I loved Sara Bareilles’ first album, Little Voice, and I am anxiously awaiting her second album release Kaleidoscope Heart where you can preorder on Amazon here (expected around September 7th). I am adoring the latest single, King Of Anything, and the video has just been released and is super cute. View it on Youtube.

She writes her own music, plays the piano, and is all kinds of multitalented. I saw some clips of her in the studio and have seen some stripped and live vids too, and she is one of the few artists who actually sounds the same live. It’s refreshing to hear someone without computer manufactured talent. She got into music early and was a member of UCLA’s a cappella group Awaken A Cappella. They even sang a song she wrote “Gravity”, which is my personal favorite breakup-but-not-over-it tune (cue Audrina on The Hills staring out the window listening to this song and thinking of Justin Bobby– ironically, I had previously dubbed a relationship that always reminded me of this song as such a “Justin Bobby relationship”). I heard this song before I knew anything of her, and it touched me, gave me chills, and reminded me of my ex. Once I put two and two together, I bought her album.

For many others, Sara Bareilles can thank iTunes for promoting her first single, “Love Song”, as a free single of the week, and then her Rhapsody ad with the same tune. After that, she blew up! “Love Song” is catchy, fun, yet shows she isn’t going to bend over backwards for a man. She manages to make heartbreak sound beautifully touching or even uppity and catchy. In “King of Anything”, she makes it obvious yet again that she is a strong, talented woman:

“I hate to break it to you babe, but I’m not drowning
There’s no one here to save.

Who cares if you disagree?
You are not me
Who made you king of anything?
So you dare tell me who to be?
Who died and made you king of anything?”

Look her up. She is not destroying feminism (coughKatyPerrycough). You’ll thank me later.

-Whitney J. Manson