Sara Bareilles’ new album, “Good Grief,” confronts themes of loss and death, prompted by the death of her longtime best friend. Despite the heavy subject matter, the album balances mourning with celebration and features uplifting musical arrangements.
Bareilles was motivated to explore these themes after the death of Chad Joseph, her college bestie and former tour manager. The album’s first third focuses on songs directly tied to his death, but surprisingly includes some of the album’s most joyful-sounding material. The opening track, “Home,” paraphrases a conversation between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper about grief, noting how it’s often emotionally suppressed: “I was taught to bury with the dead / The presence of my grief / I see it now, but didn’t then / That silence is a thief / It made strangers out of friends / Robbed me of saving graces offered in unlikely places.”
The second track, “Just Kids,” directly addresses her experiences with Joseph, acknowledging the details of his life and death with a mix of sadness and celebration— “You never got to get married and I hate where you’re buried” — and describing performing the song as a public voicemail. She states, “Out on the street / Singing in the phone / They’re looking at me / There was a time / That I might have cared / But this one’s for my best friend so let ’em stare.”
“Still Crying,” co-produced by Aaron Dessner, depicts a scene hovering over a deathbed with the lyrics, “Pray, pray to someone I used to know / I request a rescue / Tell Him that he moves too slow.” However, the song is arranged as a waltz-tempo tune, described as emotionally exhausting but “weirdly romantic,” resembling an old-fashioned doo-wop song with tearlessness as the ultimate goal.
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