Sara Bareilles answers the questions about her music life
Question: You struggled to write the songs on “Kaleidoscope Heart.” Any thoughts of bringing in a co-writer?
Sara Bareilles: I’m not a very good co-writer; I never have been. I enjoy it in the sense of collaboration — I’ve met some really lovely people and had a good time — but I come out with material that I don’t feel that connected to. … I’m such an autobiographical writer. The songs for me are very much like diary entries, and it feels strange to share that with someone.
Question: John Fogerty has said that a guitar will call out to him when it has a song ready. Does your piano do that for you?
It usually feels like this big old blank canvas. I don’t ever feel like it doesn’t. It’s there to listen and to help me articulate, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It always feels like some kind of sanctuary, so if anything sucks or if I’m in a bad mood or the day is horrible or I feel whatever, it’s sort of there to be my companion to get through that.
Question: What prompted you to write your current hit, “King of Anything”?
I’d just started to share the music for the first time [with the] label, management and band; I just started to see everyone giving me their feedback, which is what they were supposed to do, but then realizing that was kind of shaking me up a little bit. I was realizing, “OK, here it goes,” and so it begins again, where you open yourself back up.
It felt like a channeling experience. I wrote it really quickly. It was the same way that ‘Love Song” came down, and it felt very true and like I needed to say that. I knew it was going to be the first single.
Question: On “Not Alone,” you have a most unusual guest, Alfred Hitchcock. How did that come about?
It’s an old, old interview off the BBC. That song came out so much darker than I had originally thought it would. At the last minute we wrote the musical interlude. It sounded beautiful, but very theatrical, like a soap opera scene or something. It didn’t feel complete. I was thinking we could sample an old movie. I love “The Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock, and we were looking online and we stumbled across this interview, and that quote was the perfect length, the perfect sentiment, so it felt very serendipitous that I found that.
Question: You were on some Lilith Fair dates this summer. Why did you want to be part of the all-female festival?
I consider myself a feminist, but not in the man-hating way. I really felt firsthand the struggles that one encounters as a female, especially in the music industry. It is such a boys club, and, I felt, especially getting started, that I had to kick and scream to be heard, and I [was] excited to be around other women who have probably experienced the same thing, just to see how everybody else conducts their business. I’m usually the only girl — my entire crew and my entire band is all male — so I like the idea of being around some other female energy.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Reviews of MP3 Players.
