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<\/p>\nWhen Gigi Perez took to the stage at the Austin City Limits Festival earlier this month, it felt like the universe was holding up a mirror, reflecting back all the growth she\u2019d done in the four years since her last performance there.<\/p>\n
Back in 2021, the Cuban American singer-songwriter had a newly-minted record deal and a handful of viral SoundCloud singles \u2014 the wistful acoustic guitar track \u201cSometimes (Backwood)\u201d and the devastatingly raw \u201cCelene.\u201d The 2021 edition of ACL was the first festival she ever performed, and though her early afternoon slot at one of the smaller stages attracted a few dozen audience members, Perez had spent so many years dreaming of the opportunity that it didn\u2019t matter. She was happy just to be there.<\/p>\n
This month, Perez returned to Austin no longer an emerging artist, but as a rising star. Her mega-viral single, the lovesick folk ballad from 2024, \u201cSailor Song,\u201d had topped the U.K. singles chart and earned more than 1 billion streams on Spotify. On the back of its success, she spent the first half of this year opening for Hozier in support of her 2025 debut LP, \u201cAt the Beach, in Every Life.\u201d <\/p>\n
So when she took the stage at ACL in October, this time it was for a coveted golden hour set, with a sea of people stretched out before her \u2014 and a chorus of voices singing along to her every word.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was magical,\u201d Perez told De Los. \u201cThere were people there who were actually at my first set in 2021, standing in the front. It meant a lot to me. I think that there\u2019s a shock that I still experience with people coming to my set at a festival.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At 25 years old, Perez has lived more life than most. Born in New Jersey and raised in West Palm Beach, Fla., the singer grew up in a devoutly Christian Cuban household, the middle child of three sisters. <\/p>\n
As a teenager, the religious values she\u2019d been steeped in were beginning to clash with her own realizations about her sexuality \u2014 and music provided a lifeline. The queer artists she listened to, like Hayley Kiyoko and Troye Sivan, tapped into feelings she hadn\u2019t been able to articulate, and inspired her to write music that would allow her to express them in her own words.<\/p>\n
At 18, just as she was preparing to head to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, her grandmother and uncle passed away, just weeks apart from each other. These dual losses set off a wave of grief and sparked difficult questions about her faith. She was struggling to regain her footing over the next year when, just months into the pandemic, her family experienced the sudden loss of her older sister Celene.<\/p>\n
Perez felt unmoored. Her whole life, Celene had been a north star, a guiding light who inspired her to take up music, and who wanted to be a singer herself. Perez did what she knew how: wove her pain and anger and devastation into music, writing the soul-stirring tribute, \u201cCelene.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other day, I thought of something funny, but no one would\u2019ve laughed but you,\u201d she sings. \u201cAnd mom and dad are always crying. And I wish I knew what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Cat Cardenas \/ For De Los)<\/p>\n
Her first original songs gained traction on TikTok, getting the attention of Interscope Records. From there, her career began to take off. She opened for Coldplay and Noah Cyrus, releasing her first EP, \u201cHow to Catch a Falling Knife,\u201d in April 2023. Then, just months into a string of performances scheduled in London that summer, the label released her from her contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember just being dumbfounded,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was this immediate, very deep sense of fear and failure.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the funny thing about grief \u2014 that all-consuming force that had dragged her out to sea multiple times over the last several years \u2014 was that as suffocating as it could be, it was also surprising and unpredictable. So despite the depth of complicated emotions washing over her, Perez was acutely aware that this news was nothing compared to the loss of her sister. \u201cSo many things that happen in my life don\u2019t affect me in that same profound way,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was one of the things that made me. I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s hard to find the words even now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Growing up, Celene had her sights set on Broadway. She introduced Gigi to several musicals, from a bootleg version of \u201cLegally Blonde,\u201d to her first live theater experience in \u201cWicked,\u201d to the cast album of Lin-Manuel Miranda\u2019s \u201cIn the Heights.\u201d They played one song from the soundtrack, \u201cBreathe,\u201d on repeat. It\u2019s sung by the character Nina, the daughter of immigrants in Washington Heights, who returns home in shame after having to drop out of Stanford University. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s how I was feeling at the time,\u201d Perez professed.<\/p>\n
In London, she listened to the song on repeat. Then, she started writing. From the beginning, her style has always been instinctual; a freeform jam session where she sits at the piano or with her guitar and just lets her ideas flow out. The title came to her first \u2014 \u201cAt the Beach, in Every Life\u201d \u2014 and the song poured out of her, nearly word for word.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember the first time I played those chords on the piano, I had no idea what was going to happen,\u201d she said. \u201cI just knew something was opening up inside me, but I had no idea how deep the well was going to be, or that I was going to be an artist who gets to travel the world. I just had these desires, these visions, but to really live it is something else.\u201d<\/p>\n
