“It’s not that I didn’t want to talk / I’m just scared of the confrontation,” sings Sarah Barrios at the start of “I Didn’t Mean To.” The song, her debut single on Arista/VIsonair Records, is an intimate confession (“I don’t know how to make it right / but it’s keeping me up at night”) about inadvertently doing someone wrong. It’s a universal feeling, expertly captured by Sarah’s ethereal vocals, a voice that hums with that frantic electricity knowing that you accidentally broke someone’s heart. “I showed up to the session with about three hours of sleep, a coffee, a notebook, and a whole lot of anxiety and just went full-on therapy session,” she tells HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY about the track. “I had a lot I needed to get off of my chest that day.”
If “I Didn’t Mean To” is the byproduct of insomnia, it’ll be incredible to see what she does on a good night’s sleep. The Torrington, Connecticut native has been building a buzz with her music, citing everything from Jane Austen to science fiction novels to Paramore to The Beatles as an influence. Initially, her first brush with music was her family’s jam sessions, as both her parents played in bands together and her childhood home was filled with daytime concerts and late jazz nights. “Music was a big deal for the family, but I never thought doing music as an actual job was possible,” she said, per a statement. She actually enrolled in college to become an elementary school teacher, but a breakup inspired her to “do whatever I want” and what she wanted to do was music.
After dropping out, she followed her dream the way any modern music act does nowadays: posting covers on YouTube and performing at open mics. She wound up connecting with a manager (who allowed her to crash on his couch “for five of six months” after she bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. “It’s probably the coolest, craziest thing I’ve ever done.”
That faith in herself has paid off. After spending a year doing session work for other artists, she poured herself into a song that would anchor her debut project. “I cried in the bathroom afterward. It was the first really vulnerable song, a piece of me I hadn’t shared before. It was a game-changer for how I approached writing songs,” she said. It would also be a gamechanger for her career. She inked a deal with Visionary Records/Sony Arista and has finished recording two EPs and an album. The project is described as a novel, one based on the theme of how “Life is weird and you spend your entire life figuring it out,” she says. No need to figure this out — Sarah’s one to watch out for. We mean it.
“I Didn’t Mean To” is out now.