Born and raised in a small town, SARA always knew that this wasn’t the life cut out for her. Like most kids, her childhood was spent dreaming about becoming a singer. She ran away to the big cities like New York City and London – and is now living her dream, telling her story in her debut single ‘Runaway’. We’ve had the pleasure of doing Sara’s first interview ever, talking about her inspiring journey, wanting to provide a movie soundtrack to people’s lives and how she has been noticed and praised by Harry Styles and Niall Horan.
“Every song I write is personal to an extent, some more than others”, she says. “But I feel like a lot of topics that I write about are almost hidden secrets in my mind.” SARA has written countless songs over the years, going from folk ballads in the early days to now pop-rock and indie, drawing inspiration from the UK music scene. No matter the genre, SARA always has the same ritual before starting a writing session: The singer goes into nature to sit and do a bit of self-reflecting. Said self-reflecting made her take a few years to start working with producers, as she expressed “I wanted to make sure that I’m ready to start releasing music. For this era that I’m now in there’s quite a few songs that are finished and ready to go, but from years back when I was still writing mostly folk ballads there are a lot of songs that I’m just sitting on,” waiting for the right time in the future to be released.
On the way to releasing her debut single, SARA had to tackle some obstacles. Growing up in a small town in Germany, where gossip culture is a big thing, releasing music in English for a big audience, started off as a dream. A dream, that many belittled her for and made fun of. “I always had this dream of making music and spreading a message, everyone dreams of that as a child but a lot of people when they enter their teenage years and especially their adult years, they lose their dreams. Because society tells us it’s unrealistic and too much of a risk to go for them. A lot of people where I’m from don’t see it as a real career path”, she explains. As a teenager she often felt like an outsider because of this – “Ialways felt so watched and judged”. Though there was a time when she felt like she was playing a role for others, “where I tried to suppress those dreams because I thought it’s not complying with society standards”, SARA stuck to her gut and her dreams. She had what she described as a U-turn and decided to just go for “what I know will make me happy”: She moved to the big city, living between London and New York City. “As cliché as it sounds”, she says, “but my biggest achievement in life so far is going for what I felt like doing and ignoring the doubtful voice inside my head that was constantly fed by others”.
Leaving everything and everyone you know behind to start a new life in a new country is a risky thing to do, but she has never regretted it. After all, the new life with her uploading song covers on social media has gotten her an Instagram DM from Jerry Barnes, inviting her to his studio in NYC in 2019. Before that, she was quite nervous about singing in English as it wasn’t her first language. But with the songwriter, who has written for legends like Roberta Flack, being the first ever professional musician hearing her voice and telling her how good it is, just like her songwriting and her English, encouraging her to pursue that career path, SARA made her way into the studio. With Barnes by her side as a mentor – “he’s been a huge help in terms of actually finding my people in music” – SARA is now ready to tell her story with her debut single ‘Runaway’. “‘Runaway’ is pretty much me in a nutshell. It’s the story that everyone finds out about me when they get to know me: I’m from a small town, I ran for my dreams and that’s why I ended up here. It’s what everyone knows me for. So, I felt like that’s a really good introduction into not only the sound that my music is now in but also the person that I am and the message that I want to be spreading”, the singer-songwriter explains.
The message behind ‘Runaway’, which originally started out as a poem, is uplifting, trying to encourage people to go for their dreams, to not listen to those doubting you. Telling her story simply gave SARA an opportunity to “send out a positive message into the world and try to inspire people and encourage them to do what makes them happy. Even if it’s just one person”. SARA describes the mood of the track as rebellious, but also free-spirited, a vibe she got when her producer Chris Sclafani, who has worked with artists like Ed Sheeran and Halsey, came up with the electric guitar riff for the song for the first time. “I was like: This is it, this is what the song is about.”
When telling her that the song, along with the music video being recorded on a camcorder, showing scenes in the car at night with friends, at the beach or in a diner, reminds me of a coming-of-age movie and its soundtrack, SARA laughs. Turns out this is exactly what the artist was going for; “When I wrote it, I had it in mind as a movie soundtrack”, she says. “When people ask me’ What’s your mission as an artist?’, I say that I want to provide a movie soundtrack to people’s lives and make them feel like the main character in their own life. Everyone should be, but a lot of people act as a side character, but everyone is a main character, and I feel like the right kind of music can really enhance that feeling and just make you so significant and special. And I want to do that with my music.”
If there’s one thing that’s for sure, it’s that SARA herself is the main character. Back when she was posting covers on social media, Harry Styles liked her cover of his song ‘Lights Up’ – It was the 164th liked tweet on his profile in 2019, a number she now considers her lucky number. But Styles isn’t the only One Direction member who has noticed her talent, in the same year Niall Horan did as well: The singer had posted lyrics of an upcoming song, challenging people to make up the top line to the track. SARA tweeted a video of her making up said top line, which Horan noticed. He told her what amazing vocals she has. The tweet got so much attention that Greg James played it on BBC Radio 1’s Breakfast Show.
With all the support and praise from fellow musicians, but mostly because of her passion and her mindset of always chasing that dream, SARA now has an exciting future to look forward to: For 2024 she has already planned a bunch of new singles to be released. When it comes to live music, she’s going to see what ‘Runaway’ is doing and will then go from there. So, there’s just one question left. In true Melomaniacs style, we had to close the interview with our classic final question: Which song did SARA last listen to? ‘Overtime’ by Zach Bryan.
Listen to SARA’s debut single ‘Runaway’ here.
