Sara Bareilles will play Toronto's Massey Hall on Sept. 15 and 16.Ian Allen/Supplied
The title of Sara Bareilles’s first album in seven years is Good Grief, which sounds either like an expression of exasperation ripped from a Peanuts comic strip, or a statement on the cathartic nature of mourning.
It’s both – the double meaning is intentional.
“It’s a phrase I use a lot,” she says, speaking on a video call. “I sound like my mom when I say it.”
The album is a reflection on the death of a close friend and a politically conscious reaction to a society going haywire. “This whole collection of songs felt like transmissions rather than a deliberate attempt to make sense of the world,” she said earlier this year when the record was announced.
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A few months have passed. The album is out, and Bareilles is on a tour that brings her to Toronto’s Massey Hall on Sept. 15 and 16. How is she doing now?
“I’m fine,” the musician, actress and Broadway composer says with a smile. “I’ve figured it all out.” Sarcasm. “No, I’m not fine,” she continues, still smiling. “I don’t think there’s a solution here. It’s not an album of answers.”
What Good Grief is, then, is an elegant account of frustration and loss − melodic punches thrown in the air. The album’s first track and lead single is Home, an affecting ballad inspired by a conversation between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper on the latter’s podcast about sorrow. The song serves as a rallying call for community: “So tell me your story, I’ll tell you mine.”
From her home in New York, the 46-year-old native of Northern California spoke about journeys − musical, emotional and otherwise.
When putting the album together, were you conscious of the whole 14-track experience as opposed to just putting out songs for playlists?
I’m an artist who has been around long before playlists. I’m schooled in a different way. I’m also someone who takes time between records. If I’m going to take the time to make an album, I’m going to curate the listening experience from top to bottom.
I should point out to the readers that the album is not a downer. The song Capsize Me is upbeat and Nervous Breakdown is probably the jazziest number about an acute mental health crisis ever written.
[Laughs] Well, it’s about taking the listener on a journey. I’m thinking thematically and tonally about what the sounds evoke, and what the tempos feel like next to each other. The tracking is a big undertaking.
What’s the takeaway? What do we learn about grief?
The whole point of this record is to try to capture the fullest embodied expression of grieving, which to me is not one thing. It is the paradox. It is the surprise and delight of what can sometimes feel monolithic or like dark matter. There is so much awe and mystery and joy and connection and fulfillment in grief as well.
And resilience?
Yes, and hopefulness. That is all embedded in the record as well. And humour. You brought up Nervous Breakdown.
I smiled at the line “keep the Novocaine out of my wisdom teeth” when I heard it.
Who doesn’t need a cheeky moment when they’ve having a hard time? I was trying to speak to grief in all its forms.
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Let’s talk about Hands off My Body. When you performed it in 2024 at the Hollywood Bowl, you told the audience that the song would speak for itself. Now that I have you, can you speak for it?
I started writing it just after the women’s movement in Iran in 2022, after Mahsa Jina Amini’s death. Then the song began taking on different layers. Roe v. Wade fell, and women’s reproductive health was under attack in the United States and all over the world. There were just so many places in which I felt like we are witnessing the kind of monster of misogyny and what feels oppressive to me on behalf of women. So, the song is a plea for autonomy and independence and community.
Would you say community is a theme throughout the album?
Yes. I think so many of the songs on the record are about bringing your pain to each other so we can hold it together. I think Hands off My Body is a battle cry for women to come stand together and ask for freedom.
Speaking of women, tell me about Heartland. I love the Carole King feel, and it seems you’re singing about one woman in particular, the one with the torch.
Heartland is about grief of country. It’s a complicated feeling being American right now. I wrote the song from the perspective of what something like the Statue of Liberty actually represents. And from the perspective of the Constitution − these words on the page, what they embody and what they idealize. I still feel the ideas are worth pursuing.
What is America grieving over as you see it?
The cruelty. The greed. The competition. There’s just a lot of grief, and the powerlessness seems so big.
Where are you in your own grieving process?
I’m in the messy middle. I’m not healed. And I’m trying to share from that place.
This interview has been edited and condensed.