Music

Sara Bareilles Returns With ‘Good Grief’ Album And Fall Tour

Jun 4, 2026

download - 2026-06-04T140623.567 — Photo Credit: Ian Allen

Sara Bareilles has a new chapter ready to open. The Grammy-winning, Tony and Emmy-nominated singer-songwriter just announced her seventh studio album ‘Good Grief’, arriving August 28th via Epic Records, and she’s paired the news with its first single, “Home.” It’s her first record since 2019’s Grammy-winning ‘Amidst the Chaos’, and it marks a fresh turn in her 20-year career. The 14-track collection is a reckoning with loss, yet every dark corner carries a luminous pull toward hope.

The songs arrived almost on their own. “This whole collection of songs felt like transmissions rather than a deliberate attempt to make sense of the world,” Bareilles says. “My deepest hope is that Good Grief provides some kind of comfort or catharsis.” That openness gives the album its quiet power.

“Home” sets the tone, and its origin is striking. The single grew out of a conversation between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper about grief and loss on Cooper’s podcast. “It feels like an invitation and a tone setter for the specificity and depth of this record,” Bareilles explains. “It just feels really essential right now. In order for us as humans to really know and understand each other, we have to listen to each other’s stories.” It’s a stirring, generous lead single that pulls listeners straight in.

The record covers remarkable thematic ground, all rooted in Bareilles’ own experience, from intimate tributes to lost friends, to defiant anthems for women’s rights, to unexpected flickers of lightness in dark times. Bareilles produced it herself, recording most of it over six days at Dreamland Recording Studios in Woodstock, NY, with a band of longtime collaborators: drummer Charley Drayton, guitarist Butterfly Boucher, keyboardist Misty Boyce, bassist Solomon Dorsey, multi-instrumentalist Rob Moose, and co-producer, engineer, and mixer Jonathan Low. Later sessions ran with co-producer Aaron Dessner at his Long Pond Studios in the Hudson Valley, NY, with engineer and mixer Bella Blasko. The album also features Brandi Carlile, Andrea Gibson, Ingrid Michaelson, Joe Tippett, and Megan Falley.

The making of the album was captured in the documentary ‘Sara Bareilles: Good Grief’, premiering at the Tribeca Festival this week. The film offers an intimate, unfiltered look at her return to the studio with close friends for the first time in seven years, a portrait of her creative process that becomes a deeply personal, hopeful meditation on loss and the healing power of music. It’s a moving testament to creativity, community, and vulnerability.

This fall, Bareilles makes her long-awaited return to the stage on the deeply personal Good Grief Tour, promoted by Live Nation. The run opens September 9th in Boston and winds through iconic theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and more. The shows blend raw new material with the songs that have defined her career, all delivered with her signature wit and authenticity. Presales start Monday, June 8th, ahead of the general sale on Wednesday, June 10th, at 10 am local time, with VIP packages on offer.

The cause runs deep too. Bareilles has partnered with PLUS1 so that $1 from every ticket sold will be contributed by Live Nation to The Jed Foundation, supporting emotional health and suicide prevention among teens and young adults. One hundred percent of net proceeds from the tour’s VIP Upgrade Packages will benefit NAMI, the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization, funding free education, support programs, advocacy, and resources for individuals and families affected by mental health conditions.

‘Good Grief’ Track Listing: