Sara Bareilles is done with artifice, and she's making that clear.
The singer-songwriter sat down with Rolling Stone to discuss her first studio album in seven years, Good Grief (out Aug. 28), and she came prepared to be uncomfortably honest. "The decade of my forties has been all about stripping away artifice," Bareilles said. "I don't want distance in my relationships, in my conversations, [with] fans, or the music. I don't want artifice. I think it's very easy to hide. And I'm terrified, but I'm not hiding."
Nearly two decades after "Love Song" turned her into a household name—the 2007 piano ballad that was her label's biggest nightmare—Bareilles has spent the intervening years doing everything else: Broadway, television, building a life outside the recording studio. Now she's back with an album about loss, healing, and the mess in between.
Good Grief began in 2020, when the pandemic hit and Bareilles' mental health "took just a total nose dive." She battled anxious, depressive episodes she "could not shake," overwhelmed by everything collapsing around her. Instead of disappearing, she transformed that pain into art—and is bringing a documentary and tour to match.
At Rolling Stone's residency at New York's Cherry Lane Theatre in early June, Bareilles took the stage in a black velvet dress with her self-deprecating wit intact. "There's a part of me that's worried that my vagina is going to flash," she joked to the crowd before performing alongside guitarist Butterfly Boucher and keyboardist Misty Boyce.
Good Grief arrives Aug. 28.
