Song Exploder - Gigi Perez - Sailor Song

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Gigi Perez is a singer and songwriter from Florida, and at 25 years old, she’s already had so many ups and downs in her music career. She started sharing her songs on TikTok, where they got enough attention that she got signed to a major label deal, but that ultimately didn’t pan out. Soon after that, as an independent artist again, she had her biggest breakout hit, with “Sailor Song.” She released it in July 2024, and it went viral on TikTok. Now, it has over a billion streams on Spotify alone, and it’s a part of her new album, which came out in April 2025. In this episode, you’ll hear how the song evolved, from her first voice memo to the final version, which she recorded in her childhood bedroom. I talked to Gigi about how “Sailor Song” came about, and about all the different parts of herself that she put into it—her faith, grief, desire, and more. For more info, visit songexploder.net/gigi-perez.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. Gigi Perez is a singer and songwriter from Florida, and at 25 years old, she's already had so many ups and downs in her music career. She started sharing her songs on TikTok, where they got enough attention that she got signed to a major label deal, but that ultimately didn't pan out. Soon after that, as an independent artist again, she had her biggest break in. out hit with Sailor Song. She released it in July 2024, and it went viral on TikTok. Now, it has over a billion streams on Spotify alone, and it's part of her new album, which came out in April 2025.

In this episode, you'll hear how the song evolved from her first voice memo to the final version, which she recorded in her childhood bedroom. I talked to Gigi about how Sailor Song came about and about all the different parts of herself that she put into it, her faith, grief, desire, and more. My name is Gigi Perez. I grew up in the church and the whole nine yards of it. I think everyone in my life was kind of surprised when they saw me starting to play the guitar. But, you know, if you're like a seven-year-old being exposed to the concept of eternity, and you don't really have the emotional intelligence or tools to understand any of it,

you know, it causes a lot of questions. And so I think that songwriting was just the way for me to like kind of lay everything out, like, okay, this is what I think is going on right now inside of me and what's happening out there. And I was able to, for the first time, really process what was happening. Like when I was 15 and I was songwriting for the first time, that was the first time that I acknowledged myself that I like girls. And that was a whole can of worms that I opened, acknowledging that. and what it was going to take to really understand that, I did that through music. Where were you when your songwriting first started?

I grew up in South Florida. There's not really a music scene for the kind of music that I was making. So I pulled out loans and I went to school for music. I did probably a full year of school. Half of it was online because COVID hit. And then my sister passed away that summer. She passed away. And that was a very dark time in my life and my family's life.

And I just hit this point where I just felt like I had nothing to lose. And I was so desperate for connection. I was really desperate to have some sort of distraction from this very massive hole in my heart. And in my life, so I just started posting these songs. And then I got signed when I was 20. go through my first record deal. And there were a lot of really beautiful moments from that experience, but it was also full of a lot of resistance.

And nobody knows what's going on with TikTok and how it's affecting the music industry. I was like a guinea pig, you know. So I leave the music business and everything that that meant. And I was grateful that my parents let me come back home and they were very happy about it. And I was happy to be back, but also there were notes of defeat.

of, you know, I'm 24 and I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm applying for freelance work to write a happy birthday song for like an eight year old and nobody's answering. So I'm not even getting work. But I'm trying. And so in the middle of all of this, how did Sailor's song first start? What was happening that day? It was February 29th. I was on my bed in my childhood room, I go to these chords, just messing around. I was like, kiss me on the mouth and love me like sailor, and then it just immediately came out. It was just the chorus of the song. I made a video of it that same day. And you posted the video on TikTok? Yeah, because I was like, I was like, I fuck with this. Sorry, I don't know. Can I say that word on here? Sure. Okay. So you wrote the chorus. What was the story in your

mind. Like, what was the song at that point, even in that little nascent version of it? What did you think the story was going to be? And where was it going to go from there? You know, I really, I loved that I got across that feeling, that, like, desperate, fervent attraction to someone and, like, sense of, like, let's just get out of here. Like, this life and all this shit is so crazy. But you're my focal point in an otherwise very chaotic world. Was that something that you were feeling? at the time? Yeah, fully. Very clear like I was waking up yearning for this person, you know, going to sleep, yearning for them, you know, that fun little game. Yeah. So yeah, it was very much like real and it's just a feeling of relief to be able to get it out. Like saying something in a way

