Sarah Kinsley Addresses Platonic Love in Delicate Symphonic “Starling”
By Kelly Carciente
Making headlines for her innovative and colourful blends of genres and techniques, Sarah Kinsley dove into the creation of her debut album and one of her most recent singles “Starling,” in recent ˚1824 press conference.
CLASSICS & ROMANTICS, PRODUCER & SONGWRITER
Sarah Kinsley was surrounded by an inventive and technical musical world as she studied classical music from a young age. Blended with her love for pop music, Kinsley’s intrigue for the art of music found harmony in her dichotomous musical influences. This is evident in the world-building into which she leans through a miss-match of classical symphonies and ‘80s-style synths. The singer, well known for her 2021 TikTok-viral track “The King,” is onto her debut album Escaper, with three pre-released singles, releasing on September 6th.
The California-born New York-based singer is notably remarkable for her range as an artist in all respects. While much of her music experience literally began as DIY, Kinsley’s hunger to learn and improve drove her to teach herself music production through hours upon hours of YouTube tutorials. And while these tutorials have paid off, gearing her up to create and release her own music projects independently, her passion led her to pursue education at Columbia University, studying music theory. As she describes her earlier self as a “sponge trying to learn everything,” Kinsley points to her Audio Engineering course’s professor for giving her the most memorable and valuable advice she was ever given. She recounts, “the greatest thing you can do for yourself in production is to not add layers upon layers… the process of carving out space for sound, subtracting from a baseline for sound to create room for things ensures that everything will be heard and there is room for everything.”
Her journey in the music world is arguably remarkable. Kinsley notes growing up as a classically trained musician with the hopes of being a classical pianist playing in symphonies for the rest of her life. She reminisces on her knack for songwriting spawning in middle school, and her curiosity continuing for the creative aspect later into her university degree. Considering the competitive nature of the classical world, and not even for the sake of a career, Kinsley leaned into the producing world. Her desire to learn from YouTube tutorials came from wanting to take on larger decisions in producing her own music, like testing out different voice manipulation effects.
Her passion for classical music still resonates with her both in the creative and appreciative senses. Kinsley notes Chopin and Debussy as some of the composers that have stayed the longest with her. The dramatic shifts between classic and romantic music and the revolution of different perspectives in composition lived with Kinsley when considering her overall sound. While she may not have listened to much classical music while writing Escaper, she believes “the tone and overarching themes that that music represented for a long time,” influenced her creative vision.
Kinsley’s continued appreciation of creating her music alone has translated into her frustration with collaboration. As someone with a need for control, she prefers to not be disturbed by others’ thoughts. Despite this, she found a perfect partner in creating her album, John Congleton, who she notes worked on some of her most favourite records. If anything, she felt the ease of his patience allowing her to feel comfortable to try anything, even if it wasn’t perfect, saying, “I could throw a bunch of shit at the walls and see what works.”
While these two worlds tend to seem so different, Kinsley draws on her appreciation for how structurally similar the genres are:
“I’ve always felt like classical and pop music were not that different structurally. I always listened to so much radio growing up, like top 200…they have similar structure. With sonata form, you know what will happen in the structure and won’t likely be surprised, similar with pop music. [Those] paradigms are treated the same way, and merging them, the structure is the same. But, as a listener, I loved watching classical elements [make it] into pop music and a lot of different music incorporating stylized symphony or orchestra. Within my own music, I get so much selfish love when creating string arrangements. A lot of beautiful textural… string over drums…weird nostalgia that synths cannot [achieve], strings can make you feel emotions that a lot of other [instruments] cannot.”
CREATIVE EXPRESSION & ESCAPER
The songwriter describes writing the majority of the album while grieving a friendship and the feeling of escapism: “where do you go when you don’t want to exist anymore?” The album’s title, also the title of the album’s final track, stems from her love for the film Past Lives and the overall theme of being “desperate to leave and also to return.” While it was a harder and much darker time for the songwriter, Kinsley values music as a vehicle of expression: “The testament of music as a form of expression to move through grief and understand yourself stood true to me. I learned about the more vulnerable and darker sides of going through that. It was refreshing to come out of that.”
Kinsley speaks so lovingly about her existential and nihilistic philosophies in the writing process of Escaper. When addressing the biggest revelation she has experienced and hopes other take away while listening to it, she says, “I feel like individual interpretation is the greatest gift of music … through the story of making it … escapism is necessary for survival, but there is something beautiful about choosing to experience the world and living through it, realizing that love is worthy and humanity is worthy through our participation even with flaws and darkness … the decision and final place I come to; you are worthy of love and love is worthy of you.”
