Sara Bareilles On: Songs That Write Themselves, Grief That Doesn't Destroy You, and Why There's Nothing To Fix

**Dan Harris** (0:04)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm your host, Dan Harris. Pop songs generally cover romantic love.
I recently did a search for how many songs contain the words, I want you, and I think in this while ago, I think it was like scores if not hundreds of songs. However, there are some great pop songs that cover weightier, heavier stuff like Grief. If you think about Let It Be, Paul McCartney sings about his late mother, Mother Mary. Also artists like Beyonce and Kanye and Frank Ocean have written and sung about Grief. And now comes my friend, Sara Bareilles, who has recorded a whole album, which comes out today on the subject of Grief. It's called Good Grief and it is accompanied by a documentary, which is quite beautiful and a whole tour.
If you have never heard of Sara, I don't know what's the matter with you, but if you've never heard of Sara, she's a Grammy winning songwriter, the composer and star of Waitress on Broadway, and much, much more. And a friend of mine, as I said, Sara Bareilles, welcome back to the show.

**Sara Bareilles** (1:19)
Hello, Daniel.

**Dan Harris** (1:20)
I sometimes ask people, especially when I have somebody on the show who I know, I ask a question that is, it might seem perfunctory or tossed off, but I genuinely want to know the answer, which is, how are you? What's going on?

**Sara Bareilles** (1:34)
You know, I'm a little wobbly. I'm a little wobbly right now.
I think being on, I had breakfast with my husband this morning, Joe, and it was occurring to me that being on the precipice of sharing this body of work to the degree that it will be shared is just a really, it's like an OD in vulnerability. And me, I love vulnerability. Don't get me wrong. I love to cry in front of people. I'm not mad about it. But it's a really tender, very personal offering. And so I think there is the part of me that's like, oh, I hope people will like it.
The powerlessness of that. Or it's like you release this thing that you love and you hope other people are kind to it in some way. Or that it means something to someone else in some way.

**Dan Harris** (2:33)
I hear you. I hear you on the wobbliness. That seems, I mean, if you weren't, there might be a question of like sociopathology.
Given how vulnerable you are making yourself in this, not only in the record, but also in the documentary. So I'll just say, I'm like just one person and I'm totally biased, but I've been listening to the record and watching the documentary. Both are beautiful. You had played me a couple of songs from the record beforehand. So I had heard some of the work, but now like listening to it in its entirety, it's amazing. So congratulations.

**Sara Bareilles** (3:09)
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I think for the first time in my career, in my artistic career, there is a kind of integration happening between, I don't feel like I'm presenting a body of work that is misaligned with what's happening in my personal life, where I don't have to go and put on a dog and pony show and feel like behind the scenes, there's this other thing happening, the grieving or whatever it is. I think in the past, it's like when it's time to release a record, it's time to go and do the song and dance thing.
This whole offering feels more like an art project. It feels more integrated just as a piece of art and as it relates to my life. That feels great actually. I thought that that would be really scary, even though I feel a little wobbly, but I feel really, it's a very empowered place actually, that there's not some secret I'm keeping from everybody behind the work.

**Dan Harris** (4:17)
I could imagine past projects like Girls5eva, the comedy you did or Waitress or whatever, in its various iterations on Broadway and then there was also a movie. You're out there promoting something that's fun or a little bit light and you've got some Sturm & Drang or heavy shit happening in your personal life and you don't, it doesn't make sense to talk about that in that context.

**Sara Bareilles** (4:42)
Oh, totally. I mean, the first season of Girls5eva, I was having a full on dissociated episode and got on Lexapro for the first time, like taking anti-anxiety medication for the first time and they would call cut on set and I would go to my dressing room and like have full on panic attacks and I know you get it.