Sara Bareilles’ new documentary, Good Grief, captures in an emotional and joyous way the making of her upcoming album of the same name. It premiered Thursday at New York’s Tribeca Festival, and following the screening, she brought her band onstage to perform some of the new music.
Sara opened with the album’s first single, “Home,” followed by “Just a Kid,” “Still Crying,” “Heartland” and “Nervous Breakdown,” the latter co-written by her longtime pal Ingrid Michaelson.
On the red carpet ahead of the screening, Sara told ABC Audio that the movie was inspired by a desire to share more openly the grief she’s experienced in her personal life. She lost two of her best friends to cancer, and she’s also struggled with infertility and her mental health. So she asked her “trusted friend” director Josh Alexander to film the recording sessions.
“I was like, ‘Is there something here? If we just go in and make this an experiment, knowing that this might not work, and we might come out with nothing?'” Sara said. “And he really quickly said yes and we got the team together. And I’m so grateful, because it feels like, if I didn’t have these days captured, I don’t know what I would do.”
Onstage after the screening, Sarah said, “The last five years of my life have been a deep excavation of a lot of grief and a lot of joy and a lot of … faith in the mystery of how things move. But I really hope people come away feeling a little closer to themselves.”
“I think the more we can really have grace and compassion for our own pain, we can have it for others and be a sounding board,” she continued. “We really, really need each other.”
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