In creating this album, Kinsley let her creative flag fly as she built a world surrounding the themes, both lyrically and sonically. Similarly to her influence of Celine Song’s 2023 film, Kinsley refers back to a number of films that have influenced her creative vision, name-dropping The Portrait of a Lady on Fire. The musician describes the world she built from her intrigue: “When writing the initial songs, I was intrigued by the immortality of if we had other things … there is a completely alternate reality when you make these tiny decisions… are you the right one? Have you escaped to the right decision? It is an insane concept to want to write about. Out of my own interest, what does this even mean and can we imagine these worlds, can we live these illusions, the bodies that we live in?” She also mentions the thematic importance of the opening single and track of the album, “Last Time We Never Meet Again,” describing the cyclical sentiment of having the beginning as the end and the end as the beginning: “The idea that when endings occur, you are forced to create your new beginnings.”
Sonically, Kinsley sometimes envisions cinematic environments for her songs to live in. Her most recent single, “Realms,” released on August 1st captures the energy of living in a movie scene. She mentions feeling free when creating the song, especially rhythmically, describing the evoked feeling reminiscent of skipping and frolicking in a field. Her sonic influences may have initially began with her appreciation for classical music, but she also notes her love for ambient records from artists like Elizabeth Fraser for her luring or haunting voice in her earlier work.
“WE’RE THE LUCKY ONES” IN “STARLING”
Back in July, Kinsley released the second single for this album, “Starling.” She describes the sonic landscape as something straightforward she had laid out in her mind, wanting it to sound like “a waltz, a sweet and tender song,” and that she achieves. Through synths “gliding through notes,” a graceful piano melody setting the tone, balanced by a rhythmic drum beat acting as the pulsing heartbeat keeping the track alive, this waltz between the piano and drums is soon uplifted by a beautiful string arrangement in the verse leading into the second pre-chorus. Kinsley’s gentle and dreamy vocals ultimately shine through, leaving further emphasis on her dedication to her friends in her lyrics.
As an ode to her happier, simpler moments with her closest friends, Kinsley sings, “To find another in the sky, smiling in the dark/Laughing at the fucking stars/… To meet another is a miracle, let alone you and I.” Throughout her whole life, she was told the importance of seeking out romantic relationships and infatuations, and yet, she notes platonic love having a special place in her life through her devotion to her friends: “Platonic love is the most sustaining thing ever in my life.” She has recently explained, “it's very much a testament to how full love can be outside of sexual or romantic love. Growing up, I just thought that's what you're destined for. It’s very strange when you realize it has nothing to do with that and everything to do with what you decide for yourself.” This is translated into the peak of the song in her lyrics, “if we tried, put your hand and swear/We’ll be fine if we're still here at 45/If you don't marry someone, then neither will I/Say you'll be mine.”
Sarah Kinsley's music video for "Starling".
Kinsley experimented with her creative expression by directing her music video for the same single as she led a dance, noting how film directing would have been her backup plan to music. As friendship is so integral to the messaging of the song, Kinsley emphasizes how important her friends are to her and to the making of the video. The video shows a delicate contemporary dance woven between scenes of a glowing melting ice cube and reflections in water keeping the shared connection with her friends. She utilizes “ice as metaphor for love. When you touch it, it melts. When you live you begin to die and you cannot stop because it continues to live without you.”
If her artistic abilities were not completely on display before, they are now as she dances through her words. When asked about why she chose to include this element in her video, Kinsley says, “I feel like dancing and movement have been a huge part of who I am as a musician. I love when people dance at shows… One of my worst nightmares is playing a show and not a single person moves, seeing a crowd move together, I want it to be an essential part of how people listen to my music.” Luckily, she is set to go on tour this fall, and considering she emphasizes the value of working with the intimacy of a live audience, this is a tour no one will want to miss.
With a generous vocal range reminiscent of a blend between Mitski, Kate Bush, Lana Del Rey and Lorde, and an idiosyncratic production style more carefully woven than your average pop song, Kinsley is able to display her range of talents and artistic styles throughout her work. Despite perhaps resembling other artists that have come before her, Kinsley’s stylistic choices set her up to stand out as both a vocalist and composer.