that explains exactly what I'm feeling and in a way that I just didn't expect myself to be able to describe is the relief for me. After you'd written those words for the chorus, Where did you go next? I knew that I wanted the song to grow. You want it to get smaller and sweet, and you also want to know that you're climbing to that more explosive moment that comes in the chorus. I remember the melody following me from this song

that I had written a while ago. Okay, so you have this older song, and you kept the vocal melody, but you changed the lyrics? Yeah. Was it hard to reimagine it with new words? Certain melodies that I write become so easy to write words to.

With Sailor and the verses, I was like, I saw her in the rightest way. It was funny because I said it and I was like, that's not really, you don't say that. But it like happened. I saw her in the rightest way looking like in half the way. How much do you feel compelled

to make it as close to your actual experience versus fictionalizing it, which is a roundabout way of me saying, like, do you think that the person that you are writing about actually looks like, Anne Hathaway, are you like, that's a nice rhyme? I love to write about the real things, but it's the feeling of it. So for Anne Hathaway, it's just like the beauty. It's like, oh my God, like she's gorgeous. Like I grew up watching Princess Diaries and Devil Wars Prada, so it's the sentiment of like

that unbelievable breath. taking beauty that, you know, reminded me. At that time, I had been messing on Ableton, and, like, every single day, I'm learning how to record and produce, and I knew that I wanted to take it seriously. So I bought a MIDI keyboard. I knew how to record acoustic guitars and my vocals. And I think that's, like, the heartbeat of what makes it mine is how I record guitars and doing that, I think, really set the bed.

And so I think there were, like, five guitars on there. The vocals for me, that was just the biggest learning piece of like, how do I like my vocals to sound and to sit? And so there's one in the center. But nothing can capture this stage. One of left and right. What made you decide that the right approach was multiple guitars, multiple vocals? So I have this friend, Eric, his producer name is Archaus.

And he helped me a lot when it came to learning how to record and produce. Like, he was the first person I was ever in the studio with when I was 19. And at the time, he was doing like EDM music. And so I would go over to his studio and he would just give me lessons on things. And he taught me record a guitar on the left and record a guitar on the right. And I was like, okay, that's cool. He makes very different music than I make. But I kind of applied the things that he taught me in a different way, if that makes sense,

like in a different context and took that and ran with it. But I remember I found that like sizzly, deep, brooding base, the depth and the feeling like, it felt traumatic. It felt traumatic. All the addicts, you know, like it felt like I just was like making a sonic movie in my mind out of like intense feelings that I live with. So the song, the way that it sung is from a place of like just feeling so out of control. and, you know, I did worship team growing up. What's that? Worship team.

Oh, what is worship team? I'll tell you. There was an American church, and then there was also a Spanish evangelical church. Most of my life, I was in the Spanish one. And before the service, you sing worship songs. I did that, and I felt very connected to this divine thing, and I knew it through the medium of Christianity. And it was always very intense.

It's like there's people praying, people speaking in tongues. It's very, very heavy. And I'm on like the stage singing while this happening. You like put your hands up. You're like feeling the Holy Spirit. And it's such a relief to sing. It's such a spiritual experience for me. Then I started thinking it was like maybe the reason why I sing the way I do is because I'm desperate to connect.

And I feel that divine thing that may have affected. the sonics of Sailor song is like, I feel like I was just desperate to connect to that thing. She took my fingers to her mouth, the kind of thing that makes you proud that nothing else had it. I just want to ask you about the lyrics here because how do I put this? It's not not an explicit song. Yeah. Did that cause any ripples for you with your Christian upbringing? Hmm.

You know, I think I, like, really swept all that under the rug when I came out with my first song and I said, fuck me right in it. So I feel like I got everything out of the way. Yeah, I could see that. So I don't fear being explicit. Sometimes, like, to a fall, I'm like, do I have, like, a potty mouth? They're like, I don't know. I understand, like, why that would be upsetting, not upsetting, but, like, are, like, the past. is going to hear that.

