Interview by Carol Wright | Photographer: Livy Wicks
Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Sabrina Song has been putting out music since 2018, but last year, she caught people’s attention in a now-viral TikTok when her song “Strawberry” played at the end of @discoveringartists.irl video. This year, she released her stunning debut album You Could Stay In One Spot, and I’d Love You The Same, and joined Carol Ades on tour. Song talked to NYOTA about writing to process change, working with music producer Torna, and collaborating with her peers.
As you discovered your interest in singing and songwriting was it something you immediately made known to family and friends, or did you keep it close to the vest?
I’ve been singing since I was a little kid, so that was definitely always a defining trait for me. I was always putting on skits and making everyone listen to me sing the songs I learned at school and summer camp. Songwriting came a lot later for me, and I did feel sheepish about everyone hearing my early songs. I was really green and writing from such a vulnerable place – It felt really lame at the time since I didn’t really have any community around music until later on. I’m happy that has changed.
When you first started songwriting did you ever find yourself trying to be deep before you found your voice as a writer?
This is hilarious. I think yes, but also I just inherently did feel everything so strongly that my music was correspondingly melodramatic. Everything feels so huge at 16, 17, 18 – I wouldn’t say I was trying to be deep in a purposefully superficial way, but I was trying to capture these intense emotions as an inexperienced writer, so results definitely varied.
The interesting thing about your 20s is that each thing you go through in life feels incredibly monumental which can lead to high highs and very low lows. Has writing music about this period of your life helped you work through some of the changes?
Definitely. I realized in the process of creating the album that I’m not just songwriting to capture my emotions, but writing to understand and process them. I’m really trying to distill some emotions that I find contradictory and confusing and painful into a story that people can understand, and that process really helps me work through those situations. I had this experience where I was the only woman at this dinner, and the men present were acting so egregiously awful that I was left with such a gross feeling. I got home and felt like I needed to purge and unpack that feeling, and that’s when I wrote “Rage” from the album.
You Could Stay In One Spot, and I’d Love You The Same is a beautiful body of work. Tell our readers a bit about how the title of the album came to be.
Thank you! The title comes from a lyric in the album track “Busy Work.” I was trying to find the emotional through lines in the album and capture them in the title, and I kept coming back to this feeling of gratitude for my loved ones during this period of transition and instability in my life. The title could be interpreted as an ode to the people in my life who I love dearly, who have moved to different countries and time zones, as well as a message to myself that my value doesn’t come from my productivity or success.
Torna co-produced the album with you. Did it take time for you to build trust with him and feel comfortable receiving his input since you regularly produce your songs solo?
Torna and I had a bit of a trial meeting to see whether working together would be a good fit, and I felt like he really understood my vision for the album. We wanted to let the songwriting stay front and center while still creating compelling arrangements, recording each element in a beautiful way, and fully realizing the potential of each song. I think letting someone else in was a sign of maturity as a producer for me, because I used to feel this internal pressure to do everything alone. I’m so happy with our work on this album and I really learned to see the value and fun in letting new collaborators in.
The lines “Thought you wouldn’t live to see old age / So you lived that way” in your song “Happy To Be Here” moved me. What was your headspace when you were writing it?
This song was one of the last written for the album in the spring of 2023. That line is juxtaposed with the next line “Me, a nervous wreck with my blinders on / Skeptic to a fault.” I was trying to capture how two drastically different people can balance each other out, and all of the ways love can ground you and heal your past notions about what relationships are supposed to look like. It’s a true love song for me.
In your deluxe version of You Could Stay In One Spot, and I’d Love You The Same you collaborate with artists like emory, and Ok Cowgirl. How did it feel to have them breathe new life into your songs?
I can’t say enough positive things about emory, Ok Cowgirl, Mike Kota and Laura Elliott. It was genuinely an honor to have them reimagine the songs they selected, and it was fascinating to see how different each of their approaches were. I think the coolest part was how they extended the worlds of the songs and infused their own emotions with the original stories. I am most inspired by my peers and each of them is making extraordinary music – I’m constantly in awe and lucky to call them friends.
What advice do you have for aspiring singers?
Focus on figuring out what you want for yourself as an artist before all else – If you feel passionate and confident in your sound, performance, writing, etc, the rest will follow.
This story first ran in Issue 38: The Music Issue. Read more from the issue here.
