Sounds Like Me

by Sara Bareilles

  I made a beat called Frankie at my parents’ house in New Jersey a few days before we went into the studio together. I was living at my parents’ house at the time and I’d just work on anything that came into my head whenever I was home. A lot of these ideas would become the Bleachers album, but rarely there would be these other ideas that I would be so in love with but couldn’t create a song out of. The beat and chords for this Frankie thing was exactly that (I don’t know why it was called Frankie). It felt different, like it had this rolling quality that made me want to listen on a loop. I remember thinking, “Fuck, if that beat feels that good, imagine a great song on it,” but I couldn’t write anything. Somehow, it didn’t feel like me.

  I put Frankie in a special folder on my iTunes labeled “Really Good,” which exists separately from my “Writing” folder, which at the time was also separate from the “Bleachers” and “FUN.” folders. Everything got dumped into the “Writing” folder, and then very few things would end up in “Really Good” that didn’t just go to “Bleachers” or “FUN.”

  Sara seemed somewhat nervous when we first started working. I was, too. There is always this feeling at the beginning of a session with someone you’ve never worked with before where you just don’t know if anything is going to be possible. It’s a strange feeling, it’s the opposite of cozy. We talked for a while and I played her some stuff I was working on. A song I did with Tegan and Sara, some random demo stuff, and then I started playing her different track and chord ideas. I was running her through different ideas in the “Really Good” folder and she stopped me when she heard Frankie. From that point everything was simple.

  As it was happening, Brave was the easiest and most joyous song I’ve ever been a part of. There were no moments I remember struggling over a part. Sara’s lyrics seem to spill out of her. Each layer we added I could feel the song coming more and more alive. There is actually almost no part of Brave that we wrote or demoed that isn’t exactly what it ended up being. That is so rare. The best songs are the ones that just come out. Nothing felt forced because Sara was actually writing lyrics that were especially inspiring in that moment—to her personally, to me after conversations we had been having that day in the studio, and to the world, given that moment in history with the fight for LGBTQ rights. The parts were the same way. They flowed out. Sara’s moving bass parts on the piano of the chorus dictated the beat in that part; the triumphant lyrics gave total license for the drums to be super bombastic.

  I didn’t have much perspective on it. The day after that New York session I flew to London. I remember editing vocals and working it out on the plane. I showed it to some of the guys in FUN.; they gave me this feeling that it was something really next level. I remember sending it to my publisher, who called me freaking out about what was then labeled I Wanna See You Be Brave.

  Its funny like that—you don’t understand something when it’s easy. Like falling in love with someone—just kind of happens without making any real effort or big plans. Important songs come out that way as well. When I hear Brave or hear a beautiful story from someone who it’s meant a great deal to, it just makes me think of spending time with Sara. It just makes me think of having breakfast with her, getting to know her, laughing about how absurd our work can be, having intense conversations about politics and human rights—basically just her and I hanging out.

  As time goes on and I write more and more, it’s so clear to me that being in that free space is the only way to create something with weight. Working with Sara those days has shaped my outlook on writing more than I can express.

  * * *

  The song got released in April 2014, and I braced myself for the inevitable frenzy that would come when it shot to number one on every chart in the world. I was sure this song was going to connect with the masses with the same kind of explosive energy I had felt when we wrote it. I wrote in my journal about how difficult it was going to be to handle the amount of attention the song would get. I tried to emotionally prepare myself for rising to a new level of fame and what would come with that. I finally understood how Oprah must feel.

  Cue humble pie. The song didn’t “shoot” in any direction at all; although Brave was warmly received and definitely supported on the radio, there was no fanfare. Not even a parade in my honor. It was just another song out in the world. It’s embarrassing that I let my ego have so much real estate, but again I was reminded there is always room for more humility. It’s one thing to dream of connecting in a big way; it’s another thing to crave attention. I tucked my tail between my legs and practiced my gratitude for what was in front of me: preparing for my first solo tour in May, which was terrifying. I called it the Brave Enough tour to acknowledge that I was facing a long-held fear of mine of playing solo shows. I was brave enough to try and do something that truly scared me, but in the midst of my preparation for the tour I encountered an entirely new issue:

  I couldn’t sing the fucking song live.

  It was too high. I’d known it was at the top of my range when we recorded it in the studio, but you can sing it as many times as you need to get a good performance, so I didn’t think much of it. Take dinner breaks. Try it on different days. Drink bourbon. You are bound to hit the notes at least a few times and bim bam boom, you got a song. But sustaining the practice of singing a song like this was new territory. I would have to sing it multiple times a day, at eight in the morning for radio promo, at sound-check parties, and every night on tour. I would have to sing it on TV eventually, and there I was in the rehearsal room and it felt like there was only a 50/50 chance for me to hit those notes or not. I panicked and paced and sang until my throat hurt. I eventually asked for help, and with the guidance of a wonderful voice coach named Wendy Parr, we broke it down. I bawled like a baby in our coaching session, sharing how limited I felt in my own abilities. Now the song represented all my fear in a whole new way. I felt like a fraud, and thank God there had been no parades in my honor. I’m a hack.

