Sara Bareilles
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
Totally. I mean, I think more than anything, I just feel a responsibility to show up authentically. Like, I'm someone who... I'm aging naturally. And I might change my mind about that. But I'm like, what does it look like for me to just be, like, to not try to hide the person that I am turning into? I'm not trying to piss anybody off by getting wrinkles on my forehead.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
I'm just, this is what it looks like when you're lucky enough to grow up and lucky enough to get to age. And so I feel like... That's the thing I feel responsibility to, is to keep trying to show up authentically, and I'm not always going to get it right, and it's going to piss people off sometimes, but it really matters to me.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
Sitting in the morning sun I'll be sitting till the evening comes Watching the ships roll in Then I'll watch them roll away again Songwriter and performer Sarah Bareilles.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
She spoke with The New Yorker's Rachel Syme. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. I want to close the program and begin the new year by thanking everyone at the Radio Hour and at The New Yorker. And thank you for listening, and a happy new year.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
Wasting time. Now you whistle, ready?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
Okay, so this is my theory. This is my theory. No one can be tough when they're whistling like that. You were pretty good. You were pretty good.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
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...
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
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,
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
I'm not gonna write you a love song Cause you asked for it
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
And I was so angry when I caught myself in that line of thinking. And I said a prayer and I was like, please let me just return to myself somehow. Just remember why I'm doing this. Remember what I'm trying to say. And it was a diary entry. It's like head underwater and you tell me to breathe easy. This time is impossible. I don't want to give you what you're asking for.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
I don't even know if I knew what I thought they were asking for, except that I knew they wanted a song that could go on the radio.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
My mom was a very prominent community theater actress in Humboldt County where I grew up. And she did tons and tons of shows at our repertory theater there. And I would go to the theater and I went back not that long ago. And in my mind... It is like a palace. And when I went back, I'm like, oh, it's like a 99 seat theater. It's so small and perfect and beautiful.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
And it was the happiest I ever was, was sitting in a theater seat. And then the idea that I could be a part of productions was just like mind blowing. I did productions of Little Shop of Horrors. I did Mystery of Edwin Drood. I did Charlotte's Web. And I really thought I would go into theater. And then I started writing songs. And I moved to L.A. to go to UCLA. And then my music career...
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
just sort of foregrounded itself. And I got on that ride. Being a touring artist is like you get on the ride and then you come home and you write a new record and then you get right back on the ride. And I started to feel like I'll hate this really soon. Well, I took this month-long rumspringa in New York. And I had a meeting with my brand-new theatrical agent.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
And he's like, there are auditions for a show called Into the Woods. And I was like, I love that show. Give me the audition. And I auditioned for Cinderella for the production that was in the park. And when I tell you, I shit the bed. I shit the bed with fury. And I walked out of that room and I was like, there's not even like a world where like, maybe that went okay. Like, it was so clear.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
They were like, oh, I hope you'll be okay after this. It was so terrible. And I really, I was so humbled by how little I knew about anything in this industry. And then... got the opportunity to sit down with Diane Paulus, who was the director of Waitress, and she talked to me about this project.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
So I thought I would go back to theater as a performer, and then I was like, oh, I don't know how to do that, and then started writing songs.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
She is my scene I was just trying the whole time to just
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
Like act like I knew what I was doing. I do think I have some instincts around, like it became clear very quickly that I liked being in these conversations. I liked the puzzle. I liked the questioning of motivation. And the collaboration was very new to me. You know, these songwriters that I got paired with, I think for a long time made me very fearful of collaboration.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
When it's the right kind of collaboration, it can be incredible. You know, the phenomenon of something being bigger than the sum of its parts.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
If you can let go of the part of you that needs things to be finished quickly or perfect or that you know what anything is or means, if you can let go of that part, then it can be really fun.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
No. I feel like working in the theater industry only affirmed that I think the theater industry is the best industry. I think what it affirmed in me is that I just felt like I'd been at the wrong party my whole life.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
career i just i don't know where i fit in the music industry people did not give two shits about me until i wrote until waitress was like a musical and i was like you guys care about this show about pie but you didn't like nobody would touch me with a 10 football there's so much competition in the music industry that i don't i just i'm not a competitive person i don't understand it
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
It's not that theater isn't competitive. There is that kind of essence as well in some ways. But everybody, there's just sort of this feeling of like everybody's sort of so happy to be there. Like, we got a show, guys. They're so grateful to have a paycheck. We don't know how long it's going to last. Yeah. So I love that feeling. I would rather be at that.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
I would rather go to the Tonys than, you know, the Emmys or the Oscars.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
I mean, Gravity was a song I wrote from an extraordinarily brokenhearted place. I was 18 when I wrote that song. And I thought, like, the world was ending. And that song now gets to be interpreted and reinterpreted for other people's pain, even though I don't carry that same pain anymore.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
My hope is, as a songwriter, I can work to articulate things that maybe you wouldn't quite know how to say or other people feel like, oh, I'm the only person who feels this. And then, like, wait, she must feel it too because it's right there in the song.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
Set me free me be I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity here I am and I stand so tall I'm just the way I'm supposed to be but you're onto me and over me you loved me cause I'm fragile and I thought that I was strong you touched me for a little while and all my fragile strength is gone sad
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
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.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity Here I am and I stand so tall Just the way I'm supposed to be But you're onto me I live here on my knees as I try to make you see that you're everything I think I need. Here on the ground, that you're neither friend nor foe, though I can't seem to let you go. The one thing that I still know is that you're keeping me down.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
Sarah Bareilles speaking with staff writer Rachel Syme. More in a moment.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
And wound up killing 20, 30,000 people or so before it was over with.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
I don't think art itself is vulnerable. I think artists are vulnerable. I watch a lot of young artists get... popular really quickly because of the way the mechanism functions at this point. There used to be more time. The idea that it was a slow burn, and there is something valuable about it being a slow burn. And I watch a lot of these young artists... freak out, cancel big shows.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
And I don't fault them for this. I feel like the exponential growth is more than could possibly be metabolized by an artist at that. You're playing 100 people one day and then two months later you're playing to like 50,000 people. It's not normal. I think you have to be really clear on why are you making what you're making.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
If it's to get magazine covers or if it's to get rich, I would really encourage you to do something else because art doesn't have time for that. Because I think creation is a holy act. I think it's sacred work. And I think it's like ministry to take care of the world with making art.