At Home with Sara Bareilles: The Playlist

Sara Bareilles is taking the time to sit back and reflect as she adjusts to this new normal while she’s social distancing. “I’m looking at all those parts of myself and how we can show up with kindness and compassion, and not have to perform for the world all the time,” Bareilles tells Apple Music. “It's part of the reason I've been really quiet during this pandemic, because I am taking it in, and what's authentic to me is not performative right now. It's just watching.” Meditation has been an integral part of the pop singer-songwriter and actor's routine, as has taking care of her mental health. “I'm someone who really struggles with anxiety, and I've had a tough go of it during this pandemic. It came back big, big, big time.” In the meantime, Bareilles has kept busy writing original music for the upcoming TV series Little Voice (playing exclusively on Apple TV+), which she also co-executive produces. On this exclusive Apple Music playlist curated by Bareilles herself, she shares an eclectic mix of tracks that are keeping her centred, featuring artists like Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, D’Angelo and Charlie Rich, whom she first learned about from record producer T Bone Burnett while they were working on her 2019 album Amidst the Chaos. “He’s the person who shared this record with me, and realising that this was just the demo of the song—that it was just a throwaway one-take recording—it just broken my heart open,” she says of the country crooner’s ballad “Feel Like Going Home”. “The first time I heard it, I was like, ‘Play it again. Start again.’”