Sara Bareilles may be the queen of post-breakup, sugary pop songs, but she is gearing up to take her talents to Broadway.
“What’s Inside: Songs from Waitress,” is composed of selections from the upcoming Broadway show, “Waitress,” though the orchestrations and lyrics are different from those that will be sung onstage. Bareilles has been off the radar for two years — taking time off from the public eye after garnering platinum certifications for hits such as “Love Song” and “Gravity” — to prepare for her music’s Broadway debut. The musical is adapted from Adrienne Shelly’s film of the same name, which focuses on Jenna, a woman stuck in an abusive marriage who expresses herself through the pies she bakes.
To make versions of the songs that were truly her own for “What’s Inside,” Bareilles took the score she wrote and changed it into pop numbers, effectively removing the show’s context to make her album. The final product is a collection of songs that create a middle ground between musical theatre and pop music. That middle ground, however, is a bit shaky.
While the songs used in the beginning are self-explanatory because they function as the exposition of the plot, the majority of the songs later on in the album become increasingly difficult to understand out of context. Most of Bareilles’ previous tracks have been written almost exclusively in second-person narrative, and she could have been singing about anyone. In making an album that still adheres to this kind of music but that adds a plot with tangible characters, the listener needs to guess who Bareilles is singing to, producing an album that stands awkwardly in between the two genres.
Bareilles herself jokes that she cannot believe that her record company chose to support and produce this album. And while it adds to her list of studio albums that show off her effortless vocals and clever lyrics, it’s possible that the album won’t get the critical acclaim that her previous ones have, if only because some of the songs aren’t clear in their intent.
Regardless of this, in composition, the album is just as good as Bareilles’ previous work. Pieces of her other hits shine through on this album, showing that this album is Bareilles’ moment to hold on to the Broadway-bound songs as her own. For example, the first track, “Opening Up,” uses piano riffs nearly identical to those that make appearances on her second studio album, “Kaleidoscope Heart.” Characteristic to the style she has established in previous albums, many of the songs place emphasis on the backing vocals whose harmonies hold their own as vital to the fabric of the songs.
Similar to the pastime of the show’s protagonist, the album is fantastically sugarcoated. With only one or two exceptions, even the songs that express fear and doubt (“When He Sees Me” and “Bad Idea” featuring Jason Mraz) refuse to let the subject matter interfere with the tone. Though this album doesn’t have a song that you can belt alone in your room to cathartically get over your ex, it has enough to at least lift your spirits.
Perhaps the most impressive track on the album is the ballad “She Used to be Mine,” which fulfills the musical theatre convention of the driving act two solo, explicitly stating a change in character for the protagonist. Unlike the other songs on the album, this one has the ability to stand on its own as either a pop single or as a part of the show. In the context of the musical, it is the moment that Jenna decides to lie to her husband and change the way she lives. This song is the most heartfelt on the album, something that was present in the songwriting process: Bareilles says that she felt a more personal connection to this song, to the point that she even cried when writing it — the first time that she had ever done that over one of her own songs.
With an album like this, even if you can’t tell who Barreilles is singing to, it’s these very emotions that make it worth the listen.