Sara Bareilles: ‘Life is f**king big. It’s confusing too.’

It’s hard to believe it’s been six years since Sara Bareilles released the now-ubiquitous Love Song, but the Californian singer-songwriter is now enjoying another cross-over hit in the form of feel-good anthem Brave. Co-written with fun.’s Jack Antonoff, the song deals with a friend’s struggle to come out and has since been adopted by the gay community in the States, becoming the soundtrack for a host of viral videos and coming out stories.

With third studio album The Blessed Unrest due outnext month, we caught up with Sara to chat about everything from Brave’s gay appeal to why she’d be willing to carry Haim’s laundry around for them…

We’re really glad that Brave has finally got a UK release. Were you expecting it to be so successful?
You know, I have to say, Brave has been a really remarkable experience to watch. I mean, you hope your song’s gonna be a smash success and we were excited to release it, but it didn’t come out of the gates and blow anyone away! I think as I adjusted my expectations to that, it was a really sweet development to watch it take hold. It was much more grass-roots and word of mouth; people really taking it and making it their own anthem and making web videos. It was this really cool campaign that wasn’t orchestrated by anyone other than the fans, you know? I’ve always been kind of a slow-burner anyway.

People seem to have really connected with it in a way you can’t predict. Did you sit down and think ‘I want to write a gay rights anthem?’
You know, that’s what’s so cool and unpredictable about music. It reminds me it’s like a living, breathing organism and you can’t control it, you can’t predict it or manipulate it – it’s gonna do what it’s gonna do. I wrote it with my friend Jack Antonoff and we were both really inspired and motivated by all this momentum in the gay rights agenda at that time last year. There was so much happening and at the same time a really dear friend of mine was really struggling with coming out as an adult. It was watching their struggle and it was so much in the ether.

It was more like a love song for my friend, so it sort of started from an intimate place. But that being said, I was conscious of trying to make statements on this record that felt a bit more expansive and trying to tackle subjects that are bigger than just matters of the heart – which sometimes can be the biggest thing in the entire fucking world, believe me – but I wanted to try and articulate some of the feelings I have that feel bigger than that.

Were you surprised at the incredible reaction the song has received from the gay community?
It’s been amazing! The coolest thing about this song has just been that people are sharing their stories in a really vulnerable way. They’re giving up their really intimate personal struggles. I’ve got really beautiful letters about teenagers coming out, and I feel so privileged to have leant a voice to that, but it’s not been always about the story of coming out. There was this incredible online video that this children’s cancer ward made in Minneapolis where all the nurses lip-synced to Brave, and it’s all these beautiful little kids with these, you know, really big problems, who are smiling and ripping their wigs off and singing ‘I wanna see you be brave’. Oh my God, I was tears. I was in tears. It’s something I can believe in and am so proud of.

In the video you show off your dance moves in a very public situation, performing an impromptu routine in the middle of New York City. Was that fun to film?
Oh, it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had on a video shoot! It was one of those days where you’re like ‘This is work?!’ It was all hidden cameras and stuff so there was definitely an element of facing your fear! It’s embarrassing to walk into a public space and choose to make a fool of yourself, but we had our band of angels that we dispersed throughout the city and went and did their dance moves. It was really fun.

A lot of songs of The Blessed Unrest have a similar sense of positivity and empowerment to Brave. What kind of head-space were you in when you were writing the record?
Actually, the record the born out of a really hard time for me. I think part of the reason for the tone of the writing was sort of me making my case for myself, having little pep talks with myself and lifting my gaze upwards a little bit. Last year was a really hard year for me; I went through a lot of tough stuff personally and made the big move from LA to New York. Leaving LA was very bittersweet: I’d left a long-term relationship and split with my band of close to ten years. I was kind of starting over a little bit. It was a really tough time and that’s kind of chronicled in the record. So there’s a real melancholy spirit to a lot of the songs.

One of the songs, Chasing the Sun, is about mortality and living life to the fullest. Obviously you were born and raised in Northern California and your mother worked in a funeral home: was your life basically the premise of Six Feet Under?
Haha, no thank God! Oh my God, I don’t have the make-up for that. I’d have nightmares! My mum was a funeral director after I’d graduated college, so I was well out of the house! Thank God, I can’t imagine being around dead bodies! I think most things that affect me are just getting older and looking at my life and having these really big experiences. You start thinking about, like, ‘What does it all mean? Why are we here? What is the meaning of life?’ Those are questions you think about when you’re in your twenties but I dunno, there’s something about stepping into this chapter in my life – I’m in my thirties now – and it feels like a heavier statement. You start really looking at things on a deeper level. It’s fucking big. It’s confusing too.

Do you feel like you’ve entered that phase in your thirties when you’re expected to have everything figured out?
Oh yeah, and I’m like ‘Fuckin’ damn no!’ No one should look to me for answers on anything – I’m a fucking mess! Haha really! You can ask my therapist.

Well you seem very together so you must be doing something right!
Haha! Oh thank you, I’ve fooled another one!

You’ve been compared to a lot of female singer-songwriters, but what artists are you listening to now?
Well, I’m a huge fan of Haim; I know they’ve been spending a lot of time over in the UK. They’re the shit. I saw them last year in LA and I’m a huge fan.

You could probably pass for the fourth Haim sister – you’ve got the look!
You… are my new best friend. I’ve been trying to convince them to let me join the band for a year now! I’m like, ‘I will fucking carry your laundry around, I don’t care!’ I just love them so much, they’re so cool.

Who are your dream collaborators?
Oooh, there’s a lot of them. I would love to do something with Frank Ocean, I would love to do something with D’Angelo. I would love to do something with Chris Martin. If you know anyone then help me out!

In the UK Love Song is still the song most people would associate you with. How do you look back at that song now?
You know, I think I’ll always be so grateful to Love Song because it’ll always be the song that opened things up for me. The tricky thing is that the world is so big, the ripples only go out so far. But having a song like Love Song as a cornerstone piece is a really cool thing. I’ll not be offended if people that’s the only song they know of mine! But you hope with something like that that it’s hopefully an invitation for someone to dig deeper and look at some of the other things you do. But it’s the song that started everything for me, so I’m always happy when people are diggin’ that song.

So can we expect you in the UK later this year?
I hope so! We’re talking about it and trying to find the right time in the schedule. But it’s looking really good that I’ll head over. I hesitate to say yes because I don’t want to be wrong, but I think so and I really hope so!

Brave is out now, with Sara’s album The Blessed Unrest to follow on May 26.

Watch the video for Brave below: