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  This book is for three blazing and fierce young fires, Abby, Megan, and Melody. May you be brave and wild and search for your sound in this beautiful world, knowing you are already perfect, and endlessly loved.

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by Ben Folds

  An Introduction

  Once Upon Another Time

  Gravity

  Love Song

  Beautiful Girl

  Red

  Many the Miles

  Brave

  She Used to Be Mine

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About Sara Bareilles

  Photo Credits

  FOREWORD

  BY BEN FOLDS

  * * *

  MY INTRODUCTION TO SARA was seeing her face on the free promotional CD of her major label debut Little Voice before using it to prop up an uneven leg of my entertainment center in the corner of my living room. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even take it out of the clear wrapper, as I already had an opener for my next tour. I could hear the crunch of the plastic case as the shelf settled into a satisfactory approximation of level. I was glad I got that in the mail! A few months later, when I heard Love Song in a shoe store, I was ashamed. I walked across the mall parking lot to Best Buy to buy a copy sans hole in singer’s face. It deserved to be purchased and played to death, and so it was.

  Years later, Sara Bareilles is one of my favorite humans in the world, and in my opinion, one of the finest singers and pop music artists of our time. I can tell you firsthand that whether it’s having a laugh stageside before a performance, a minor breakdown at a coffee shop during recording sessions, or attempting to escape the Sony Studios parking lot to avoid more reality TV hair extensions, Sara is the same Sara who you hear on your iPod, on the radio, or while buying shoes. She will soon be keeping you company for the next two hundred pages in that same brilliant voice that has won her a mainstream audience that follows her every word with the zeal of a small cult. For me, this book, like her songs, is like having a conversation with the lady herself, minus my constant interruptions. In this case, that bit is nicely contained in this single-page foreword that you can skip if you like, that in fact could have been boiled down to this:

  Dear Sara,

  Please forgive me for the hole I put in your face and for allowing TV producers to dress you in twenty-inch high-heeled stilettos. You are a true friend, a brilliant musical theater composer, and now a damn book author. You constantly uphold my faith in people, music, and still, after all these years, the corner of my entertainment center.

  You are beautiful.

  Ben

  AN INTRODUCTION

  * * *

  I HAVE BEEN WRITING this book for over two years.

  Over two years for eight essays.

  Over two years for eight essays about myself, whom I spend a great deal of time with, and know a lot about. If you’re not great with subtext, I’ll help you out:

  Writing this book was difficult.

  I said yes to this project back in 2013, because I loved the idea of writing a book. That’s like buying white jeans because you like the idea of looking good in them. I think we all know where this is headed. It was nice at first. I smugly skated around on the phrase, “I’m working on a book right now. . . .” and people gave me raised eyebrows and looks of wonderment and I felt like sparkly peppermint candy for a few months. Then the edges faded and shit got real. Instead of a cabin in the woods with a typewriter and a basset hound, I had a laptop, a winter in New York, a deadline, and anxiety.

  I kicked and screamed and wrestled and lost. I traveled and ignored and distracted and apologized. I watched it like a rattlesnake out of the corner of my eye and hoped it would just slither away. When it didn’t, I spent countless hours in coffee shops, restaurants, and at my kitchen table, writing to meet a “hard” deadline that came and went well over a year ago. I considered giving back the money I got from the publisher. I considered putting this off for another few years until I became smart enough or wise enough or funny enough to know how to do this. Then, at the encouragement of my managers, I decided to take a long break from it.

  I wrote a musical.

  It was easier to write a musical than this set of eight essays.

  After about a year and a half of fighting it, I finally surrendered. I took a break from flogging myself with the question, “What business do I have writing a book?” and decided to do it anyway. That question didn’t have an answer, and the truth is that nobody out there in the world needs this book. Nobody but me. I needed it.

  It taught me to love something difficult.

  Writing this book was hard. In fact, I would say it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But the epiphany was recognizing that I could maybe still love this thing not only in spite of it being challenging, but because of it. It was as I sat with that truth that I understood why I fought this so hard. It feels infinitely more vulnerable to speak about my life without the metaphor and mask of music or my singing voice. I had to take a look at who I am without those things. These essays are a much more direct line to the inner workings of my mind and my heart, and that’s an exposed place to find yourself and your little machine.

  I leaned on the familiar foundation of my own music to find my way into this new kind of writing, and eventually the book evolved into a collection of stories, each anchored by a song. It felt right to weave my music into this writing in some way, and it helped the essays start flowing like the tiny belabored trickle they were intended to be. I tried to be candid. I tried to be honest. I tried to remember things in an unbiased way. I tried to be at least a little funny. I tried not to gossip. I tried to be myself, as wholeheartedly as possible. I started to enjoy it, and that was astonishing. I neared the finish line bruised but happy, all the while dodging the main question anyone would ask. . . .

