Sara Bareilles Is Back: ‘Grief Is This Miraculous Teacher’
The singer-songwriter on writing her Oscar-shortlisted track for ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’ after a few challenging years
I cover where music & Hollywood meet. I spoke to Spike Lee about how he recruited Aiyana-Lee for Highest 2 Lowest with a DM, chatted with Amanda Seyfried & Daniel Blumberg about The Testament of Ann Lee and broke big news from Stephen Schwartz about the future of Wicked. Reach me at rob@theankler.com
“This all feels like a really good place to start the year off,” Sara Bareilles tells me while appearing on a Zoom from her office in New York, fresh from a tastemaker event. Behind her, a cue card from her 2019 SNL appearance is framed on her wall (“such a cool little parting gift”). Beneath it, a guitar neck sticks out of a black case propped on the floor.
Despite the heaviness of recent headlines, she’s finding solace in talking about Come See Me in the Good Light, the emotional Apple documentary from filmmaker Ryan White about the late poet Andrea Gibson. Bareilles not only serves as co-executive producer on the Oscar-shortlisted film, but also contributed the “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet,” which also landed on the best original song shortlist.
“Lots of time, energy and attention were poured into this film, so I always get so much out of getting to spend time with the people who made it,” says Bareilles, buzzing with pride for not only her song and film but a continuing mission to help spread Gibson’s work.
When she first encountered the poet’s writing, Bareilles, 46, had experienced what she previously described as a “severe mental health dip” brought upon by the pandemic and the deaths of some close friends, including Tony Award-winning actor Gavin Creel. She took to Gibson’s writing because it was bursting with love and frankness, the kind of language Bareilles needed to read at the time. Eventually, the California native signed on to co-executive produce the film alongside a cadre of boldfaced names, including Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and the comedian Kevin Nealon. Comedian and writer Tig Notaro also serves as producer.
Using lines written by Gibson — who was nonbinary and whose work focused on gender identity and social justice — Bareilles also crafted “Salt Then Sour Then Sweet” alongside fellow singer-songwriter and executive producer, Brandi Carlile.
It’s the latest unique endeavor for the fearless Bareilles, who is no stranger to art-form hopping. I’m not just talking about her Grammy-nominated pop career (she gave me the scoop on her new album below), but also the stage (Waitress, the musical she wrote, which earned her a slew of Tony nominations) and the screen (Girls5Eva, the hilarious skewering of the music industry, which I also had to ask about).
In the meantime, the release of Come See Me in the Good Light has been poignant and bittersweet. The film premiered at Sundance last January and debuted on Apple TV in November. In between, the 49-year-old Gibson died of ovarian cancer in July, while, in October, Bareilles married her longtime partner, actor Joe Tippett, who starred in Waitress.
As Bareilles told me, it was Gibson’s passionate prose that got the creative team through the emotional rollercoaster.
Rob LeDonne: How did you first encounter Andrea’s work?
Sara Bareilles: Sadly, it was Instagram (laughs). I have such a love-hate experience with Instagram. But one of the great things that Instagram gave me was exposure to Andrea’s work. They popped up in my algorithm when they were posting a lot of videos about their cancer diagnosis. I was going through a kind of rough period in my life at the time, too, and I was just so moved by how Andrea is able to find the light in dark places. They were so self-effacing, authentic and honest. It just felt like there was no filter, and I tend not to have much of one either, so I really loved that and found so much solace and comfort in it. So we just started following each other, and then I was reading beautiful poetry excerpts and getting introduced to the books, and it was kind of a waterfall from there.
It’s amazing how you were at this low point in your life, which opened a wider door to being struck by her writing. I suppose it found you at the perfect time?
There are wonderful books that I’ve read that I first tried to read earlier in my life. You have that feeling of, “I’m not there yet.” But yeah, it was a perfect time to be introduced to their work. I was talking to (Gibson’s widow) Megan Falley last night, and I was saying how I really admire, and sort of covet, the way that they wrap language around the world. I love the way Andrea thinks. As a writer, I just find their work so inspiring. The opportunity to collaborate with them and create a song from their original work was just a huge, huge gift.
In your own estimation as a writer yourself, what made Andrea special?
God, so many things. The thing that feels most present to me in Andrea’s lens of the world is a deep sincerity, a bent towards telling the truth. A very sincere seeking of what could be the most true and the most loving. So, without being sort of saccharine, there’s this really devotional effort towards discovering where love is in each moment. Whether it be a cancer diagnosis or the loss of a parent, love exists. And to continue to give voice and shine a light on that, I find it really remarkable. There are poems about suicidality, queerness, and there’s just this devotional quality about discovering how we love each other more and what that feels like. There’s a quote of Andrea’s: “Everything but ‘I love you’ is small talk.” And I just love that. I feel like that’s something they really lived in their life.
When during the film’s production did you sign on as executive producer? Did that come first?
I signed on towards the end; the film was essentially made, and they were just trying to raise additional funds. But I said yes very quickly when Glennon and Abby invited me to join this little team, and I felt really honored. I feel like it’s something that has recently become pretty important to me, just as a way to pay it forward. I like helping art get made in the world: art that matters, that highlights artists. It’s just a really satisfying way to spend time, energy and resources.
But Andrea had some unfinished work that they were hoping to have ready for the film. And then it sort of felt like the perfect moment to try to collaborate. And so after the first time I watched the whole screening, I sat with these pages of unfinished poetry, put together a first draft of a song, and then went to Brandi, and we shared it with Andrea, and everybody was like, “Yeah, that’s it. It’s great.”
Have you ever written a song using source material like that? Or maybe that question is ridiculous because Waitress was based on a movie after all.
But every process is different. This was a really unique experience because not everyone’s poetry, but Andrea’s, sort of feels musical to me. There’s a lot of humor, and the cadence of their writing feels very musical to me, so it did feel like getting a couple of pages of unfinished lyrics. The song is mostly Andrea’s work, with a few lines I added. And then Brandi gave feedback, and we did some mixing and matching. But yeah, it’s mostly Andrea’s beautiful poetry.
Considering Andrea’s death, has talking about them been cathartic, or has it also been tough at times?
More than anything, I’ve felt a lot of catharsis. Grief has been a really prominent theme in my life for the last five years. I’ve lost a couple of very dear friends in the last couple of years and have been writing a record sort of based around grief. Since the pandemic, my mental health really took a downturn, as I know [it did for] a lot of people, and the last six years have been really challenging. But grief is this miraculous teacher that I hadn’t really gotten to know very well. The closer you allow yourself to get to your own grief, the more buoyant the experience can become. The less you wanna look at it, the heavier it gets. And so I think this actually has been a beautiful experience of getting to talk about Andrea. I am so full of joy. I feel their spirit, I feel their artistic endeavor. I feel a will to live up to their hopes for the world.
What was Andrea like as a person when you were with them?
I didn’t know Andrea for very long, and I didn’t know them very well. Well, although this feels funny to say, it’s like, for not knowing someone very long, I think about Andrea and talk to Andrea as much as I talked to my two best friends who passed in the last three years. Our time together was sort of small and mighty. Just like Andrea! Small and mighty. I think it was really special to see them at Sundance, where we first met. We all stayed in a house together and saw the film together for the first time. They were deeply disarming and an arrow of truth. Really interested, really curious. Really funny, deeply soulful.
For example, I remember one of the things Andrea said to me. They were getting a little emotional before we were all going to the screening, and they just turned to me and were like, “I don’t even know who you love yet.” And I just met this person. The idea that someone would even have the wherewithal to be like, ‘If you’re gonna matter to me, what matters to you must matter to me.’”
Wow, I got the chills. That’s very generous and really shows that she looked at people through the lens of love.
That was my deepest impression of Andrea: They were really looking to love the world in all its flaws and pain. That was one of the great lessons that I took from my time with them. This film, I think, is like a primer on how to live your life and just love it.
What does it mean now that the song has made it onto the Oscar shortlist?
Being on the circuit for supporting this film, it’s just like — my God, how can I scream it from the mountaintops? Just please everybody watch this movie, because it’s like medicine for a world that is in so much pain right now. I just think the reverberations are gonna go beyond any scope we could’ve imagined.
You mentioned your upcoming album earlier. What can you reveal to me about that?
I am definitely someone who tries to find, not necessarily a silver lining, but wisdom. I’m definitely at a place where I want to sort of extract what I can learn from these deeper, darker experiences. So when it comes to the record, I think the big hope is this year. It’s not quite finished yet, so we’re still working on that, but I’m really proud of it. It’s very, very handmade. I didn’t go the traditional producer route; I kind of made it with friends, and that’s been really edifying and really empowering, too. Plus, Andrea’s on the record. I’m hoping that it brings some comfort to folks who have been in the depths, ’cause I know it well.
Finally, my Ankler cohorts and I love Girls5Eva. It’s been two years since season 3 debuted on Netflix. Is there any chance that it will come back in the future?
I would do anything to say yes to this. The truth is, I just don’t know. But, if anyone has any good ideas for fan campaigns to lobby for a Sex and the City-style movie, I think we would all do it in a heartbeat.
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