{"id":872799,"date":"2026-10-06T13:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T13:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/872799\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T13:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T13:12:13","slug":"sara-bareilles-on-her-new-album-good-grief-and-why-shes-not-your-grief-guru","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/872799\/","title":{"rendered":"Sara Bareilles on her new album ‘Good Grief’ and why she’s not your grief guru"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sara Bareilles almost got through this interview without crying. Almost. Her eyes started brimming with tears during the final question, revealing that her last sob session occurred just that morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m having a little bit of a grief spike,\u201d she said over a video chat from Chicago while on tour. \u201cThe end of September is rough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting on a cream-colored couch with her ever-present dog Louie snuggled beside her lap, Bareilles explained the pummeling anniversaries approaching: the birthday of Chad Joseph, her best friend from college and former manager who died in 2020 after a Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis, and the 2024 death of Gavin Creel, another dear friend and her co-star on Broadway in \u201cInto the Woods.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pain of losing both men in quick succession, along with the uncertainty of the lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, the cancellation of her Tina Fey-produced comedy series \u201cGirls5Eva\u201d and years of disappointing fertility treatments (\u201cI fully thought I would have a baby by now,\u201d the 46-year-old said.) bubble over in \u201cGood Grief,\u201d the singer-songwriter\u2019s first solo album in seven years.<\/p>\n

In the parlance of \u201cShe Used to Be Mine,\u201d from Bareilles\u2019 Tony Award-nominated \u201cWaitress\u201d score, the new album\u2019s excavation of anguish, rage, joy and everything in between is \u201cmixed up and baked in a beautiful pie.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s understandable that Bareilles felt \u201cwobbly\u201d even trying to say her friends\u2019 names while making the rounds (with plenty of tissues on hand) to promote the album and its accompanying making-of documentary, now in theaters. \u201cThere\u2019s just something that starts to crumble,\u201d she said of consistently revisiting this emotional state. \u201cI was making jokes about there will be a compilation at some point of \u2018This b\u2014 can\u2019t stop crying.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Because grief \u201cfeels like the blanket that everyone is tethered to in some way,\u201d Bareilles doesn\u2019t hold anything back in these lyrics or performances.<\/p>\n

She broke down at the piano during a recent taping for SiriusXM, singing \u201cForever,\u201d an aching, imagined promise from beyond, allowing the wave of paralyzing sadness to pass before continuing the song\u2019s repeated mantra (\u201cI\u2019ll be here forever\u201d) and commanding the stoppage be kept in. On \u201cJust a Kid,\u201d which sounds as jubilant as her breakthrough 2007 hit \u201cLove Song,\u201d she risks strangers\u2019 stares to dictate a voice note in a fit of inspiration about Joseph\u2019s footprint in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am so interested in truth telling. I\u2019m so desperate for it in the world. I\u2019m so grateful when I find it in other people,\u201d she affirmed. \u201cI felt for my own healing there wasn\u2019t anything to get from not telling the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rejecting the idea that she\u2019s now some kind of grief guru who\u2019s been through the fire and come out on the other side, she sees herself and her band more as \u201cgrief sherpas\u201d \u2014 there to uphold listeners.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just a student of grief,\u201d she offered. \u201cI would be lying if I felt like I had any kind of expertise to offer. I just am very willing to share my very honest experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sara <\/p>\n

Sara Bareilles in a scene from the documentary \u201cGood Grief\u201d that is being released alongside her new album.<\/p>\n

(Group Effort)<\/p>\n

And Bareilles extends the same invitation to everyone. \u201cTell me your story and I\u2019ll tell you mine,\u201d she sings against a languid dulcimer on \u201cHome,\u201d the opening track spelling out the thesis of the album and this \u201cart project\u201d of a tour, which begins a three-night stand at the Dolby Theatre on Monday.<\/p>\n

Her team set up a hotline (888-282-4062<\/a>) for people to leave voicemails and fans can write \u2014 anonymously or not \u2014 to prompts like \u201cWhat do you carry with you always?\u201d and \u201cWhat keeps you from feeling totally free?\u201d on gift tags that hang on an installation erected in the lobby of each tour stop.<\/p>\n

Some of the voicemails, excruciating in their honesty, air during the show as transitions between songs while Bareilles and her band (keyboardist Misty Boyce, guitarist Butterfly Boucher, multi-instrumentalist Rich Hinman, bassist Joe Ayoub, percussionist Mona Tavakoli and drummer Derrek Phillips) play within a set structured to look like the bones of a house while sheer draperies above undulate like a jellyfish, sometimes taking the shape of meringue peaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re learning as we go,\u201d she said about the responsibility of shouldering these physical manifestations of people\u2019s hearts. \u201cThey\u2019re all safe and sound. We keep them all.\u201d She\u2019s noticed how often the messages seem to repeat one another. \u201cWe feel so singular in our pain, lonely in our pain in a way and then you realize it\u2019s very much a shared experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She senses it when approached in public now. It\u2019s almost like there\u2019s an unlimited thirst from anyone in her proximity to lay down their own brush with the incomprehensible at her feet. \u201cIt does not feel burdensome at all,\u201d Bareilles said. The diverted focus from autograph and picture requests is a \u201cgift.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot that you shouldn\u2019t get a picture, but when I\u2019m reduced to just the transactional, I find that much harder to bear,\u201d she confessed. \u201cIt\u2019s a very dissociative experience for me, so the people coming to share their tenderness is like, bring it on!\u201d<\/p>\n

