Artist

Sara Bareilles

Eureka, United States · b. 1979

Sara Bareilles is a musician from Eureka, United States, active since 1979. Their discography on Gatefold includes 11 records.

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Albums tracked

In collections

1979

Since

Biography

Epic Records suits sat her down and explicitly demanded a radio-friendly pop smash because they didn't hear a single. She went home pissed off, sat at an upright piano, and wrote a direct, sarcastic middle finger to the A&R department that became one of the biggest charting tracks of 2007. That is Sara Bareilles in a nutshell. People write her off as clean-cut Starbucks adult contemporary, but under the sheen, she's a viciously sharp chord technician with the vocal control of an old-school Brill Building writer. She never stayed in the neat radio-pop box they built for her. After grinding through the West Hollywood club circuit with an independent run, she weaponized major label polish on her own terms, brought Ben Folds in to produce a weird, dark experimental EP, and then pivoted straight to scoring Broadway. Most pop artists who try musical theater fall flat on their faces because they don't understand narrative pacing. Bareilles wrote a smash stage score on her first try because storytelling was always the entire engine of her songwriting anyway.

Bio from The Clerk

The Arc of Sara Bareilles

The pivots — what forced Sara Bareilles to reinvent.

The Major Label Pushback
After self-releasing Careful Confessions, Epic signed her and brought in producer Eric Rosse to re-record and polish the material for Little Voice. The label pressured her mercilessly for a marketable radio single, triggering the spite-fueled writing of Love Song. The record exploded, turning a piano-club grinder into an inescapable top-40 fixture. You hear the tension across the whole record: slick commercial production wrapped around biting, defiant chord progressions.
The Folds Experiment & Pop Polish
She followed up her chart breakthroughs by heading into Ben Folds' Nashville studio to cut the five-track Once Upon Another Time EP in 2012. Folds pushed her away from pristine pop gloss into live-room grit, tape hiss, and sparse acoustic arrangements. That left-turn cleared her palate for The Blessed Unrest, where she balanced big pop hooks co-written with Jack Antonoff against intricate, brooding balladry. It proved she could play the modern pop game without surrendering her instincts as an arranger.
The Broadway Pivot & Roots Realignment
Instead of chasing the streaming algorithmic pop machine, she took on scoring the stage adaptation of Waitress. The resulting 2015 concept album What's Inside showcased a theatrical narrative discipline that most of her peers completely lack. That detour directly fed into 2019's Amidst the Chaos, where she brought in T Bone Burnett to strip away electronic veneer in favor of rich, analog room mics and live ensemble tracking. The record sounds heavy, organic, and grounded entirely in traditional American songwriting craft.

Influences

Fiona Apple — Bareilles has repeatedly cited Tidal as the lightning-bolt record that made her realize an upright piano could sound aggressive and modern. You hear that percussive, left-hand-heavy piano attack driving tracks like 'Love Song' and 'Fairytale.' It gave her permission to abandon polite ballad tropes for sharp syncopation.
Carole King — King's Tapestry provided the structural DNA for Bareilles's entire approach to songcraft and vocal delivery. She covered 'Beautiful' live with King herself at the 56th Grammy Awards. You hear that Brill Building discipline in how Bareilles resolves her bridges and anchors every hook in emotional clarity.
Joni Mitchell — Mitchell's open-hearted phrasing and sophisticated harmonic movement shaped how Bareilles approaches melody outside standard pop cadences. She covered 'River' and has routinely praised Court and Spark in interviews. That influence surfaces heavily in her acoustic arrangements and shifting vocal dynamics.
Ben Folds — Before he produced her 2012 EP, Folds was her primary blueprint for fast, sarcastic, percussive piano pop. The duo eventually collaborated on the biting duet 'You Done Done It' and tracked together in Nashville. His cynical humor and aggressive key-hammering echo all over Bareilles's early catalog.
Stevie Wonder — Bareilles frequently talks about studying Innervisions and Songs in the Key of Life for their rhythmic chord suspensions and vocal agility. She covered 'If It's Magic' live and regularly integrates his syncopated electric piano rhythms into her verse grooves. You hear his soul phrasing in the higher registers of her vocal runs.