SADIE JEAN ON SAD GIRL ANTHEMS, STAGE FRIGHT, AND OWNING HER TWENTIES
“I’m really excited”: Sadie Jean on new music, new tour and the spectacular rise of sad girl music
Sadie Jean broke into the charts with viral song ‘WYD Now?’, a ballad that spoke volumes to the heartbroken with tearful lyrics and a beautiful piano backing. Now, a few years on from her first success, the LA-based artist is evolving her sound whilst finalising her new record, Early Twenties Torture. The album’s first single, ‘The One That I Want (But I Don’t Know Why)’ and its music video dropped this year, teasing the audience with a more upbeat and nuanced sound than heard before.
“I feel like The One That I Want made sense as the lead single”, Sadie said, “because it felt like it really encapsulated the chaos of my early twenties”
“It’s a little bit more extroverted than my earlier stuff, because I love the sad stuff, but I definitely had fun.”
The music video was an authentic, fun production directed by Lauren Tepfer, who has previously worked with stars like Gracie Abrams and Lorde. It shows Sadie getting ready with her real-life friends and embodies, simply put, all things girl. Sadie explained, “It was so fun because I got to make it with my best friends in LA, film it in my house, and it felt so real.
“I loved the director Lauren because she just like got the vision, and we just wanted it to feel so girly, and I think we did it.
“We kept saying when we were filming it that we would show it to our kids when we were older, because it felt so accurate of us just crashing out over something kind of stupid, which I feel like is all we do.”
With the new record on the horizon, and Sadie adding the final touches, she said the process has “been really special” and that her aim is to create her ultimate favourite album.
“The whole album, that I’m kind of finishing up right now, feels like a little time capsule of all the different crazy sides of me and the wild array of emotions that I’ve gone through from
20 to now being 23.
“I didn’t even realise that I was writing an album, I was just writing songs, and then I had so many of them that I kind of realised it had to be an album, so it’s been super reflective to try and sonically recreate my 20s. Every song is definitely getting something off my chest, which has felt really good, and I think you can feel that too when you listen. All I want to do is just write, and I want every album to feel like my favourite album of that time in my life, and really encapsulate my taste in what I want to listen to, because music is kind of a selfish thing for me in that way.”
“Growing up, I would write a song and be like, no one can relate to this more than me and I would feel a sense of pride in that and I still feel I have to do that for myself because if I think too much about what other people want and then it’s not authentic in my experience.”
Sadie has decidedly stopped trying to adhere to what others want and presents her honest, authentic self at the forefront of her new music. She said, “It’s so funny, every time I try to reinvent my wheel or start a new era, I feel like I freak myself out, and I feel like I’m betraying the most intrinsic, authentic part of me.
“Some of the songs are more fun than ever, but I still want at the core to be really honest, vulnerable and just me, and that’s been an evolution for sure.”
Sadie Jean’s music falls seamlessly between the pop music of today, with ‘sad girl’ songs climbing the charts week on week. This evolution for the genre has reinforced that drive for Sadie to follow in the footsteps of some of her biggest inspirations, saying, “I love seeing it all go down and watching the music kind of change things.
“I’m such a fangirl, I love all the pop girlies, and I’m so excited every time a new album comes out.
“I’m obsessed with the Sabrina Carpenter album, I’m so excited that a new one is coming out, and I love Lizzie McAlpine, she’s not very pop, but I feel like I can totally see where she’s coming from.
“I grew up loving Taylor Swift, and I think she kind of blazed the trail for a lot of younger women singer-songwriters, but it’s been so cool to watch the girls take over.
“I’ve always loved sad music, even before discovering Gracie Abrams, but it does make me feel so much better knowing that she has had such commercial success off it. I always felt like it couldn’t be commercial to do the sad thing but it is and that makes me excited because I love sad songs.”
Sadie’s success is already flourishing, with the impending Autumn “Early Twenties Tour-ture” tour (notice the clever pun) taking the artist all over Europe. Raring to go, she spills what cities she’s excited to visit and the experience on the stage. She said, “While finishing the album production and writing new songs, I’m also thinking, oh, wow, I’m going on tour in a few months.
“I can write in service of the tour, which has been really special, and I think it’s going to be really fun now I have some more upbeat songs to sprinkle in with the really depressing ones.
“I’m so excited, I think about it every day, so excited to go back and have fun with the girls, and I can’t believe how many places I’m going, and there are so many that I’ve never been to.
“I’m really excited for Portugal, I’ve never performed there and I didn’t realise I had fans there at all. I love Paris, and I mean all the England shows are so lit. I feel like people in England know how to go to a concert, it’s inspiring, honestly.”
The feeling of a Sadie Jean show was described as a ‘therapeutic experience’. Sadie delved into the exclusivity of her performance and how each gig ‘blows [her] mind’.
“I love being on stage, but it is interesting because I had pretty bad stage fright up until the past two years, but it’s where I really feel like an artist.
“I see these people online, listening to my music, but it doesn’t feel real until I’m on stage and singing with people in real life and it blows my mind every single time. I get on stage and I’m like, I can’t believe this is real, and I get to do this, and people know the words.
“It does feel like this shared experience between everyone in the room of just feeling our feelings and having fun and listening to music, and I don’t know, I think it’s just a really beautiful energy in the room every time, and it’s really special.
“One thing about my show is like, I’m super honest and I overshare the context of what the songs are about in a way that I would never say even in an interview or even to my friends.
“But, for some reason, when I’m on stage and holding my guitar and there are 200 people in front of me, I feel like I can tell them what the song is about, and I think that’s so funny about the show.”
“Pay your ticket and I will bare my soul, you’ve got to be in the room.”
With dreams of Grammys, sold-out arenas and ‘getting to do this forever’, Sadie Jean is on track to evolve into the charts next pop princess. She is sticking to her love of sad music and prioritising her own experience to most importantly relate with her audience and put on shows that therapise both herself and the crowd. If her 23-city European tour and the awaited Early Twenties Torture record are anything to go by, Sadie’s one to keep an ear out for.
Sadie Jean Online
Sadie Jean | Spotify | Sadie Jean | Sadie Jean (@sadiejean) • Instagram photos and videos
