Sabrina Song

Sabrina Song is a singer songwriter based in Brooklyn. She has been releasing music on Spotify since 2018. She currently has three EPs out; When It All Comes Crashing Down, How's It Going To End?, and Undone, among other singles. Song has also performed on two of NPR's tiny desk concerts. She is currently doing a residency at Sofar(https://www.sofarsounds.com/), a collection of performing venues around the country, as well as a few in Canada and the UK. For more information her website is linked above, as well as her spotify and one of her tiny desk concerts.  

My Favorite Songs:

Interview Transcript(not directly quoted)

Q: Can you briefly introduce yourself and your inspirations? 

A: I'm Sabrina Song. I'm an artist, songwriter and producer based in Brooklyn. I make music as a solo project and I write and produce for other artists as well. I'm very inspired by a lot of classic and folk singer songwriters like Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Billy Joel, and more modern indie artists like Mitski and Ryan Beattie and people like that. I’m really inspired by books and movies as well; film and the intersection of music and film. 

Q: How long have you been writing and do you remember starting to write?  

A: I feel like I haven't been writing as long as some other artists who have been in bands since they were in middle school and things like that. I grew up super involved in music and theater. I played violin, piano and sang in a choir growing up. I would try to write songs here and there, but I feel like I didn't really start songwriting until the end of high school. My music theory teacher at the time encouraged me to keep a journal. He thought I should try to actually write and finish songs. The class also, for some reason, included learning how to use and record with Logic. So that was the first time I ever really, fully wrote and recorded songs and that's what I used to apply to college. I'd say during college was a super intensive writing period for me where I was writing frequently for the first time as opposed to a lot of the other kids who had been writing forever. Now I would say from the middle of college on is when I've been pursuing music in full force. 

Q: Was it intimidating, feeling like you didn’t have as much experience as your peers? 

A: Oh my God. I thought I got in by accident. I felt like it was a mistake. I felt like such an imposter. Now looking back, from their perspective, I'm sure they were looking for potential. It wasn't about who has the most experience or the things that I felt like I was lacking at the time. It ended up being a really intense period, partly just because I felt so inexperienced, but also because I felt so intensely inspired by everyone else. It was a very rapid period of knowledge and development and inspiration just because I'd never been around people who were not only making music, but doing it so maturely. It was pretty amazing. I think my peers and friends that are also artists, are some of my biggest sources of inspiration and ingenuity.

Q: Do you remember your first opportunities to share your own work and perform? What were they? What was that like?

A: I shared some of that stuff that I wrote in high school in class. I think I even put some of it on Spotify at the time, but it felt like I wasn't really trying to actually have people listen to it. I was embarrassed about it. I felt like people would not think it was cool. It was all so new. The first songs I fully finished or recorded, I put on SoundCloud or wherever. Then, once I moved to the city, everyone was playing gigs at local venues in addition to school performances. That was terrifying. I had never done that and really just started doing it because it seemed like what I needed to do. Now I'm really thankful that I didn't wait until I felt like it was good enough to share because I don't know if I ever would have felt like it was good enough. I'm always trying to improve. It gave me a good, really painful period of just doing it and getting it out of my system to get the firsts out of the way. I'll always think I have further to go, but if I just started performing in the last two years or sharing my work because it felt better or more complete, I wouldn't have learned as much as I have. 

Q: How did you start doing Sofars? 

A: When I got to do my first one I was so excited and throughout my whole time doing them I’ve become really grateful for the relationship that I have with them. They genuinely try to create cool new opportunities for artists. I just applied on their portal and started doing them. They're a really great way to get in front of new people and also practice performing in a setting that's more low energy. You're not at a crowded bar for example. It's a fresh audience that you can try things out with. I also got to do a residency in London for a month where I did a bunch of Sofars in London which was amazing. During COVID they were doing virtual performances that paid really well. I always feel like they're really searching for ways to highlight the artist.

Q: What other performances do you do? Do you prefer doing Sofars as opposed to other performances? 

A: I think Sofars have their own unique value. It's rare that you're performing in front of an audience where probably no one knows who you are. People coming to Sofars are coming to see three surprise artists. It’s a little intimidating because you have to win them over in a way, but they also want to have a good night so it's a very welcoming crowd. Sofars fall in the bucket of acoustic shows that I do alone or with one other person, where you're playing a ballad version of the songs. Most of the other shows I do are with a full band, which could be me with like two to three other people. Other shows are a more full representation of the music, but it's really nice to get to do the stripped performances too. It's a totally different setting. I probably do pretty equal 50 50 for both just because of how things come about. 

Q: Do you think performing gets easier the more you do it? 

