On the latest episode of our podcast, we chatted with Sarah Barrios.
Listeners were first introduced to Sarah Barrios’s unfaded honesty on her 2020 debut EP, “Letters I Never Sent.” Although the four track project chronicled the end of a relationship, it opened a pathway for Barrios to reflect on her behavior and sexuality. Her latest EP, “Conversations With Myself” addresses questions that arose during this journey of self discovery.
We chatted with the alt-pop singer-songwriter about her new single “Happy,” what she learned in the writing process and more!
Excerpt from the podcast:
What was the inspiration for your song “Happy?”
I was in Sweden to write music for this project and it was kind of the first time that I didn’t feel anxious. I had a session the next day and I was sitting in my hotel room and I was just ‘okay, what do I want to write about tomorrow? Let’s just think about it?’ And usually I would be like I’m feeling sad, I’m feeling depressed, I’m feeling anxious. It was the first time I wasn’t feeling any of those things, it was just quiet. Instead of being like ‘oh my goodness, I’m having peace. This means that I’m happy. This is incredible.’ I was like ‘oh no, what am I going to write about? I’m so used to being damaged. Something bad has got to happen. There’s no way that this can be a thing.’ I was terrified that I was going to have nothing to write about. I had never worked with the people I was working with, so I was like ‘oh no, they are going to think I’m horrible. I’m not going to be able to write.’ I did the journal thing where I just sat there and wrote down everything I was feeling. Quite literally some of the lines in that first verse and the chorus were just things I wrote in the journal. I walked into the session and was like ‘I don’t know what to write about because I don’t feel anxious. I feel happy, but that naturally makes me anxious.’ They were like ‘cool, that makes sense. Let’s write about it.’ And thus the song came to life and I think since then it’s kind of given me a new perspective on what being happy means.