Granted, I think the most explicit thing that I could have said was not even the sexual aspects. It was me saying, I don't believe in God. And like, that's a whole thing. Like, it caused, like, in my life, a very big discourse of conversations about faith and religion and all that kind of stuff. But to me, like, I love the conversation that it put me in, you know. Yeah. It doesn't like make me wince because I just, I don't let myself be ashamed that I thought that or that I said that.

You know, there are people that think that way. And if it makes you uncomfortable, then like, that's okay. It's not for you, you know? Yeah. The thing is like, I don't know. I think that if like my parents can get over, everybody can. Like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

But what did it mean for you personally to put it in this on? The crisis of faith was very fervent. It's probably like always been that way since I grew up that way. But I think after my sister died, I just really started to like you just slowly lose your reality. It's not like you wake up one day and you don't believe in Jesus. It's many thoughts over many years. You kind of just wake up and you're like, I don't know what to believe anymore. And every night I would be laying in my bed till 3 am crying because I'm like desperate for a God.

I was having fun with the production and learning how to record. Like that was my outlet. But it was also a very painful time because of the silence because I still feel like that 12 year old trying to understand truth. And so I think that for me it was like shameful to say, but it was the truth. It was the truth in the moment. and I felt very scared of that. And I knew that that was going to be in the song because it needed to be

because it was how I felt. And I'm okay with that right now. My conversation with Gigi Perez continues after this. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length. And this is the first one that will be out under my own name, Rishikesh, her way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career.

And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Winerobe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April. and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city,

like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In The Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. The song starts with this sound. What is that and where did that come from? That is a spice sample. I was like, these feel like pelicans. They sound like birds to me.

When I heard it for the first time, I just felt like something's about to happen. When I started the song, I was like, okay, the drum is like, that strumming pattern felt so powerful that it almost felt like there needed to be like a call. That's what my voice wanted to do. Had you sung like that ever before in a song? No, but I think in the last two years of my life, I started to implement more of my classical training. My oldest sister, she was an opera singer,

and I think that maybe there are pieces of like me that want to feel closer to her And so I used that part of my voice that I didn't use when I was younger. That's beautiful. So Noah Weinman, he is a producer and a mutual friend of ours connected us because I was looking for a friend that was down to collaborate someone that was interested in co-production.

Yeah. And so I sent it to him and he was like, oh my God. He heard it. He immediately knew where he wanted to take it. He was like, oh, like I think adding light percussion. I was so excited to see what he brings to it because I knew that I wanted piano on it. One of my favorite parts about the song and what he added

was just that like, dun dun dun dun dun dun. It's kind of like one note, but it like propels the song into the next part of it. It gave it a very intentional phrasing, section by section. And can you tell me where this part came from? That is also a spy sample

because I knew that I was like interested in trumpets but I don't know anybody that like plays the trumpet so I was just looking for stuff and I came across that on Splice and I was like playing it right over the chorus And do you remember how you felt When you first heard those parts together? My mind was blown

Because I had never even like used a sample in that way Yeah But it felt like once I heard it It was super integral that I was like I can't just like not use it That is the sample So how is the song feeling to you after you had the samples and all the tracks from Noah and everything that you'd done.

Oh, I was like over the moon. I was so happy with it. I remember dancing, like crazy. The desperation that you were so happy to capture in the song, the desperate yearning and also the desperate feelings around faith and loss of faith. Is that a feeling that you still have these days? I think that that was scratching the surface. Like that was just the start of the desperation. Unfortunately. I think that it was acknowledging it through music for the first time because it's hard sometimes to find the words.

But for some reason, if I do it in a song, I can see things a little bit more clearly. So do you think the experience of writing the song has changed you? This song completely changed my life. life in my circumstances as I knew them. I haven't been home all year because I've been touring. Honestly, my life has changed very, very drastically. But the biggest thing for me is that this song put me in a place to find my community.

There are people who feel the same and people that are listening. It's helping me feel less alone. And that I find beautiful. And now here's Sailor Song. by Gigi Perez in its entirety. Visit songexplotor.net to learn more. You'll find links to buy or stream Sailor Song and you can watch the music video.

This episode was produced by me, Mary Dolan, Craig Ely, and Kathleen Smith, with production assistance from Tiger Biscop. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm.

If you'd like to hear more from me about what I'm watching and listening to and thinking about these days, you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi-Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.