A: I used to be so nervous and I definitely still get nervous, but I think the way the nerves used to manifest was that I felt unprepared and it didn't feel like the best representation of the music or of me. It wasn't really nerves, it was dread. I had performed in front of audiences for all different purposes throughout my childhood and high school as just the performer, not the writer, and I never used to get nervous. So I think, looking back, I wasn't nervous, I just wasn't fully prepared or felt like I didn’t have control over the circumstances of the shows. I didn't know how to direct the band to play the way I wanted. I didn't feel like I was setting myself up for success. Whereas now when I feel nervous, I know it's because I feel unprepared. Knowing you rehearsed enough and knowing that you feel confident in what you're doing is the best way to combat nerves. So if I do feel super nervous now, I know I didn't practice enough or something. But that is pretty rare unless there is a last minute performance.

Q: What is your writing process? Do you start with the melody or the lyrics? Is one or the other more important to you as a songwriter? 

A: When I first started writing I had never produced. Initially it was just me playing the piano and writing. I would be sitting at the piano, playing chords, seeing what I came up with, in a super traditional way. Then as I went through college, I learned and practiced a lot of producing in Logic and then Ableton. Producing opened up a lot of other ways to start a song because I could make the instrumental first and try to write over it. I could also use my background vocals to make up the track. Now the most common way I'll start a song is usually with lyrics first. I don't necessarily think that lyrics are more important in music, but I think I'm a very lyric centric person. I feel like I need to know the story of the song before I can flesh it out, which is not true for every artist. 

Q: Do you think a lot about production when you’re writing or is it something that comes later? 

A: Sometimes I'm writing and I hear the whole song in my head and that's what used to be so frustrating earlier on. I knew how I wanted the songs to sound, but I had no idea how to do that. I heard the song but I didn’t know how to actually make the track. Whereas now, if I’m in a place where I'm writing and I can make the track at the same time, I can already hear the peaks and valleys, and how the drums will sound. As I've continued to produce, that part of my brain has grown as well, where I can hear the whole thing unfurling in front of me as I'm writing. There are also some times where I'm writing with just piano or guitar. There's been a few times recently where I wrote something as a piano ballad and then the more I sat with it I realized it was supposed to be way more fleshed out and have drums and live bass and things like that. I've been trying to let myself experiment a little more and not lock myself into one sound or one thing. Since I'm producing my stuff I'm able to achieve the vision, so I'm more prone to thinking about production as I'm writing. Whereas sometimes when I'm writing for other people's projects and maybe I'm not going to be the producer on that, I'm able to detach from production a little more and just focus on the song alone. 

Q: How do you keep your music different and new? 

A: I'm always afraid that I'm not going to be doing something new, but then by the nature of me growing as a person and time passing, it ends up evolving and changing. There are some times where I'll start a song and think I'm saying the same thing I said in another song, but I try not to think that. One of my songwriting teachers during college gave the really good advice of; if you're judging the song while you're writing, then you're not even letting it become a song yet. I think something I've tried to do is, if I think an idea is strong, even if I’m scared it’s boring or too similar to something else, I finish it first because maybe it'll become something different and I wasn't gonna let it become that out of fear of it not being special enough. Naturally I'll go through bursts of writing a lot and then I’ll take a few months where I'm only writing here and there. Then, every time I return to it I feel like I have something different, that I’m coming at something from a different angle or trying to write on a new instrument. I also think writing prompts can be really helpful. Me and my friends, for fun, did this songwriting circle a year or two ago where every week we would give each other prompts that were super weird. For example, I had to use certain words or write inspired by a book or a movie or write in the style of a certain person. That can give you a little more direction when you feel like you're stuck or you aren't feeling creatively inspired. There's been a bunch of different ways to combat the feeling that your music isn't changing, but most of the time I feel like it's more of a fear than like something that's actually going to happen.

Q: Is there a specific subject you find yourself writing a lot about? Do you write more about your own life or more about fiction? 

A: It’s funny because in my first few years of writing, most of the songs I've were, almost exclusively, about self doubt and insecurity and loneliness, among other things I was feeling so strongly. I used to feel that I was writing songs about only that, but that's all I was feeling. The more I grew as a person and as a writer, I was able to explore more mature and more complex feelings than I could before. I was developing as a writer and also had more to say as a person. I felt more confident in what I had to say. Now I think the song and the subject matter is expanded. I've been writing, the last few years, about really complex relationship dynamics, not necessarily love songs or breakup songs, but complex things of love or relationships with friends or parents or womanhood or other things that I don't think I ever thought I would have the confidence to try writing about. I haven't released a lot of those songs, but the prompts have helped me write about a lot of things that are not pulled from my own life. I think most of the stuff that I feel the strongest about has all been from my real life experiences. A lot of my friends, however, are able to pull things from thin air and make them feel just as authentic. 

