The New Yorker Radio Hour - Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Sara Bareilles broke out as a pop-music star in the late two-thousands. But she’s gone on to have a very different kind of career, writing music for Broadway and eventually performing as an actor on stage and on television.  At the New Yorker Festival, in 2024, she played her early hit “Gravity,” and spoke with staff writer Rachel Syme about the pressures of fame, aging, and why she prefers working in theatre. “There’s so much competition in the music industry. I’m not a competitive person; I don’t understand it. It’s not that theatre isn’t competitive, but there’s this feeling—everybody’s so happy to be there. Like, ‘We got a show, guys, and we don’t know how long it’s going to last!’ ”  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnant. At the New Yorker Festival a couple of months ago, we were joined by Sarah Borellis. Borellis broke out as a star in pop music in the late aughts with the Grammy Awards to prove it, which he's gone on to have a very different sort of career writing music for Broadway. So on the one hand, Borellis is busy acting on stage and on television, and on the other, she's busy as a composer and a songwriter. Right now, she's adapting Meg Wollitzer's best-selling novel,

The Interest For the Stage, along with the playwright, Sarah Rule. Sarah Borella sat down to talk with staff writer Rachel Seim, and to play a little music, too. How do you write a song, Sarah? There are very few times I can think of where I sat down and something just sort of showed up. I really believe in this idea of kind of, of, you know, the muses visit the artist at work. They reward the person who creates

ritual or routine around just showing up and writing. I'm finding that I'm in my 40s now. I'm 44 and my rituals have changed and the process changes, but it's evolving. Reading about your first record deal, though, and how many co-writers they tried to put you with or, you know, there was a sense at the beginning maybe where they didn't let you follow your own nose or trust that you could be on your own. And I know that that was difficult. So I mean, how did you feel like you had the confidence then to sort of say, I need to be solo here? I wouldn't identify it as confidence. I think it was a kind of desperation.

I got set up on all these songwriting sort of dates with very successful songwriters who were writing songs. for Avril Levine and Kelly Clarkson and like a lot of my sort of contemporaries, it just didn't resonate. It didn't, it felt like it didn't matter if I was in the room or not. I felt like they were just writing songs and they were just trying to find people to sing them. And songwriting to me has, I can't think of anything more sacred. It's as intimate as it gets and it is literally an illustration of my relationship with God. It's like, that's as close as I get to like being naked spiritually for the world. And so the idea that I would sit in a room and have somebody hand me a sheet of paper that had like a list of song titles, a lot of them with like letters

in the title, which like, too good for you. It's like a girl's five-ed-a-choke. I don't think God wants to say that. I was in despair, actually. And my manager at the time finally like heard me. I was like, okay, you don't have to do it anymore. And I think this is where my heart breaks for young artists who don't realize, like, you have the power to go home all along. Like, I didn't ever have to do any of that. But I do think I grew from the experience. I think people sort of assume that love song was written out of that despair. You know, that song feels so defiant.

And I wonder, was it written out of despair or was it written out of the moment when you got through it and you were thinking, I'm on the other side of this and you know, you guys can shove it. That's a good question. I think you could shove it. I wish I could have put that in there. I think you're right. That wasn't a moment of despair. That was more a moment of discovery.

I was listening to the radio and I was just like trying to cop what I heard on the radio. I was trying to like mimic. I was like, oh, it should sound something like this. And I was so angry when I caught myself in that line of thinking. And I said a prayer. and I was like, please let me just return to myself somehow. Just remember why I'm doing this. Remember what I'm trying to say?

And it was a diary entry. It's like head underwater and you tell me to breathe easy. Like this time is impossible. You know, I don't want to give you what you're asking for. I don't even know if I knew what I thought they were asking for, except that I knew they wanted a song that could go on the radio. I know you grew up loving theater and getting to work on Waitress is your grand return to your early love of theater. So maybe we can start with your early love of theater and then clock up to Waitress.

My mom was a very prominent community theater actress in Humboldt County where I grew up. And she did tons and tons of shows at our repertory theater there. And I would go to the theater. And I went back not that long ago. And in my mind, it is like a palace. And when I went back, I'm like, oh, it's like a 99-seat theater. It's so small and perfect and beautiful. And it was the happiest I ever was, was sitting in a theater seat.

And then the idea that I could be a part of productions was just like mind-blowing. I did productions of Little Shop of Horrors. I did Mystery of Edwin Trude. I did Charlotte's Web. And I really thought I would go into theater. And then I started writing songs, and I moved to L.A. to go to UCLA. And then my music career just sort of foregrounded itself. And I got on that ride.

Being a touring artist is like you get on the ride, and then you come home and you write a new record, and then you get right back on the ride. And I started to feel like I'll hate this really soon. Well, I took this month long, Rumspringer in New York. and I had a meeting with my brand new theatrical agent and he's like there are auditions for a show called Into the Woods and I was like I love that show give me the audition

and I auditioned for Cinderella for the production that was in the park and when I tell you I shit the bed I shit the bed with fury and I walked out of that room and I was like there's not even like a world where like we're like maybe that went okay like it was so clear they were like oh I hope you'll be okay after this it was so terrible and I really I was so humbled by how little

I knew about anything in this industry and then um got the opportunity to sit down with Diane Paulus who was the director of waitress and she talked to me about this project so I was I thought I would go back to theater as a performer. And then I was like, oh, I don't know how to do that. And then started writing songs. So you're approached about waitress. Diane Paulison, you are having this wonderful mind meld. You watch the Adrian Shelley movie.