That attraction to compassion tracks with poet Megan Falley\u2019s description of Bareilles as \u201cunabashedly heartfelt.\u201d The two met when the singer collaborated with Brandi Carlile on \u201cSalt Then Sour Then Sweet\u201d for the Oscar-nominated documentary \u201cCome See Me in the Good Light,\u201d which centers around the life and career of Falley\u2019s partner, the late poet laureate of Colorado Andrea Gibson in the face of a terminal ovarian cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

\u201cBoth of us have been resisting the idea that \u2018grief is love with nowhere to go\u2019 and instead, actively putting our grief, our love, into our art,\u201d Falley said in an email exchange. \u201cWe\u2019re challenging the buttoned-up paradigm of burying the dead. We\u2019re keeping our dead alive through art, through talking about them always.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bareilles gave Falley a songwriting credit on \u201cIdiot Heart\u201d for a snippet about Gibson \u201cbecoming the moonlight.\u201d Falley said only a faint trace of her original line \u2014 \u201cDancing in the moonlight is wild now that you are the moon\u201d \u2014 made it into the song but speaks to the singer\u2019s \u201cwildly generous\u201d nature that her name is included at all. Also listed on the credits? Bareilles\u2019 husband, \u201cMare of Easttown\u201d actor and songwriter in his own right, Joe Tippett.<\/p>\n

\u201cIdiot Heart\u201d gives the album a luminous (and much needed) dance break, but that wasn\u2019t what Tippett had in mind when he first sent the lyrics to Bareilles. \u201cWe had to really negotiate it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was like, \u2018I wrote it and I also wrote music to it and I think I like mine better,\u2019\u201d she related with uproarious laughter. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018No, we\u2019re putting this on my record.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Good <\/p>\n

She faced another personal negotiation on how forthcoming to be about undergoing IVF treatments. Ultimately, she decided speaking from the \u201cmessy middle\u201d made the most sense, even disclosing to the New York Times that she experienced her first miscarriage earlier this year and revealing in the \u201cGood Grief\u201d documentary she\u2019s considering egg donation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have shame about the fact that it\u2019s been hard. I have never met a more humbling experience,\u201d she said with an outsize emphasis on \u201cnever.\u201d<\/p>\n

The stark \u201cLadies in a Line,\u201d with harmonies that verge on a holy meditation, carries the women with \u201cempty arms with lists of names\u201d who wait, hushed and nervous, for seemingly endless appointments with \u201cfine-tipped needles.\u201d Reddit threads abound with fertility playlist suggestions and Bareilles\u2019 addition to the canon doesn\u2019t go unnoticed. She singles out Martika\u2019s 1991 collaboration with Prince, \u201cLove \u2026 They Will be Done\u201d as her own anthem. \u201cIt\u2019s just about surrender.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Eureka, Calif., native, who now resides in Brooklyn, embarks on her second go as a musical theater composer with \u201cThe Interestings,\u201d an adaptation of Meg Wolitzer\u2019s 2013 novel about six teens who form a bond at an arts camp in the \u201870s they carry into complicated adult lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am ravenous about this show. I love it so much. The world that Meg created, I find to be so vibrant and intoxicating and delicious,\u201d Bareilles gushed.<\/p>\n

With a world premiere scheduled at Berkeley Repertory Theatre with performances beginning on Jan. 31 and opening night on Feb. 17, the show is reflective of her deeper relationship with Broadway than a decade ago when she worked on \u201cWaitress.\u201d She\u2019s proud of the score\u2019s \u201cstretchiness\u201d and the evolution of her craft. Mostly, she\u2019s taken by the material\u2019s timeless theme, which dovetails with all she\u2019s tried to convey on \u201cGood Grief.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about the ache of growing up \u2026 and that we get to grow up at all,\u201d Bareilles said. \u201cIt\u2019s the gift.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sara Bareilles almost got through this interview without crying. Almost. Her eyes started brimming with tears during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":872800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[1029,367757,88,367754,185408,367756,8982,367755,216,15798,994,21939,10484,23640,12853,4477,2394],"class_list":["post-872799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-art","tag-dear-friend","tag-entertainment","tag-falley","tag-good-grief","tag-grief-guru","tag-heart","tag-love-song","tag-music","tag-name","tag-new-album","tag-other-people","tag-sara-bareilles","tag-show","tag-tour","tag-world","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}