  Wendy guided me to softening and staying put. She made me walk around the room stomping through imaginary rain puddles to get me back in my body, and then she helped me find the placement for these notes in my mouth and throat. She subtly sculpted some of my vowel sounds on the high notes, and then after not too long, I actually got it. It was clear it would take work to get comfortable, but I saw it begin to become possible. The whole thing was about trust and facing difficulty, and the irony was fucking thick as molasses. The song was here yet again to teach me about humility and hot damn: message received.

  I went on my tour and learned that I was capable of putting on a solo show, communing with my fans in an entirely new way that made me light up. I stretched into new territory, and all the while, Brave was out there in the world, making its own connections. This song took on a dynamic life of its own over the next year, and I started seeing the effect it was having on people, not on the charts. During my solo tour, we launched an art project where fans were asked to fill in the blank on a square card: I Am Brave Enough to ___________________. The cards ended up on Instagram under the hashtag #IAmBraveEnough.

  The answers were astounding:

  Donate bone marrow.

  Go to nursing school.

  Wear glasses.

  Come out to my family.

  Admit that I need help and to seek it.

  Speak out against my abusive father.

  Attend a concert in DC by myself and make new friends.

  Beat cancer.

  Stop letting doubt consume my life.

  Fight our infertility.

  Share my brain injury story.

  The list goes on and on and on. I was leveled by the courage of total strangers to be vulnerable, and felt like this song was the greatest gift I had ever received. I felt closer to and more inspired by humans than ever. Late one night I was sent a link to a video made by the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital. A bald little boy in a Superman cape ran out the doors of the hospital as my song play
ed in the background, and dozens of nurses and doctors and children danced around playfully, singing the words of Brave, inspiring each other to stay positive in the face of hardship. I wept. Over a million people would eventually see this video. It ended up on CNN and on news outlets all over the country. Many more videos and stories like this would spring up. Brave had become an anthem of sorts, and I felt like the song was a part of a little mini movement. I couldn’t have been more proud.

  On a rooftop in Chelsea, New York City, March 2013

  Pema Chödrön is one of my favorite spiritual teachers. In her book The Places That Scare You she writes,

  “The essence of bravery is being without self-deception.”

  I have spent so much time and energy in my life telling myself hundreds of little lies. Lies about the way I feel or don’t feel. Lies about what I want. Lies about the things I want to do. Lies about the people who make me feel safe or the kind of art I actually want to make. All these lies that muddy up the honest conversation I could have been having with myself and the world around me.

  I don’t know who I thought I was helping.

  Who am I when I am stripped of all of that? Who am I if I build my life on my deepest, most soul-crushing truth? Who stays with me? Who disappears? What happens if I feel pain but don’t run from it and instead learn to feel it? Or if I feel vulnerable and don’t hide it? If I feel ignored and ridiculed and don’t pretend it doesn’t hurt? What would happen if I found a way to speak up honestly as often as I possibly could? If I was just brave enough to try?

  Well, I’m working on it.

  I wrote my friend a letter when I first started writing this chapter for the book, to thank her—officially—for being my muse. It occurred to me that I might not have been explicit in letting her know how much she was a part of the story. She had already come out to her family months prior to this note and is still, every day, stepping bravely and truthfully into the light. She is stunning.

  SHE USED TO BE MINE

  * * *

  SHE USED TO BE MINE was the first song I wrote for my musical. That, by the way, is a really fun sentence to type.

  For years now, I have been fantasizing about how I would dive back into the world of the music I grew up on, the music of musical theater. As a child, I was captivated by the scores of shows like The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, and Evita A Chorus Line, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, West Side Story, Annie, and The Scarlet Pimpernel Miss Saigon, The Secret Garden, Tommy, Chess, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Little Shop of Horrors . . . and many, many more. I developed a way of listening to music because of those shows, and because of that, I learned a particular way of writing that would show up down the line. The focus was acutely on the storytelling, bringing the audience along on a character’s journey, sharing their emotional evolution, all delivered with some unforgettable melodies. I experienced the power of deepening a dramatic moment with a song. I also learned that I was not a true soprano, no matter how hard I clenched my butt cheeks. I tried to sing the part of Christine in The Phantom of the Opera dozens of times, melodramatically staring myself down in my nightgown in my bedroom mirror, and tragically falling short of the high E she sings at the end of the title song until I actually gave myself a headache one time and had to sit down for a few minutes. In spite of my injuries, the seeds were sown deep and true, and my love for the genre has never faded.

  I have gotten farther and farther away from traditional theater in my career, but always held on to a hope that someday I would find my way back. Never in a million years did I imagine that would be because I wrote a musical that would be headed to the Great White Way (which is NOT the name of a shark highway but a nickname for Broadway, which I did not know until about six months ago). It’s a fantastic turn of events, and I have a country music star to thank for a big part of it.