And how do you approach this project? I know the first song you wrote for it was She used to be mine. She is messy, but she's kind. She is most of the time. She is all of things. I was mixed up and baked in a beautiful part. She is gone, but she used to be my... I was just trying the whole time to just, like, act like I knew what I was doing.

I do think I have some instincts around... Like, it became clear very quickly that I liked being in these conversations. I liked the puzzle. I liked the questioning of motivation. and the collaboration was very new to me. You know, these songwriters that I got paired with, I think for a long time made me very fearful of collaboration. When it's the right kind of collaboration,

it can be incredible, you know, the phenomenon of something being bigger than the sum of its parts. Do you like the workshop process for a new show because I know you just had your workshop for this and then it's like you have to go back and tear things apart, lose numbers, bring numbers in? I mean, is that exciting to you? If you can let go of the part of you

that needs things to be finished quickly or perfect or that you know what anything is or means. If you can let go of that part, then it can be really fun. Do you feel like working in the theater sort of like reinvigorated your love of the other side of the industry because you were saying like it's the hamster wheel,

it's the hamster wheel? Do you feel like you felt revived? No. I feel like working in the theater industry only affirmed that I think the theater industry is the best industry. I think what it affirmed in me is that I just felt like I'd been at the wrong party

my whole career. I just, I don't know where I fit in the music industry. People did not give two shits about me until I wrote, until Waitress was like a musical. And I was like, you guys care about this show about pie, But you didn't, like, nobody would touch me with a 10-foot ball. There's so much competition in the music industry that I don't, I just am not a competitive person.

I don't understand it. It's not that theater isn't competitive. There is that kind of essence as well in some ways. But everybody, there's just sort of this feeling of like everybody's sort of so happy to be there. Like, we got a show, guys. They're so grateful to have a paycheck. the last.

Yeah. So I love that feeling. I would rather be at that, I would rather go to the Tonys than, you know, the Emmys or the Oscars. But music can be such a bridge, you know? I think about how many people I know that feel so strongly about the song, Gravity, for example.

I mean, how for you is music your way of sort of both channeling your own insecurity and all the things you're still dealing with and then trying to connect? I mean, gravity was a song I wrote from, extraordinary broken-hearted place. I was 18 when I wrote that song. And I thought, like, the world was ending. And that song now gets to be interpreted and reinterpreted for other people's pain,

even though I don't carry that same pain anymore. My hope is, as a songwriter, I can work to articulate things that maybe you wouldn't quite know how to say or other people feel like, I'm the only person who feels this. And then, like, wait, she must feel it too because it's right there in the song.

So I'm just the way I'm but your aunt. And all fragile who touch me for a little fragile strength is gone into your grab it but you're on to make you see that you everything I think I'm not for the wizard you're keeping me.

Sarah Borella speaking with staff writer, Rachel Sime, more in a moment. I wanted to talk about a sentence from your book. that I wanted to sort of hear what you think about it now, where you wrote, nothing makes me more panicky and rage-filled than the worry that I've done something in order to position myself for business over art.

And I wonder where you feel like the sea size right now between commerce and art, especially as the music business is ever changing, you know, how are you fighting the good fight for art? I don't think art itself is vulnerable. I think artists are vulnerable. I watch a lot of young artists get popular really quickly because of the way the mechanism functions at this point.

Like there used to be more time. The idea that like it was a slow burn and there is something valuable about it being a slow burn and I watch a lot of these young artists freak out, cancel big shows and I don't fault them for this. I feel like the exponential growth is more than could possibly be metabolized. by an artist at that, you know, you're playing 100 people one day and then two months later you're playing to like, you know, 50,000 people. It's not normal. I think you have to be really clear on why are you making what you're making. If it's to get magazine covers or if it's to get

rich, I would really encourage you to do something else because art doesn't, art doesn't have time for that. Because I think creation is a holy act. I think it is, I think it's sacred work. And I think it's like ministry to take care of the world with making art. Well, I know you've had the chance to meet and perform with many of your heroes and, you know, Carol King and be mentored in the industry a little bit by the people that came before. Do you, you know, you're in your 40s now. We talked about that. Do you feel a responsibility to mentor younger artists at this stage? Totally. I mean, I think more than anything, I just feel a responsibility to show up authentically. Like, I'm someone who I'm aging naturally, and I might change my mind about that. But I'm like, what does it look like for me to just

be, like to not try to hide the person that I am turning into? Not to, I'm not trying to piss anybody off by getting wrinkles on my forehead. I'm just, this is what it looks like when you're lucky enough to grow up and lucky enough to get to age. And so I feel like that's the thing I feel responsibility to is to keep trying to show up authentically. And I'm not always going to get it right and it's going to piss people off sometimes. But it really matters to me.

And son, I'll be sitting till they even go, watching the ships rolling. Then I'll watch. songwriter and performer Sarah Borellas. She spoke with the New Yorker's Rachel Seim. I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. I want to close the program and begin the new year by thanking everyone at the Radio Hour and at the New Yorker.

And thank you for listening and a happy New Year. It's all ready. It's terrible. Keep going. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed. formed by Merrill Garbus of Toon Yards. Okay, so this is my theory.

This is my theory. No one can, like, be tough when they're whistling like that. You were pretty good. You were pretty good. This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deckett.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.