Good Grief

My dearest incurable humanist,

If you are here, it’s because like me you are grieving. I say “grieving” in present continuous because I believe one never stops grieving. It changes with time, and you learn to live with it, but once it arrives, it never leaves. Last Friday, Sara Bareilles released her seventh album and the first one since 2018. As a big Bareilles fan since Love Song, as soon as I learned it’s titled Good Grief, I pre-saved it on Spotify with unrealistically high expectations, which somehow she still exceeded.

In Good Grief Bareilles brilliantly encompasses the many versions of grief, from the loss of a loved one, to illness, to the IVF process, to the passage of time, with a voice and perspective that can only be achieved through heartrending mourning. Bareilles recently lost her best friend from college and manager, Chad Joseph and the actor Gavin Creel, who worked with her in Waitress and Into the Woods. From the outside grief might seem as an exaggeration but once you’ve lived through it you start to see all the layers in between.

Good Grief begins with Home, a song she wrote inspired by a conversation she heard between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper on the latter’s podcast about their own grief journey.

Relations are complex, no one truly knows the whole story except the people in it, hence, when one is gone there might be guilt, regrets, things left unsaid, that naturally transform into inconsolable grief. As I said before, this transforms, but even on a good day, or a good month, one single thing can trigger you back into that pain. Still Crying, which she composed with the National’s Aaron Dessner, portrays this endless loop.

Nervous Breakdown, co-written with Ingrid Michaelson, changes the mood into a jazzy cabaret style vibe, with humorous yet honest lyrics about what a panic attack feels like. It’s no secret that grief comes in a combo package with depression, anxiety and a toxic inner monologue. Bareilles grasps on something I believe is seldom talked about which is the accumulation of losses and mournings that sometimes we have to simultaneously go through, which add up.

I don’t know if grief is good, but it’s definitely a journey to learn; and there is no better soundtrack for it than this album. Bareilles believes grief must be shared and talked about to heal. I couldn’t agree more, and this is why we’re here, my dearest incurable humanist, to share our grief.

Until next week!