Sounds Like Me

August 31, 2015
In this balanced, honest collection of eight essays, each “anchored by song,” Grammy-nominated singer Bareilles shares the story of her life “so far,” beginning with her childhood in Eureka, Calif. When she was 12, her parents divorced but remained on good terms; Bareilles journaled her way through the experience, learning early on to use paper and pen as a way to process her innermost feelings. Teased by peers as a child, she was scarred by “fat trashing” but eventually found her way to a new school and friends, theater, and singing. After a broken teenage love affair, Bareilles wrote the popular song “Gravity” and began her journey to professional songwriting and singing, eventually signing a record contract and releasing five albums with and several hits. Readers will also learn the inspiration behind “Once upon Another Time,” “Love Song,” “Beautiful Girl,” “Red,” “Many the Miles,” “Brave” and “She Used to Be Mine” were birthed. Though Bareilles asserts that writing the book was the hardest thing she’s ever done, her prose has a natural rhythm, and the stories behind each song are organically woven throughout. Fans will be more enamored, as, like Bareilles’s music, this biography resonates with authentic and hard-won truths.

September 1, 2015
A chart-topping singer/songwriter exposes "the inner workings of my mind and my heart" through this intimate essay collection anchored with music and humor.A five-time Grammy Award nominee, Bareilles conveys her life and career in a series of heartfelt, confessional ruminations written with the passion with which she hones her musical craft, forming an entertaining and candid scrapbook chockablock with memories, lyrics, stories, and photographs. A tomboy growing up the youngest of three sisters in northern California's wooded Humboldt County, the author reveled in building haystacks and catching frogs until her parents' divorce when she was 12, a devastating event that only exacerbated the self-consciousness she felt as the schoolyard "fat kid...the label I was given by my peers." Getting in shape and becoming active in theater empowered her throughout adolescence and shaped her onstage presence. The chapters are each named for a song in her repertoire: "Gravity" describes a formative and exquisitely crushing encounter with heartbreak, while "Love Song" chronicles the author's years as a flourishing artist on the singer/songwriter circuit in Los Angeles (she signed her first record deal in 2005). A unique epistolary section called "Beautiful Girl" includes letters to her former selves to exorcise the demons of the past. Mostly sidestepping hackneyed platitudes for true sentiment, the singer remains genuine whether discussing what she learned while writing on a deadline, the development of her recent theatrical adaptation of "Waitress," or the vulnerability of exposing her life "without the metaphor and mask of music or my singing voice." Bareilles also demonstrates a sense of humor, much like fellow musician Ben Folds, who admits, in his playful introduction, to initially repurposing one of her "Little Voice" promotional CDs to counterbalance an uneven leg on his entertainment center. A breezy, upbeat, and honest reflection of this multitalented artist.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 1, 2015

The five-time Grammy Award-nominated American singer-songwriter and musician talks about her craft in that same revelatory style that has made her a big name since her 2007 hit, "Love Song."

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.