Singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, who’s currently starring in the Broadway musical Waitress, said that her upcoming album will “go deeper” than her usual ballads and reflect our current political climate.
“As a songwriter and an artist right now, in the way the political climate feels and our sort of cultural evolution, it feels important to talk about deeper subject matters,” Bareilles said on BuzzFeed News’ Twitter morning show AM to DM.
She recorded the album in Los Angeles and said that it deals with “big themes” and represents “what the last couple of years have felt like being in the world.”
“In the last five years of my life, I’ve really sort of deepened my relationship to my own activism and advocacy, wanting to talk about bigger things than just my own heartbreak,” Bareilles said.
While Bareilles didn’t say exactly when her new album will be released, she said that fans can expect the new music to drop early this year.
Famous for her hit songs like “Love Song,” “Brave,” and “King of Anything,” Bareilles also wrote the original score, complete with music and lyrics, for Waitress which debuted on Broadway in 2015.
The show, originally starring Jessie Mueller as lead character Jenna Hunterson, was helmed by the first all-woman creative team on Broadway.
Bareilles said this wasn’t intentional and that the team was “well into the life of the show” by the time they even realized this fact.
“We’re just people who were at the top of our fields who got brought together and we were making this thing,” she said.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with doing something that’s all women, for women, by women,” she added. “I’m clearly a feminist and believe in that movement very deeply.”
“But what my hope for our movement is that we get to the point where it’s really not about gender at all. It’s just about people who are beautiful artists in whatever way, shape, or form they take.”