  Jennifer Nettles and I were acquaintances, but became friends when I spent the summer opening for her band, Sugarland. This was an enormous tour. Eight buses, twelve semitrucks, and an elaborate two-story stage configuration that all centered around Jennifer and her musical partner, Kristian Bush. In all my years of touring, this was the first time I had opened for a band that had a female out front, and I studied her like a textbook, both on- and offstage. Onstage, I noticed how she was able to command more space than I ever had. It was little things, like reaching her arms out to their full extension when she gestured, or speaking a little slower, more deliberately, so everyone in the crowd could understand. She held space and time for applause. She was undeniably in control. Offstage she was gracious and kind to the many folks on tour but kept deliberate boundaries that were not to be crossed. She commanded respect and consideration to preserve her energy for the stage, and I found it fascinating. She was a Star with a capital S.

  There were lessons I took with me that I wish I had learned earlier in my career, like knowing what you want and not being afraid to ask for it. This can mean privacy, or fried chicken, whatever it is your soul is asking for. I also learned a respect for my own boundaries, because I saw how diligent Jennifer was with hers. Asking for what you need with kindness is a great skill, and doesn’t mean you will always receive it, but it will certainly up your odds.

  One day on tour, we sat down together on a grassy lawn outside a southern venue and I learned that we shared a love for musical theater and had both been harboring little-girl fantasies of starring on Broadway someday. Of course Jennifer, always the big thinker, immediately said, as if it was the most obvious way forward, “We should write a musical and star in it!!!” I laughed, thinking that it sounded like a crazy idea and, like most awesome crazy ideas, it would be forgotten the next day. You know, like New Year’s resolutions, and remembering people’s birthdays. I forgot that Jennifer has too much fire for a fade-out. She is a meticulous doer, and within a week, we had writing sessions scheduled into the tour and we developed the basic brushstrokes of a musical called LESBIANS!, about a women’s college in the ’90s. LESBIANS! didn’t totally crystallize but was a pretty ambitious start for a couple of folks with no experience writing musicals. Over the next year we wrote a handful of songs, but the idea unraveled as we both got busier with touring, life, family, and other projects. We had a great time fantasizing, though. I never would have taken it seriously if not for her. It taught me to think bigger, and to get clear on what I want. Theater didn’t have to be some nebulous pipe dream, but a real place that I could start aiming toward, and the whole process greased the wheels for what was coming. I have Jennifer’s chutzpah to thank for that.

  Side note: a couple of years after our adventure, her chutzpah also landed her a starring role as Roxy Hart in Chicago on Broadway. She was fabulous, and will most definitely be back for more. Love you, sis.

  I started building a relationship with the theater in a real way, and formed new business relationships to help move me in that direction. In January of 2012, I took a trip to New York for both business and pleasure, and had my first meeting with Jack Tantleff, my brand-new theatrical agent. I arrived for brunch feverish and hungover (after a night that fell in the “pleasure” category) and spent a good portion of the meeting trying not to vomit in my bowl of tortellini in brodo. We talked about ways I could dip my toes in the Broadway world, and Jack had lots of great ideas, making it seem not only possible but plausible. I felt the butterflies in my stomach start churning as he talked about the different ways I could be involved. He mentioned a production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods that would be going up in Central Park the following summer, and that I might be right for the role of Cinderella. The timing would be perfect: I was in between record cycles. It would also give me an actual reason to spend a big chunk of time in New York City besides just “I want to go to there.” My toes tingled, I was beyond excited.

  My team set up the audition and I felt fancy and entitled and cocky and returned to New York a few weeks later to promptly get my ass handed to me. In a high-rise rehearsal room studio in midtown, in my
casual sweater set, I basically one-arm army-crawled through that audition. I was underprepared and under-qualified. My heart raced and my voice shook as I wobble-sang Sondheim and overacted the shit outta my lines in the scenes. We all could simultaneously see that there was no way in hell I was going to pull off that role, but the creative team was so kind. As they ushered me out, I didn’t even hear a snicker as the door closed behind me. The experience was humiliating and unforgettable—an extremely important lesson in respect. I knew that I had a ton of work to do if I ever hoped to step on a Broadway stage.

  A couple of months passed and I received a phone call from Jack saying that there was a woman who wanted to have lunch and talk about the prospect of working together. A team of people were working on the stage adaptation of a film I hadn’t seen yet, a film called Waitress, which had come out in 2007, an instant indie classic. I was enticed by the idea of getting involved with a show at its earliest stages, and curious about what they were looking for in me. I agreed to have a lunch meeting with the director, Diane, to get more information on what this whole project entailed. I guess I could imagine myself as a waitress. . . .

  I didn’t know who Diane Paulus was when I sat down with her a Times Square restaurant: old school, with white tablecloths and an elderly lunch crowd. She wore all black and no makeup, dark hair falling below her shoulders, her shiny hazel eyes tucked under wild eyebrows. I liked her immediately. She is direct and articulate, curious and intelligent. I didn’t know then that she is one of the most sought-after visionaries and highly regarded directors working in the theater community, or that she would be named among Time magazine’s one hundred most influential people in the world. I didn’t know she had won multiple Tony Awards and was creative director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, one of the foremost incubators for groundbreaking theater projects. I just sat there in my not knowing, and ordered soup and salad thinking I was supposed to be wooed. Ugh. Kill me.