry. I was getting a pap smear, and the doctor said, “So you got any fun Broadway things coming up?” And I’m like, “Can you get the instrument out of my body before you ask me about my summer plans?” So shocked. 

Bed Bath & Beyond always. RIP. Do they still exist? And Home Depot. Any of the big box stores, really. That’s my demo. Oh, my god. I had an experience where I bought a bunch of bras and then I took them back because they were expensive. I was living in Santa Monica. This was many years ago. And then my song came on the radio as this woman was mean mugging me because she’s like, “What crazy returns 10 bras?” And I’m like, “Just put it back on my card, please.” That’s me.

Wait, which song was this? “Fairytale.” I fully remember. Thank you for that. That’s fun to revisit. She did not like how I had folded them. She was upset. Next.

What would you say is your best gig ever? Best gig ever. One of the best gigs was getting to honor Carole King at the Kennedy Center Honors [in 2015]. There’s so many things to tell you about this. First of all, because James Taylor played right before I played, and James Taylor played on the set piece that was a roof because he was playing the song “Up on the Roof.” And I was playing “You’ve Got a Friend,” so James [exits] to the left and I come on. And James had asked me before the show, “Would it be OK if I play along to ‘You’ve Got a Friend?’” So James Taylor is sitting in the dark, on the side of the stage of the Kennedy Center, just playing along. I was like, “I can’t believe this is happening to me.”

And then after me was Aretha Franklin. Aretha comes out and it’s this legendary performance where she sang “Natural Woman” and she hadn’t sung it in so long, and Carole didn’t know she was there. And Obama’s crying because he had, like, a terrorist thing that day, and it was so intense. Everyone was on their feet. And Aretha carries her purse everywhere because that’s where her money is, and she brought the purse and sitting on the piano. You can’t make this shit up. It was the best gig.

What’s the worst? I have a lot of those, too. One time I opened for Three Six Mafia at one of those college shows where they would do the spring concert. And they were like, “We want to appeal to the whole of our student body, so we’re going to bring the little white girl with the ukulele and Three Six Mafia.” Who have an Oscar, by the way. And I got flasks thrown at my head, and then I went into my bus and I cried.

“I wrote ‘Love Song’ to the record label thinking I was going to get in trouble because it was so obvious. They didn’t know.”

I’m sorry. That’s all right. I’m OK.

You just mentioned Carole King and Aretha. I’m curious, growing up in Eureka, California, who was the first favorite artist that you really loved? Oh, gosh. They come as a little pack. It was Indigo Girls, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, Billy Joel, and Elton John. Obviously, I loved piano music, and I loved storytelling. But I think Fiona Apple was maybe the first artist that felt like a contemporary kind. She was a little bit older than I was. I just loved the way that she told stories. 

I could talk to you for hours, from sleeping with the wolves to returning bras. To who else I’ve slept with!

Last question. What are the most important rules you live by? I really try to be kind. I think kindness is really essential. I really try to tell the truth. Where does this [saying] come from, where it’s like, “Is it kind, is it necessary?” There’s like these three … whatever. I came up with that. Is it kind, and is it necessary? Because sometimes I have a little bit of a penchant for telling the truth and it can be unkind, because sometimes no one’s asking. But I really have learned so much from my beautiful husband, Joe, about giving people the benefit of the doubt. Just leave a little more space for grace. Maybe they’re having a hard day, maybe it’s not pointed at you. Just try to extend a little grace where you can. 

That’s amazing. Yeah. He sucks. [Turns to husband in crowd.] Love you, honey.