Interview by Carol Wright | Photographer: Julia Khoroshilov | Cover Design by Carolyn Knapp
We’re going into the NYOTA archives to find some of our favorite interviews that weren’t originally shared on the site.
Over the course of the last 15 months, Sarah Kinsley found herself in the same boat as many of us around the world stuck at home during unprecedented times, unaware of how the pandemic would reshape our lives. Using this time wisely, she immersed herself in writing, making music, and creativity, as well as a new virtual way of keeping up with her studies. This led Kinsley to put something together that is an expression of where she is in her life currently, as well as being a forward step in her journey as a songwriter and musician. Kinsley talked to NYOTA about her music reaching others beyond her own life and how she has evolved as an artist.
You developed a love for music at a young age and learned piano at a young age. In the midst of this, when did you discover your singing voice?
Weirdly enough, I think it was a simultaneous sort of pushing away and pulling towards my love for other kinds of music. I was always drawn to music. I was surrounded by it in every form. Lessons and theory books. Listening to CDs in the car. Dancing to tunes during lazy evenings. But there was something in learning the piano that was missing. Lyrics, or a voice. Instrumental music let me imagine, but kept me yearning to find my own centre in the midst of it all. So I think after about ten or twelve years of classical music I just started wondering what music I could make on my own, from my own voice.
Something special about your songwriting is that you’re specific yet listeners can still relate or see themselves in your songs. When you’re writing are you pulling inspiration from life experiences, things you read, things you watch or all of the above?
Thank you, it’s incredibly reassuring and beautiful to hear that the music is capable of reaching beyond my own life. A lot of what I write is, of course, personal, intimate, close. I want you to be my second head, a kindred mind when you hear my music. I hope it speaks for itself. I think to some extent, my music is inspired by the things I watch and read. But it exists in its greatest form when the music is about my life, my experiences. The things that make me whole.
You’re currently a Music Major at Columbia University. Have your studies impacted or changed your music making process?
Oh, absolutely. I think music is a reflection of all the things we do and breathe and inhabit, so of course, my studies are bound to affect it. In some ways, I’ve been a much more critical listener due to it. But I think this has also pushed me to get to the bottom of that relationship between music and emotion. And from there, the relationship music creates between you and I. Why does it make us feel this way? How can I produce that effect again? Studying music is not so much a dictator of process, but more so a beautiful consequence of knowing the power certain sounds and phrases hold.
You often shed light on how there are few female producers. Do you think social media could potentially be a tool to bring female producers to the forefront?
To clarify, I don’t think there are few women producers. I believe there are few highly recognized female producers. They exist and create, and I think the idea of women producers has changed greatly due to social media. But I also don’t think that real change – like any sort of change – will happen on platforms alone. It’s a cultural sort of shift that will happen one day, one that I’ll hear when someone asks me if I’m the sound engineer or the producer by assumption.
Comparing The Fall EP to The King EP there are similarities but also stark differences. Was your goal to change and play around with sound when it came to creating The King EP or do you think the changes came naturally as you’ve evolved as an artist?
Honestly, I ask myself this question a lot and I’m not sure what that change boils down to. Whether it’s a choice made of conscious mind or maybe by some subconscious spirit. I do know that change is vital and expected, although I don’t think I ever expected the change to happen in this specific way it has. My last EP felt like self-sacrifice, or devotion. I was writing about past people, past lives, past experiences. Giving them my words. But The King EP was an ode to my past self. Who I had been, what skin I had shed off. That evolution, that change was so stark in comparison to what I was. So maybe it’s a little bit of both, the desire to change and the fact that it’s bound to happen.
On TikTok when you release snippets of songs you usually share how that can portray a moment or a visual for people’s lives. For example, “I have discovered what it sounds like to truly be alive.” How do the scenes you envision when you first begin creating a song translate to the final track?
They seem to naturally immerse themselves in the foundation of the track for me. Or the entire record. I think that when music really taps into its meaning, whether it’s about being truly alive, or living without fear or regret, that meaning seeps into the song. It’s impossible to disconnect one from the other. Every element, every production choice, every lyric is naturally geared and driven towards this concept. This idea of what the song represents. I think it’s similar to the experience of associating sounds with feelings, or people. Sound and music and noise all have that power over us.
On TikTok people use audio from “The King” to edit together videos of them living freely or reaching milestones. How does it feel to see listeners connect with the song in that way?
There’s nothing like it. Granted, I do think TikTok is a funny place to see it happen. But it is proof that the song makes people feel the same ways I do. As weird of a platform TikTok can be, it has an odd way of reminding me that the ways I experience my music, or the way I feel, are more universal and understandable than I think.
I could see “Over + Under” being an ode to love and life in your 20s because so much change happens during those years, especially the lines “Back in my hometown I wonder if I’m out of place / These years feel so far away.” Do you think later down the line you’ll be able to listen to this song and clearly remember how you felt during this stage of your life?
It is definitely an ode to this time right now. I wrote “Over + Under” while I was surrounded by life in its sort of rawest form. I was looking at the trees and the clouds and all these forms of change. I think it was reassuring to know that the world was changing with me. This song will absolutely maintain its meaning down the line. It serves as a time capsule of sorts, a distinct memory of who I was and what I believed in over this past year.
Do each of your songs on the EP encapsulate what you first envisioned when beginning your creative process?
No, not at all. And I’m incredibly happy to know that they don’t follow the exact meaning of what I envisioned. I think I began writing The King EP, I was pushing towards this clear idea of what being the king meant. If it meant being the greatest, the best, the absolute highest ideal of myself. But as I kept writing and living and thinking, a lot of the songs began to reveal much deeper contradictions I held against myself. I was slowly unraveling doubts and fears and inconsistencies. Could I be both afraid and free? Is it possible to start again? And to all of it, I said yes. And this is the part of the EP that I didn’t anticipate. It was facing those contradictions knowing that they were not going to dissolve or change. That embrace of all of those doubts and fears is what made the EP so special. It’s an ode to the imperfect, which is, in my eyes, so beautifully whole and great and big.
It is so refreshing to see the passion you have for your own music. Do you think truly being passionate about the work you create is the key to any young artist making their mark in the industry?
Thank you. I think passion is necessary beyond work; it’s the essence of actually living. I find that the music I love the most, regardless of genre, regardless of anything, is music that makes me feel. When artists are passionate about being vulnerable, when you can stand in front of a crowd and bare it all, that music is divine. It’s other-worldly. That feeling is so intoxicating and incredible – why should we do it any other way?
This story first ran in Issue 24: The Art Is Life Issue. Read more from the issue here.