Q: How does your writing process change when you are writing for someone else as opposed to writing for yourself? Do you always know who your songs will be for when you start writing? 

A: For me personally, it's completely different. I write alone for myself, but I do sessions super often where I'm just acting as a writer and producer with my writing partner. In these sessions we're with an artist and we're going into the session knowing we're writing for the artist. That writing process is just like my solo one. However when I'm writing in a room and we know it's gonna be for someone else, it's a lot more like a puzzle. We talk to them for a while and ask what they’re feeling and what they want to write about. We also ask if they have any ideas they’ve already started that they want to work on. Once we get something started, I think about what the best way to express that would be. What's the most interesting melody? And then I'm also trying to write in their voice. Do they like to say things super blunt? Spunky? Or are they more emotional? Do they use a lot of imagery? It feels like a kind of totally different part of my brain. I want to make the artist happy and write the strongest song possible. It’s been really fun since I write alone for me. I get the most collaboration from writing with other people for other people. 

Q: Can you tell the story of your song ‘Just To Know You’? 

A: ‘To Know You’ is a song where I was driving or walking or something and I just put on a voice memo and just left it while I was singing out loud. It’s a love song, but if the proportions were like, I love you so much that even if it were the end of the world stakes, I'm happy that I get to spend these five more minutes with you. I wrote the beginning first; the ‘when it all comes crashing down’ part. That lyric was pretty inspired by Titanic and Orpheus and Eurydice and other mythical stories or dramatic, rom com movies where it actually is the end of the world. This was a different subject matter for me because I’m usually pretty literal. But this was more metaphorical. The idea was that even if all of these things are happening or if they actually were to happen, I'm just happy to know you and be able to love you. All the things I'm saying in that song are mostly hypotheticals. So that song was more of explaining the feeling of the intensity of the love with one big metaphor of the end of the world. 

Q: When you covered ‘Linger’, how did you make the song your own? 

A: I'm hard on myself when it comes to covers. If I'm singing another person's song, what am I adding to it? Why would someone want to hear me? Obviously sometimes you can just sing a cover because you love the song, and I do that all the time, but I thought if I was going to release a cover I wanted it to be something I either felt fit in my discography as if I wrote it, or I wanted to pick a song I love and do something really different with it so that it stands apart from the original. I was not sure what I wanted to do for a cover when the opportunity was presented to me, but I've always loved ‘Linger’, it’s one of my favorite songs of all time. It is so wistful and like freeing and light, but the lyrics are terribly sad. I've also learned over the years what you can do to make a cover interesting. You can reharmonize it for example. I thought, ‘why don't I sit at the piano and try to play a new chord progression?’ At least for part of it, so that the song would feel even more moody. I wanted to play into the somberness of the song. Then, I still wanted it to get big and cathartic at the end. I started messing around just on piano. From there, I produced it out. It was a really fun challenge production wise. 

Q: What is your weekly life like in terms of music? 

A: I have a day job. I've worked many different jobs since after school, including a period where I only freelanced doing music. I've worked different part time jobs. I've worked multiple part time jobs. What I've found is that, until I'm able to do music full time, I want to have the income to be able to do the shows I want to do and do the shoots. A lot of services in music can be expensive. So right now I’m working full time outside of music and then two to three times a week I’m doing sessions with other artists for their projects. Those are about three to five hours usually. In the meantime, I'm working on social content for my pages to promote songs, or I’m planning or rehearsing for shows. There's so much paperwork and things that you have to send people. For example, I have to advance the shows and send them my stage plot. If you're uploading a song for release, you need to make a press release. You need to pick out the date and plan when you're going to start teasing it. I'm actually in a period of that right now. A lot of my time, if I'm not actually making music, is the administrative part of music because I don't have a label. I do have a manager and a great distributor though.

Q: What is your favorite part about your job? 

A: My favorite part is when I'm actually working on the music and get lost in working on it. The most important part of all of it is the song and the joy of finishing a song that you're really excited about. That is the most rewarding part of all of it. I just realized, earlier, especially when I felt like I didn't know what I was doing and was worse than everyone, is the only thing that you really have control over is the music and making it the best it can be. Knowing that's going to exist forever is super cool and I'm always thinking about the longevity of the music and the longevity of my career. Also, a lot of the little things that I thought would have brought me joy, we're pretty fleeting. So actually getting to work on the music itself and putting time into it and everything is so gratifying and is truly the part that is the most fulfilling.