  Deciding what to call this book almost drove me crazy. In a very formal meeting surrounded by a team of literary professionals, my publisher asked me casually, “So have you thought at all about a title?” He smiled. I fake-smiled. He had no idea how much time I had already spent wildly scraping my insides for this oh-so-elusive set of words. Hours and days and weeks making lists of possible titles, some of which still speak beautifully to the emotional state I was in along the way. . . .

  Wait, So I’m in Charge?

  Trying Too Hard

  Being a Person Is Really Hard

  I’m Not Going to Write You a Book

  I Don’t Feel Like Being Funny

  Utterly Uncool

  Whatever It Is, It’s Not What You’re Thinking

  I spared him my knee-jerk reaction of leaping across the table and fighting him like a feral cat, and instead told him I was “working on it.”

  I was on my eighth and final essay, sitting at my kitchen table looking out my window at the never-ending winter of New York, and thinking for the millionth time about what I wanted to call the book. I thought about the approach I was taking with the essays. About how the essays felt like they reflected my life on a larger scale. I wanted them to be honest. I wanted them to be authentic. I wanted to make sure that when I read them back, they sounded like me (*cue light bulb).

  So here we are.

  This book is some of my story and some of my songs.

  It was a labor of avoidance, then hate, then love, and I’m glad I staye
d around long enough to witness the transformation.

  I wrote it for you.

  It sounds like me.

  ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME

  * * *

  AS A CHILD I was a tomboy, and felt most myself with my clothes and my hands dirty, running through the woods with my two dogs by my side, following the clues of a self-laid treasure hunt, or clip-clopping along on my make-believe pony through a soft bed of pine needles. Our house was on five acres of redwood forest, and I spent the vast majority of my kid days out in what felt like cavernous wilderness. I wrote one of my first songs in my backyard, but realize now that it’s maybe more creepy than cute to sing a song called My Special Place.

  My dad’s house in Eureka

  My cousin Christy and I at my uncle’s house (just up the hill from my house)

  My uncle and his family lived next door to us, separated by an acre of field and forest. We were lucky to be close to our extended family, and the organized chaos of our combined houses is the backdrop for some of my best memories. Their house mirrored our own home down the hill: a sizable but modest ranch-style redwood house, tucked under the trees, where most things are a little bit broken but that’s okay. There were always tons of people, some colorfully exaggerated stories being told around a table, plenty to eat, and a roaring fire in the fireplace.

  I have fifteen first cousins on my dad’s side, seven of whom grew up alongside my sisters and me. We all loved playing together, and this meant that any family gathering brought with it a barrage of wrestling matches and races and yelling and “Where is your sister!?” and hide-and-seek and card games and skits. There was crying and laughing and everything in between. Five of my cousins are adopted and, as a multiracial family, we kids looked like a United Colors of Benetton ad, but instead of Benetton our family was advertising Ross Dress for Less and Goodwill. It was awesome.

  I was closest to my cousin Christy, who is two years older than me. She stood almost a foot taller than me, with caramel skin and a bright, toothy smile. Many of my most idyllic childhood moments involved her.

  Summers were my favorite, of course. I couldn’t wait for that succession of days that felt absolutely endless when we could gorge ourselves on our own imaginations. Once, we built an enormous haystack out of the cut grasses in the field and spent the afternoon burrowing a hole from one side to the other, leaving a tunnel high enough to sit cross-legged in. At the time, I figured we would probably move some stuff in and live out the rest of the summer there, but then we got hungry and Full House was on. We climbed woodpiles where I caught a splinter between my butt cheeks and had to lie on my stomach until my mom came to help. We roamed the creek and caught frogs and made them tiny furniture that they hardly ever used or appreciated. Those same kinds of frogs serenaded us on the many nights we slept outside on Christy’s back deck in sleeping bags, under the canopy of thick branches. Overnight, the tree limbs would become saturated with the coastal fog’s moisture, and by morning, we’d be soaked with dew. We “swam” in swampy, muddy holes that had been dug for planting trees, and made a game of trying to get our legs (in our fathers’ rubber boots) stuck in the mud. Our favorite spot to end up was “The Tree,” a network of knotty, gnarled branches that dangled over a tiny creek, complete with a rope swing. We’d lie back and talk endlessly about things I can’t remember even a little now.

  When we both got horses around the same time, my little-girl brain almost exploded.

  Too.

  Much.

  Joy.

  To.

  Compute.

  Christy was the first to get her horse, when she was around fifteen. Lady was a tall, lean chestnut mare, and I ached with envy. I pestered and whined until my dad eventually caved in and we got Shiloh, a little Welsh pony and Arabian mix who I loved even more than I loved Lady. Shiloh was the same color as redwood tree bark, with a regal face and a stout little body. And even at his relatively ripe old age of sixteen, he had way more energy than I could handle. He was a retired barrel-racing horse and, among many things, taught me that I hate barrel racing.

  The sweet family that sold us Shiloh was involved in the local rodeos. They were true horse people: they owned enormous trucks with extra wheels, went trail riding on weekends, and wore cowboy hats and big belt buckles unironically. They were like freaking superheroes. They were also very encouraging of my decision to enter the barrel-racing event at an upcoming rodeo, even though I had never even tried it before. Shiloh was an old pro, and how hard could it be?

