Rock Music News: Sarah Kinsley interview (2024)

“I think I went to Montreal once,” Sarah Kinsley tells me from her New York home during our Zoom call. “My uncle lives in Toronto, so I’ve been there a lot and I went to Quebec a bunch when I was in high school.”

Sarah may not be 100% sure if she’s visited our city before, but this coming weekend she’ll be playing live here for the very first time when she appears at Bar Le Ritz on June 4th.

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“My first Canada shows; yeah, I’ve never played outside of the US in North America. I love the Intimate shows and it’s a nice way to ease into getting to know a place, honestly. It’s actually really interesting because I really love travelling and playing shows is actually the best way to get to know a city, weirdly. It’s just a very intimate experience, and you get to know the taste of a city or like the flavour of what it’s like playing shows, which I guess you would understand more rather than being like a tourist or just someone like walking around or just visiting. So yeah, I’m very excited.”

Since 2020, Sarah Kinsley’s ascent—while pursuing her music studies at Columbia University—has been swift. Currently, she has a total of 80 million streams across 181 countries, a number that surged after the release of her EP, The King, in 2021. The title track gained viral popularity on TikTok and currently stands at 39 million streams and counting. NME included the EP on its list of top debut projects of 2021, with the publication praising, “Her transformative songs about the challenges of growing up and self-discovery share an intimate connection with the introverted, profoundly human alt-pop of Maggie Rogers and Lorde.” Kinsley followed that success with another EP, Cypress, in 2022. Headline tours and appearances at SXSW and The Austin City Limits Festival refined the singer/guitarist’s expressive and uninhibited live performances.

“Everything feels new,” Kinsley says when I ask about her musical journey. “I think it’s because, especially with touring, we haven’t had the chance to be newcomers to a place yet. So there are many boundaries to push with where we play. But music for me began when I was young. I was a classical musician my entire life. That was my true identity. I started piano when I was around four years old. So I’m an instrumentalist at heart, before everything else. I grew up playing piano and in orchestras. I loved it.

When I was around 10 or 12, I wanted to venture into guitar. I loved pop music as a kid. I always listened to the top 40. And yeah, I started singing. I was really nervous and shy, even though I’d been performing for my whole life in classical music. I started singing and writing, wanting to do more and more. And then wanting to produce. I love being a newcomer, a beginner. I wanted to chase that in music. I always wanted to learn a new instrument or craft. It was natural that I would start writing or singing and branching away from where I began.“

Do you remember the first time you performed live?

“Oh my god, yes! I used to live in Singapore when I was younger, and I lived there for about five years, and I started singing while I was there. And there was this after-school club that did small performances around school. And I think one of the first times I ever really sang, it was maybe in front of 20 people in a very big theatre, but just a very small audience and I did something acapella. It wasn’t really for anything. Like it wasn’t for a show or a competition. I don’t really remember what it was for, but I just remember being like stood there, and I was just so overwhelmed. And it was so silly to not play an instrument at the same time. I was just kind of like making a beat with my hands and just singing. And it was really fun. And I sang with this other girl. I don’t know if that was the first time, but that was definitely one of the first times ever that I sang in front of people. So a lot of the fear subsides when you’re with other people. But yeah, it was very nerve-wracking.”

So how did you end up singing acapella after learning multiple instruments?

“It was just a really big thing at my high school. Like it was a very sort of coveted thing to do. It was just very exciting. And I had been singing in middle school and I was just warming up to it and I didn’t really have vocal training, but I wanted to sing with a group of people. So the options were sing pop music with a bunch of other really cool girls or like gospel choir or just normal choir. And I was like, I don’t think I want to do those two although I did join the gospel choir for one year, and I actually had so much fun. It was great, but yeah, it was just sort of a natural option. Just to be surrounded by other young girls and wanting to explore singing and covering songs. That was like my first entry point into singing consistently, I guess.“

And when did you perform your own material for the first time?

“That really wasn’t until I got to college. Like I was learning how to write and figuring out what I wanted to talk about in high school. And I think my first year of college, I have very sweet memories with this place, but there’s a chapel on my college campus. And in the basement of the chapel, they would always do these little coffee house events. So they would bring in musicians from either around New York or there would be students and they would do these like three nights a week. And they had an open mic night one night because I couldn’t get booked or anything because it’s not like I had a full set to play. I barely had any music. I wasn’t just going to like to cover God knows what for 30 minutes. And they had an open mic night and a friend of mine was going to do it. She kind of was like, why don’t you also do it? Like, why don’t you come? And I was like; I don’t have anything to sing. And so like a week before I was like, okay, I’m going to write a song for this open mic night. And I wrote it really fast, and I really liked it. And that was the first time I played it. It was like a room of 40, 50 people packed in this brick-wall coffee house. I would go back there to play some sets actually like a year or two later.“

After playing your Canada dates, tell me about what the rest of the year looks like for you.

“I’m playing a bunch of festivals, which is going to be really exciting over the summer. I’m very new to festivals, I’ve really only done a few last year. And they’re just such a different beast than playing live shows. So we’re doing one in Chicago and New York and Atlanta, which I’m really excited about. I also really loved those cities when I played like my solo shows there. So I’m very excited to return. I’m just really excited to see other people play as well. And it’s obviously a big privilege to like, see my name in print on the bill. But I’m just excited. Like, I don’t know, I never know what to expect from festivals because I never really went to them growing up or I don’t have many experiences with them. So yeah, I’m excited. It’s gonna be very fun.”

Sarah Kinsley plays Bar le Ritz on Sunday, June 4th. Her EP, Ascension comes out June 9th.

Watch the full interview below: