At some point in your life, Sara Bareilles has probably made you cry. Maybe it was way back in 2007, when her warm, soulful voice and the mournful chords of her song Gravity spoke to you as an angsty pre-teen. Or perhaps it was a few years later, in 2013, when her defiant anthem Brave echoed around every high school hallway. It may have been later still, when you heard the pain and pathos in She Used To Be Mine, the heartbreaking ballad from Waitress, the Broadway musical Bareilles scored in 2015. Perhaps it was only last year, when you saw Meryl Streep perform Look To The Light in the third season of Only Murders In The Building – the song, written by Bareilles, that somehow manages to evoke the purity and power of motherly love, even within the framework of one of TV’s most ludicrous comedies. Everything Bareilles touches somehow seems to distil the human spirit in the most beautiful, poetic ways.

Sometimes, she even gets herself going – especially when it comes to Waitress. “This story just keeps surprising me,” Bareilles says, speaking over Zoom from her home – she has just returned from Mexico City, where she has seen the first Spanish-language version of Waitress. “It’s so moving to see this story take on yet another life,” she says.

The 2015 musical is an adaptation of the 2007 romantic drama starring Keri Russell as Jenna, a small-town waitress (and surprisingly innovative pie maker) who slowly finds a path to independence after accidentally becoming pregnant by her abusive husband, Earl. For Bareilles, watching Jenna’s tear-jerker ballad She Used To Be Mine in Spanish felt more meaningful than ever. “[The song] felt particularly resonant in this show – that moment in the show is particularly poignant to watch in a language that I don’t speak fluently,” she says. “There is a settling and almost like a sitting forward that happens.”

In the song, Jenna reflects on all of the choices and mistakes that led her to that point. It was, Bareilles explains, the first song she wrote for the show after coming on board over ten years ago. “There was a parallel happening in my life – I was also looking at my life and kind of not recognising myself inside of it,” she says. “Our circumstances were very different – I wasn’t pregnant with my abusive husband’s child, but at a certain point, you kind of take stock, and either you’re happy with the results or oftentimes [your life] is not what you thought it would be.”

At the time, Bareilles wasn’t the Broadway darling she is today. She had established herself as a singer-songwriter in Los Angeles with her 2007 album A Little Voice and her 2010 follow-up Kaleidoscope Heart and 2013’s The Blessed Unrest – but had begun to find herself itching for a change. So, she set off for New York City, hoping to branch out from the world of indie pop and break into Broadway. “I was here on a month I lovingly refer to as my Rumspringa where I was like, ‘I’m gonna just go and have an adventure in New York City,’” she says. “I went in for a really terrible audition for Into The Woods. And then I also had a meeting about Waitress.” Composing her first Broadway show wasn’t what she had expected or even hoped for, but it proved to be nothing short of life-changing. “I fell in love with the movie, I fell in love with the colours that Adrian Shelley [the film’s writer] was painting with. I fell in love,” she says, perhaps hinting at her relationship with fiance Joe Tippet, whom she met when he joined the cast as Earl in 2017. “This project has changed my life in every possible way for the better.”

Bareilles lovingly describes the musical as “the little engine that could”. It was created by a passionate all-female creative team – in addition to Bareilles, Diane Paulus served as director, while Jessie Nelson wrote the book – who have been rooting for it ever since. When I mention this, Bareilles quickly notes that she wishes that “all-female” wasn’t always the headline. “It’s like when they say, ‘an all-female rock band,’” she says emphatically. “I’m like, ‘Are they an all-female rock band or are they just a rock band?’ You know? Like, are we women creatives or do we just get to be creatives?”

After opening in 2015, the show received four Tony nominations, including a nod for Bareilles’ score, and a Grammy nomination for best musical theatre album.

Jessie Mueller originally had the lead role, but Bareilles later stepped in as Jenna, playing the role first on Broadway and, when the Broadway production closed, in the West End. “Not being hyperbolic, it was one of the best times of my life for so many reasons,” she says of her 2019 run in London. “It was my West End debut with my best friend Gavin Creel [who played Jim, Jenna’s doctor and love interest], who sadly passed away this year. But to have all of those memories of our time in London together feels just super, super special.”

When Covid-19 hit, the West End production was cut short. “We all got Covid,” she laughs. But the little engine that could would not be stopped. In 2021, the show opened on Broadway once again for a limited run, and in 2023, it was filmed with Bareilles once again stepping in as Jenna.

The film version, which has just landed on streaming in the UK on National Theatre at Home, was created using clips filmed both with and without an audience, allowing for intimate close-ups that don’t usually appear in filmed stage shows. “What we were really trying to do was honour the experience of being on stage through the language of film,” she says. “We wanted to utilise what is so powerful about film, which is the intimacy of it. One of the things that we don’t have on a theatre stage, is that really up close and personal viewing. I feel so proud of the film. I’m so glad we have it.”

Bareilles believes that everything happens for a reason – and so far, the trajectory of her life seems to prove her theory to be true. She may have bombed her audition for Into The Woods when she first came to New York with dreams of performing on stage, but a few years ago, she found herself starring in another revival of the show on Broadway, once again opposite Creel. “There are so many little synergies that seem to be floating around the life of this show. It’s crazy,” she says.

Bareilles is currently working on the score of a new musical and has hopes to return to the stage again soon. “I think theatre really has become a home away from home,” she says. “I love the collaboration. I just feel really lucky that this community has opened its arms to me in the way that it has, because I would love to stay as long as they’ll have me.”

But, to use a Waitress-themed pun, Bareilles still has her fingers in many pies. In 2019, she released her first album in six years, Amidst The Chaos. She then starred as the anxious ex-girl group member Dawn in Peacock’s brilliant, riotous Girls5eva in 2021, which moved to Netflix for its third season last year. Now, in addition to her work on her new musical, she’s also working on another album.

“I’ve been given the privilege of working around a schedule that makes sense for me – I don’t live in that cyclical recording artist thing; I don’t make records all the time,” she says. Instead, she writes music when she feels called to. For a long time, she didn’t feel that call. “I had such a hard time with the pandemic – I had such a mental health crisis during that time,” she goes on. “I was really not well for a while. I watched so many artists metabolise what was happening and turn it into something, and I just really couldn’t for years.”

Then again, Bareilles has never been one to write on command. Her first single back in 2007, which had the tongue-in-cheek title Love Song, was her witty refusal to write the love song that her label had asked for. Meanwhile, her last album was largely inspired by her dismay in the wake of the 2016 US election that saw Donald Trump assume the presidency for his first term.

Her next album, she says, will be driven by the theme of grief. “I’m noticing in the writing that’s gathered over these last, you know, five or six years, it’s really a lot about grief,” she says. “I think people are feeling a lot of grief right now for a lot of different reasons – not just loss of life, but looking at what’s happening in our country right now and the breakdown of our political system. So, this record really feels like it’s about grief to me – I know that sounds like a lot of fun to listen to!”

Apparently, Bareilles isn’t through with the tearjerkers just yet. But in spite of it all, she is still trying to find glimmers of light in the darkness – the beauty in the pain. This year, she plans to tie the knot with Tippet. “We need joy and celebration and connection and community, which, to me, that’s what marriage is really about,” she says, her face lighting up once again when I ask about her wedding plans. “It’s the calling together of the people you love the most to bear witness to a union. It’s beautiful – the ritual is so beautiful to me. Yeah, I think community is the medicine.”

Images: Getty; FilmNation Entertainment