I loved to sing as a kid and started to get more seriously interested in music when I was around 12 and got my ïrst guitar. I learned to sing and play a lot of my favorite songs and started busking/playing bar gigs. After a few years of that, I became more interested in writing songs and realized how much I loved doing that, which is when I knew I wanted to make music forever !
Bareilles: Yeah, I think the first song that comes to mind is a song called "Gravity." That's one of the first songs that I ever wrote that has, in some ways, stood the test of time. I think because of exactly what you're talking about is that it was so true. It was such a painful part of my life and I was going through, tremendous heartbreak and hardship for the first time. It's that tender time when your heart is broken for the very first time and you feel like there's no other side of that experience, you just can't fathom ever feeling better. And, I think it's really interesting, what has happened with these artists is that they all kind of came up against their own internal roadblocks and having to get really vulnerable with their songwriting and with us. And that's why I love that the title of the show is Breakthrough because it's all about meeting your own limits and then pushing beyond. And I think that's the thing that both Kelly and I offer with the amount of experience we have. We can reflect on our own journeys and realize that every time we hit one of those roadblocks, the answer was go deeper, go more truthful, share more of yourself. It's never the dog and pony show, that's never the answer. The answer is always go get closer to yourself and you will get closer to your audience. And so that's been an interesting thing to keep kind of reaffirming in the artists we've been working with. And it's been so fun to revisit that in ourselves.
Bareilles: Completely, to be honest, I was skeptical about this format going into it. I was excited by it, but I was like, "How is this going to work?" Because we're such a visual culture. And then the word I keep using to describe this experience is that it feels so intimate. It's so intimate to go on this journey with these artists and not have all of that feedback and information and all of the biases and things that come with attaching your visual experience of the world to a message, a song, a storyteller, the artist, the song, the voice itself. I was realizing on my way in today, I'm like, I have pictures of who I think these people are in my head and I literally don't know if they match. It's going to be so interesting to really get to see them for the first time.
Bareilles: Yes, totally. I think that the main thing that it inspires is that thing I was talking about, wanting to go deeper and get closer to myself and really mine what is my life experience right now. I'm at a particular place in my life. I just moved, I have a Tony nomination for the first time. There's a lot of things that are feeling very brand new to me. And I'm getting married. I have a dog, even all these different kinds of love that are showing up in my life, the way I feel about the world and the political climate and all of the struggles that are happening globally. There's a lot to say about any one person's perspective right now. And I have been so impressed with the artist's ability to encapsulate that into song. One thing that struck me is that it really feels like a magic trick when they get a prompt. They don't know what the prompt is going to be. Like if we want to talk about your writing a lullaby, what is the message you would say to your younger self? And then they have to go and do the homework and really build that relationship and build that story out. And it makes me think about what would I say to my younger self, I haven't written that song. So in a way you can't help but play along a little bit. I think this show is going to be really interesting artistic fodder for other songwriters out there who want to challenge themselves and almost like play along in a way.
Bareilles: I brought up the lullaby one because I'm interested in emotional architecture. I like getting into what is the most vulnerable, what's the most personal we can get. So there was a lot of tenderness around that prompt and some things that were surprising too. So I think that prompt for me was one of my favorites just because I felt like it was very revealing. And it really brought us closer to the artists. So that was one of my favorites. But there were some really good ones. There's also a lot of fun in some of the prompts are about interpret this decade of songs or interpret this artist and there's some really cool things about that too.
MILLSAP:
Yeah, and that's how I get it out, you know? I'm, I make a nice little song rather than getting angry. Maybe. Um, yeah, it definitely provides a backdrop for me. People are often interested. Like, "Where are you from?" "Oklahoma." They're like, "Oh, what?"