Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
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What was Sara Bareilles' journey from pop star to Broadway?
At the New Yorker Festival a couple of months ago, we were joined by Sara Bareilles. Bareilles broke out as a star in pop music in the late aughts with the Grammy Awards to prove it, but she's gone on to have a very different sort of career writing music for Broadway. So on the one hand, Bareilles is busy acting on stage and on television, and on the other, she's busy as a composer and a songwriter. Right now, she's adapting Meg Wolitzer's best-selling novel, The Interestings, for the stage, along with the playwright, Sarah Rule. Sarah Bareilles sat down to talk with staff writer Rachel Sein and to play a little music, too.
How do you write a song, Sarah?
How did Sara Bareilles find her songwriting process?
There are very few times I can think of where I sat down and something just sort of showed up. I really believe in this idea of kind of the muses visit the artist at work. They reward the person who creates ritual or routine around just showing up and writing. I'm finding that I'm in my 40s now, I'm 44, and my rituals have changed and the process changes, but it's evolving.
Reading about your first record deal, though, and how many co-writers they tried to put you with, there was a sense at the beginning maybe where they didn't let you follow your own nose or trust that you could be on your own. And I know that that was difficult. So I mean, how did you feel like you had the confidence then to sort of say, I need to be solo here?
What challenges did Sara face in her early career?
I wouldn't identify it as confidence. I think it was... a kind of desperation. I got set up on all these songwriting sort of dates with very successful songwriters who were writing songs for Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson and like a lot of my sort of contemporaries. It just didn't resonate. It felt like it didn't matter if I was in the room or not. I felt like they were just writing songs and they were just trying to find... people to sing them, and songwriting to me has... I can't think of anything more sacred. It's as intimate as it gets, and it is literally an illustration of my relationship with God. That's as close as I get to being naked spiritually for the world. And so...
What inspired the song 'Love Song'?
The idea that I would sit in a room and have somebody hand me a sheet of paper that had like a list of song titles, a lot of them with like letters in the title, which like too good for you. It's like a gross five-minute joke. I don't think God wants to say that. So it kind of, I got, I was in despair actually. And my manager at the time, finally heard me and was like, okay, you don't have to do it anymore. And I think this is where my heart breaks for young artists who don't realize you have the power to go home all along. I didn't ever have to do any of that. But I do think I grew from the experience.
I think people sort of assume that Love Song was written out of that despair.
I'm not gonna write you a love song Cause you asked for it
You know, that song feels so defiant. And I wonder, was it written out of despair or was it written out of the moment when you got through it and you were thinking, I'm on the other side of this and, you know, you guys can shove it.
How did Sara Bareilles' love of theater influence her music?
That's a good question. You can shove it. I wish I could have put that in there. I think you're right. That wasn't a moment of despair. That was more a moment of discovery. I was listening to the radio and I was just like trying to cop what I heard on the radio. I was trying to like mimic. I was like, oh, it should sound something like this.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What was Sara Bareilles' journey from pop star to Broadway?
1:02–1:43
2
How did Sara Bareilles find her songwriting process?
1:43–2:33
3
What challenges did Sara face in her early career?
2:33–3:23
4
What inspired the song 'Love Song'?
3:23–4:27
5
How did Sara Bareilles' love of theater influence her music?
4:27–4:46
6
What are the dynamics of collaboration in songwriting?
4:46–5:21
7
How does the workshop process work for new shows?
5:21–5:33
8
Did working in theater revive Sara's passion for music?
5:33–20:33