After finishing out her commitments in the U.K., she moved back home to Florida. From her childhood bedroom, she began to rebuild. She taught herself music production and kept writing more songs. Without intending to, the puzzle pieces of the last few years of her life began to fall into place, and the grief that had consumed so much of her story finally had an outlet.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the Beach, In Every Life\u201d details a breaking down of Perez\u2019s walls. Her sadness and regret washes over tracks like \u201cSugar Water\u201d and \u201cCrown,\u201d building into fiery passion on \u201cChemistry\u201d and \u201cSailor Song,\u201d before cresting into the haunting resolution of the title track that closes it out. It\u2019s a portrait of loss and yearning, made up of vivid recollections from her childhood, her family, and her previous relationships. In short, it\u2019s the album she wishes she could\u2019ve listened to five years ago when her pain seemed insurmountable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had just been operating blind for so long,\u201d she said. \u201cBeing able to share my experience of loss in this specific way, it\u2019s something that my 20-year-old self would be in disbelief of. At the time, it was like being without air, the isolation was so suffocating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not long ago, Perez\u2019s sadness could sometimes make her self-conscious. She wanted to share what she was going through, but she also didn\u2019t want to be defined by it. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be that girl who was always talking about her sister, but there was this very genuine desire to cry out for help, or acknowledge her,\u201d she said. \u201cEveryone is different, but for me, I needed to acknowledge her in order to be well.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Fans of Gigi Perez at the barricade during her performance at this year\u2019s Austin City Limits Festival in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n
(Cat Cardenas \/ For De Los)<\/p>\n
Now, not even five years later, it feels like she\u2019s finally turned the page and started a new chapter. \u201cI\u2019ve been able to build a life around my grief, and honor the loss of my sister in a way that\u2019s helped me,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know exactly what healing should look like, but her death affected me and continues to affect me in these very profound ways. This is the best case scenario for me, because I get to share it with others \u2014 that\u2019s one of the things that makes it so difficult to navigate: the feeling that no one understands you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cKnowing that we\u2019re not alone has really saved my life,\u201d she said. \u201cI used to be the person thinking, \u2018What\u2019s the point of being alive?\u2019 But knowing there are other people with the same question, I know now that we can hold each other\u2019s hands through that. That\u2019s given me a purpose and that helps me continue to move through it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the process of writing the album, Perez found ways to bring both of her sisters along for the ride. There are voice memos from Celene, along with a snippet of her singing on \u201cSurvivor\u2019s Guilt.\u201d But there\u2019s also \u201cSugar Water,\u201d a track she co-wrote with her younger sister, Bella, who joins her onstage to perform the song on tour. \u201cAnyone who has two sisters knows the chaos and intensity that can bring,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we loved each other, and we still do. My relationship to what it means to be a woman was shaped by having sisters, and Celene and Bella are the closest reflection that I have of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amid this wild, almost unbelievable year, Perez has been grounded by her family\u2019s presence. Her mom is part of her management team, and her dad has joined them on the road. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something to be said about being in it so much that it\u2019s almost hard to physically feel it on the level you want to,\u201d Perez said. But over the last few weeks, as she\u2019s gotten the opportunity to revisit the places where she first found her footing as a performer, she\u2019s had the opportunity to reflect on just how much she\u2019s grown since then.<\/p>\n
For now, she plans on heading back home to Florida once her tour is over to spend time reflecting on everything. \u201cI think that\u2019s when I\u2019ll start to see the confetti fall,\u201d she said. \u201cLife is uncertain, and we never know what it\u2019s going to throw our way, but this was a year that I prayed for. And I think it was a year that a lot of people who love me prayed for too. So for that, I\u2019m very grateful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Gigi Perez took to the stage at the Austin City Limits Festival earlier this month, it felt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,16818,16819,541,5575,241,3664,278,391,16817,3976,3704,6529,16820,16821,7741],"class_list":["post-23387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-celene","tag-dual-loss","tag-family","tag-grief","tag-life","tag-month","tag-music","tag-people","tag-perez","tag-sister","tag-song","tag-stage","tag-time","tag-word","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}