MC: How has fan interaction impacted your career? How do you use social media to your advantage?
Bareilles: I don’t really have media training. I was the judge on The Sing-Off, and that was the only time I remember having formal media training. And I think social media is hugely helpful and impactful in the sense that it makes fans feel close to their artist. I’m very active on Twitter and Facebook and on my website, and I like to keep things as complete as possible. But I also think it’s important to keep the line of privacy. I’m not the kind of person who wants to share everything, though I like to share a lot of myself onstage.
MC: Why was “Brave” chosen as The Blessed Unrest’s first single?
Bareilles: It felt like an obvious choice to me. I really connected to the message of that song on a deep level, and personally and professionally I wanted that to be my first statement. I felt it was a progression for me sonically. It sounded like something not quite like anything I’d done, but you could still hear me in all of it. I was really pushing for that. It wasn’t a hard battle; everyone agreed it was a good one to start with.
MC: “Brave” was co-written with Jack Antonoff from Fun. How did you end up teaming with him?
Bareilles: Sara Quin, half of Tegan and Sara, is a mutual friend, and she suggested Jack, because she had done some writing with him. I was talking to Sara about wanting to collaborate and wanted to find the right fit. So it was really serendipitous. I met him, and he was amazing.
MC: What is the co-writing experience like, particularly when the co-writer is also a prominent performing artist? What did each of you bring to the song?
Bareilles: Co-writing is all about chemistry, about whether or not you’ll feel comfortable with another person in the room. I think Jack and I had great chemistry from the get-go. If [your co-writer] is also a performing artist, it can inform the writing process in a lot of cool ways. You think of things in terms of what will happen onstage. You’re imagining playing live instead of just about what’s happening in the room. Jack was hugely helpful in helping me feel I could achieve some larger goals. Everybody works differently, and every situation is different. Jack had a track prepared, and I wrote the melody and lyrics with him involved. It felt like it was very collaborative.
MC: What was it like working with producer John O’Mahoney?
Bareilles: Awesome. It was very easy. We met through mutual friends. He’s a really thoughtful producer. He has strong opinions and doesn’t sugarcoat anything. If you work well with that, it’s a great fit. John helped me strip away some of my fear about being vulnerable and being wrong. It felt very collaborative.
MC: What about producer Mark Endert? How did his style differ from O’Mahoney’s, and why work with multiple producers?
Bareilles: Like an artist, every producer has a different style. Working with Mark, I let go of the reins a little more. He had a specific vision, so it was a practice in letting go for me. Of course I’m kind of a control freak as well, and I want to have my hands all over everything. It was very different. With John, I felt like we were building a castle block by block together, and with Mark, I felt like he constructed a lot of the castle, and I came in and made my changes. Both were rewarding in their own ways.
MC: Why do you like to co-produce your records?
Bareilles: I have concrete opinions on the way something sounds, the way the arrangement feels, the structure and foundation of the music. It’s not just coming in and singing vocals.
MC: Your voice is so pure. Were you trained to sing professionally? Do you still work with a vocal coach?
Bareilles: I wasn’t trained professionally. I did start taking lessons later in my career, which was helpful in building stamina and strength. I started singing very young as a kid. My older sister was very involved in theater; she was a singer. There was always music around the house, and I just fell into that. I’ve worked with John Deaver out of L.A. I’ve worked with Liz Caplan, and I’ve worked with Wendy Parr. Now I’m in a new environment and just seeing what teaching styles are like [in New York].
MC: What role does your record label play in your career? Is Epic Records very hands-on in working with you?
Bareilles: They are hands-on. I think one of the things they’ve done well on this record is they’ve left me to my own devices, and that was really important. Feeling a lot of pressure and like timelines are coming down on you or that you’re disappointing the business on some level is disruptive to the creative part of my brain. They were gentle and left me alone for the most part. The industry is going through so many changes and Epic is still in flux, and they made me feel like I was welcome.
MC: How has moving to New York City impacted your music?
Bareilles: I moved to New York in January of this year, and it is incredibly different. It’s different in terms of timbre and cadence and energetic vibrations, to sound really hippie dippie. It couldn’t be more opposite. It felt more chaotic, with so many people all on top of each other. There’s a web of lives and stories happening around you.
Los Angeles is much more solitary, at least for me. I had a little house there. Your car separates you from people. I think in L.A. I had a little more of a lethargic lifestyle. Some of that was good, cozy, comfortable. There was an incredible network of friends I miss dearly, but creatively I needed a jumpstart into something else, and New York gave me that leg up.
