Sara Bareilles is ‘Home’

May we all be so lucky to live amidst the songwriting prowess that is Sara Bareilles. 

This month, GRAMMY-winning, Tony and Emmy-nominated singer-songwriter announced her first album in seven years, Good Grief, out August 28th alongside the drop of the album’s first single “Home.” 

As her seventh studio album, and first since 2019, Good Grief reflects on a new chapter in her life. The record is a reckoning with loss, yet even in its darkest moments, it is threaded with an insistent, luminous pull toward hope, or as I like to call it, Sara’s signature.

“This whole collection of songs felt like transmissions rather than a deliberate attempt to make sense of the world,” says Bareilles. “My deepest hope is that Good Grief provides some kind of comfort or catharsis.”

“Home,” the first single off the album, was inspired by a conversation between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper about grief and loss during an episode of Cooper’s podcast. Sara shared, “It feels like an invitation and a tone setter for the specificity and depth of this record. It just feels really essential right now. In order for us as humans to really know and understand each other, we have to listen to each other’s stories.”

As this chapter is rooted in grief, it pulls from not only Sara’s deeply personal experiences over the past six years but also intimate tributes to lost friends, defiant anthems for women’s rights, and unexpected moments of lightness found in the darkest of times.

The album is produced by Sara herself and recorded over six days at Dreamland Recording Studios in Woodstock, NY, alongside some of her longtime collaborators, including drummer Charley Drayton, guitarist Butterfly Boucher, keyboardist Misty Boyce, bassist Solomon Dorsey, multi-instrumentalist Rob Moose, and co-producer, recording engineer, and mixer Jonathan Low. Later sessions took place alongside co-producer Aaron Dessner at his Long Pond Studios in the Hudson Valley, NY, with assistance from engineer and mixer Bella Blasko. The collection also features contributions from Brandi Carlile, Andrea Gibson, Ingrid Michaelson, Joe Tippett, and Megan Falley.

The making of the album was captured in the documentary Good Grief, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 4th at the Beacon Theatre. 

As Sara sings, “May we all be so lucky.” 

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