David Remnick: At the New Yorker Festival a couple of months ago, we were joined by Sara Bareilles. Bareilles broke out as a star in pop music in the late aughts with the Grammy Awards to prove it, but she's gone on to have a very different sort of career writing music for Broadway, so on the one hand, Bareilles 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 Wolitzer's bestselling novel, The Interestings for the stage, along with the playwright Sarah Ruhl. Sara Bareilles sat down to talk with staff writer Rachel Syme and to play a little music too.

Rachel Syme: How do you write a song, Sarah?

Sara Bareilles: 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 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.

Rachel Syme: Reading about your first record deal, though, and how many co-writers they tried to put you with, or 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 how did you feel like you had the confidence then to sort of say, "I need to be solo here"?

Sara Bareilles: 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 Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson, and like a lot of my contemporaries, it just didn't resonate. 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 a list of song titles, a lot of them with letters in the title, which, like, too good for you. [laughter]

Rachel Syme: It's like a girl [unintelligible 00:02:42] joke.

Sara Bareilles: I don't know. I don't think God wants to say that. I was in despair, actually, and my manager at the time finally heard me, 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 you have the power to go home all along. I didn't ever have to do any of that, but I do think I grew from the experience.

Rachel Syme: I think people sort of assume that Love Song was written out of that despair.

[MUSIC – Sarah Bareilles: Love Song]

I'm not gonna write you a love song

'Cause you asked for it, 'cause you need one

You see, I'm not gonna write you a love song

'Cause you tell me it's make or break--

Rachel Syme: That song feels, it 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 guys can shove it"?

Sara Bareilles: That's a good question. You can 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 trying to cop what I heard on the radio. I was trying to 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. 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.

Rachel Syme: 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.

Sara Bareilles: 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. 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 mind blowing.

I did productions of Little Shop of Horrors, I did Mystery of Edwin Drood, I did Charlotte's Web, and I really thought I would go into theater. Then I started writing songs and I moved to LA 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, really soon.

I took this month-long Rumspringa 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 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 was so humbled by how little I knew about anything in this industry. Then 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 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.

Rachel Syme: You're approached about Waitress, Diane Paulus, you are having this wonderful mind meld. You watch the Adrienne Shelly movie, and how do you approach this project? I know the first song you wrote for it was She Used to Be Mine.

[MUSIC – Sara Bareilles: She Used to Be Mine]

She is messy, but she's kind

She is lonely most of the time

She is all of this mixed up

And baked in a beautiful pie

She is gone, but she used to be mine

Sara Bareilles: I was just trying the whole time to just 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. 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, the phenomenon of something being bigger than the sum of its parts.

Rachel Syme: 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. Is that exciting to you?

Sara Bareilles: 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.

[laughter]

Rachel Syme: Do you feel like working in the theater 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?

Sara Bareilles: No. I feel like working in the theater industry only affirmed that I think the theater industry is the best industry. [laughs] 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 Waitress was a musical, and I was like, "You guys care about this show about pie, but nobody would touch me with a 10-foot pole." There's so much competition in the music industry that I don't-- I'm just I'm 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 there's just sort of this feeling of like everybody's sort of so happy to be there. Like, "We got a show, guys."

Rachel Syme: They're so grateful to have a paycheck.

Sara Bareilles: We don't know how long it's going to last. I love that feeling. I would rather go to the Tonys than the Emmys or the Oscars.

Rachel Syme: But music can be such a bridge. I think about how many people I know that feel so strongly about the song Gravity, for example. 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?

Sara Bareilles: Gravity was a song I wrote from extraordinarily broken-hearted place, but 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.

[MUSIC – Sara Bareilles: Gravity]

Set me free, leave me be

I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity

Here I am, and I stand so tall

Just the way I'm supposed to be

But you're on to me and all over me

Oh, you loved me 'cause I'm fragile

When I thought that I was strong

But you touch me for a little while

And all my fragile strength is gone

Set me free, leave me be

I don't want to fall another moment into your gravity

Here I am, and I stand so tall

Just the way I'm supposed to be

But you're on to me and all over me

I live here on my knees as I try to make you see

That you're everything I think I need here on the ground

But you're neither friend nor foe though I can't seem to let you go

The one thing that I still know is that you're keeping me down, ooh

Rachel Syme: I wanted to talk about a sentence from your book that I wanted to 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 seesaw is right now between commerce and art, especially as the music business is ever changing, how are you fighting the good fight for art?

Sara Bareilles: 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 that you're playing 100 people one day and then two months later you're playing to like 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 have time for that. I think creation is a holy act. I think it's sacred work, and I think it's like ministry to take care of the world with making art.

Rachel Syme: I know you've had the chance to meet and perform with many of your heroes and Carole King and be mentored in the industry a little bit by the people that came before. You're in your 40s now, we talked about that. Do you feel a responsibility to mentor younger artists at this stage?

Sara Bareilles: Totally. I think more than anything, I just feel a responsibility to show up authentically. 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 not try to hide the person that I am turning into? 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-

Rachel Syme: On there.

Sara Bareilles: -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.

[MUSIC – Sara Bareilles: (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay]

Sittin' in the mornin' sun

I'll be sittin' when the evenin' come

Watchin' the ships roll in

And then I'll watch 'em roll away again

David Remnick: Songwriter and performer Sara Bareilles. She spoke with the New Yorker's Rachel Syme.

[MUSIC – Sara Bareilles: (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay]

I'm gonna sit on the dock of the bay

Watchin' the tide roll away

Sit on the dock of the bay wastin' time

Sara Bareilles: Now you whistle. Ready?

[whistling]

Sara Bareilles: It's terrible. Keep going.

[laughter]

[whistling]

Sara Bareilles: Okay, so this is my theory.

[laughter]

Sara Bareilles: This is my theory. No one can be tough when they're whistling like that.

[laughter]

Sara Bareilles: You were pretty good. You were pretty good.

[MUSIC – Sara Bareilles: (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay]

I'm gonna sit at the dock of the bay

Wastin' time, wastin' time, wastin' time

[applause]

Sara Bareilles: Thank you so much.

 

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