  For those of you unfamiliar with barrel racing: a buzzer rings and a rider hangs on for dear life as a horse shoots off like a bat out of hell toward some big empty oil barrels placed strategically at one end of an arena and runs around them as fast as he can and then races back to the other end of the arena completely of his own free will while the rider tries not to fall off or cry because she thinks she broke her vagina and thank God the horse finally stopped and is that my pee? It’s really fun.

  I only participated in that one rodeo.

  I was the baby of my family, with two older sisters and six and nine years separating us. Because of our age difference, we didn’t have much in common, and I hated that more than anything. In grade school, I was dying to hang out with my sisters and their friends. I wanted everybody to play with My Little Pony castles and make fart jokes with me, but they only wanted to wear pastel colors and watch The Breakfast Club. It was devastating. My two sisters shared clothes and friends and secrets with each other, and I longed to be a part of that connection, but I was still just too young. (To all the frustrated little siblings out there: hold tight. This all changes when you get older.)

  My oldest sister, Stacey, kind and sensitive, always had super-cute boyfriends and was involved with school and sports, but I mostly vividly remember her interest in music, especially musical theater. Indulging my craving to be included in anything performance related, she taught me a dance routine to Janet Jackson’s Nasty Boys (which is a questionable choice now that I think about it, Stace). I gleefully danced alongside her in front of the big picture window we used as a mirror. She is a terrifically talented singer and actress, and did all kinds of performances all through high school and college. This is a huge part of why I ever imagined myself being onstage in the first place. Sometimes it’s easier to imagine yourself somewhere somebody’s already been. She was my musical idol and encouraged me by singing with me. She was also my very first cowriter. We wrote a song together when I was probably five or six, called I Love a Parade.

  The lyrics were:

  I love a parade.

  And I won’t be afraid.

  (After that we just sang “oooooooh.”)

  Our middle sister, Jenny, has a kind of magnetism within our family, and it’s not an uncommon occurrence that over a beer she has somehow heard your deepest, darkest secrets without even asking. She is blessed with an innate ability to make people feel seen, heard, and safe, meanwhile keeping her own vulnerability tucked just beneath the surface of her own skin. She shares it with only a very select and privileged few. An expertly animated storyteller, she is funny as hell, as well as a very gifted actress. I remember watching her in a play called A Bad Year for Tomatoes when she was in high school, where she donned a gray wig and oversize glasses. I almost peed my pants watching her race around the stage in a muumuu, acting outrageous and talking with a lisp. She always knew how to get a laugh. And, according to my Grandma, “She’s very good at basketball.”

  In spite of our age difference, they were endlessly sweet to me, and I have wonderful memories of being with my sisters. My favorite ones, though, are connected to music. We didn’t grow up listening to a lot of music all together. Given the sheer number of people shuffling through the house at any given time, there was usually so much commotion from various sports and activities and theater events that music became an afterthought. Christmas, however, was an exception. The whole season was filled with music, be it church hymns or the Jackson 5 Christmas album
. I loved it. I always looked forward to Michael’s tiny, perfect voice zipping up and down from the rafters singing I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus as the entire family sifted through the hundreds of delicate ornaments tucked away in shoe boxes and decided how to ration them among the tree branches. Everyone sang along, and I felt like we were finally becoming more like the Von Trapps, just like I had been praying for.

  The absolute best, best, best times for me were singing and performing little skits with Jenny and Stacey on the hearth of our fireplace in front of Mom and Dad and our extended family. We would alternate between impromptu choreography, three-part harmony on Amazing Grace, Sweeney Sisters medleys, and Sonny and Cher impersonations. I would laugh until my sides hurt and I didn’t really care what we were doing just so long as I got to do it with them. That statement holds true for me today.

  My dad juggled an insurance-adjusting business with part-time logging and was always racing around, busy with something. To this day, he loves working outside more than anything, and he taught me how to use a wood splitter, how to drive a Caterpillar, and what a truly happy man is. My mom was our devoted community organizer. In addition to part-time work, she helped run every school function and fund-raiser that came her way when we were young and, as we got older, hosted every birthday and every cast party for her friends in our community theater. She taught me the genius of the Golden Girls, how to make berry pie, the importance of thank-you notes, and the art of making someone else feel special. My parents were consummate hosts, and our home was the seat of endless parties and holiday gatherings filled with their friends, our enormous extended family, and anyone who might otherwise be eating Thanksgiving dinner alone. My uncle’s house up the hill operated in the same way, and collectively they all taught us generosity, kindness, and inclusion, and that you always share what you have, even when it’s not much. My parents managed to construct a little safe haven for my sisters and me to build ourselves within, which seems almost impossible to me when I think about how quickly childhood seems to disappear these days. They have taught me about the truest kind of love: the kind that is steadfast and strong, even when it changes shape.