Interview: Gigi Perez Isn’t Afraid of Grief; She Welcomes It

Following the release of her latest single, “Fable,” singer/songwriter and artist-to-watch Gigi Perez talks songwriting, love, and learning to grow alongside grief.

Stream: “Fable” – Gigi Perez

Grief and trauma can really stunt you, but I’m learning to grow from it.

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How does grief become a song? How does loss become a lyric? How does hurt become harmony?

For many, these questions are a part of a long stride towards self-exploration – a winded struggle of understanding grief and one that defines the complexities of the human mind. However, Gigi Perez views grief as an extension of the pen she wields. Her pen has seen joy, frustration, loss, and love. It harbors an understanding of what makes Perez yearn and ache and seek the truths she often hides deep in her subconscious. Her pen encapsulates all that she is and feels, exploring grief as a shared reality and not a concept, and it carries a figment of her sister in every stroke on the page.

Perez’s musical beginnings are directly owed to her idolization of her sister. If her sister loved Disney songs, so did she. If she could recite every Broadway musical front to back, so could she. When her sister joined her neighborhood’s theater company, Perez, inspired by all that she does, decided to tag along. Music had become synonymous with her sister. It carried a vivacity she had until then only seen performing alongside her; but, when she finally approached the piano bench, fingers seamlessly finding the keys, her voice began to take a shape of its own.

Sailor Song - Gigi Perez — single art for “Sailor Song,” which became Gigi Perez’s breakout single in 2024

“I went to the director’s piano, and I taught myself a C major chord. From there, I started learning covers and everything I had written on Tumblr had turned into little songs,” Perez shares. It was an early and crisp eight in the morning. She was fresh-faced as she dialed in from her New York apartment and her voice had a buttery undertone that would leave anyone enamored.

“I think there was a certain point where, like, a year had gone by, and I was staying up to 4 AM every single night, or a lot of the nights, and I just was like, ‘Holy crap, I love this, and I need to figure out a way to do this.’”

So, she continued writing. She strayed from musical theater and let her pen guide her down a path of self-realization. From questioning existence and the universe beyond to grappling with understanding her sexuality and relationship to the divine, she built a sanctuary in her music for all to take refuge in; and the immense success with “Sailor Song” is but one example. It took off on TikTok, capturing the ears and hearts of thousands on the platform in a series of videos surrounding people’s innermost thoughts about their loved ones.

With over 500 thousand posts on TikTok and 300 million streams on Spotify, “Sailor Song” has become a treasured beckoning of love amidst community. A sanctuary, per se, to reconcile freely with the emotions held deep inside. Her writings became a canvas for the life she longed to understand – and in time, alongside the rest of the world who found purpose in her music, she did.

“I really struggled with the context of religion versus my sexuality, but I just remember finally being able to breathe when I put it on paper because I couldn’t tell anyone. I became obsessed with my writing because it was the only time I could let it out, and music became this added release,” she began. The sun was now peeking through the blinds behind her and her frame was soon engulfed in light – a reflection of the release she coveted for. “Now, all these years later, I feel I understand more about myself because of it. I still love theater to this day, but I realized I wasn’t finding myself in these roles. I didn’t feel or see my story or the things that I was going through in these classics. When I started writing, it became genuine. This was my song, my story. It was just a very freeing kind of experience.”

However, there come moments when a writer’s pen carries a mind of its own. It moves with a propensity for chaos, ebbing and flowing on the page like a raging river that’s finally found some semblance of release. For a musician, the pen can consume like roaring waves coursing through a stream. For Gigi Perez, it navigates the disconnected parts of herself she’s neglected in order to grieve.

When she lost her sister, those overflowing words that spilled from mind to pen to paper became cries out to the universe. Questions of “why” filled her pages in the midst of her existential sorrow and her music became a revelation of that dismay. Perez ventured for a reason – puzzled by her loss of purpose – and grasped onto whatever would satiate her need to find meaning in music and life.

“I remember calling [my therapist] because I was really struggling with my sense of purpose. I left the music industry and for some reason after leaving and coming back home, I began really sitting with myself and questioned ‘What is my purpose outside of music or even me as a person?’” Perez recalls. “When you grow up in an environment where you’re given so much purpose in a very specific box, in a very specific way, through a specific person, and then you venture outside and life happens – you really begin to experience the horrors of life.”

Even in the sting of rehashing what she’s mourned, there’s still a subtle spark of hope in her eyes as she speaks. She compares her writing to medicine and the act of making music as a beacon for all who have shared in the wounds of grief. Emboldened by her pen, she was able to turn sadness into purpose; a driven reminder of the sister that inspired her indelible need to create. She continues, “I remember being 21 years old and just crying out to whatever was out there to somehow let this loss be something that helps other people. I’m still going through those questions, but I think part of it is now there’s this music that is impacting people in a way that I never thought was possible,” she says with gratitude as a smile peeks its way through.

Perez mourns through her music, and she does so with such intensity that one doesn’t have to have experienced loss to know the grief she’s reconciling with.

Her latest single, “Fable” explores the delicate nature of bereavement, delving into the fragile system of questions that spawn in death’s wake. She croons with bitter honesty as her guide, rehashing her struggles with the divine as she sings, “Hedges of prayer, ‘cause you believe doesn’t mean that it’s there. Thoughts and prayer was all they’d do.”

There’s something so alive as the mellow music in all its light strums comes to a quiet pause before her quoted discussion with divinity. The strums begin to bloom alongside her layered vocals as she sings, “Divinity says, ‘Destiny can’t be earned or returned.’” She continues, a sense of agony and longing possessing the next set of lyrics. The guitar begins to pick up as she now belts with overwhelming fervor. “Why does my skin start to burn,” she cries before a plethora of instruments winds its way into the chorus, building with a ferocity that encapsulates the complexity of grief.

“‘Fable’ captures something that I’m almost at a loss for words. I don’t even know how to explain what I felt, and that’s why I use the music. The emotions are so big and complex that I feel like the closest thing I can get to it is a song like ‘Fable,’” Perez explains. The light guitar strums return as the song comes to a close, making way for a voice note between her and her sister that grounds the song in reality. ‘Fable’ is sincere and contrived of the complicated emotions death can fester within an individual. It paints the world of grief in a kaleidoscope of colors and paves the way for any who listen to find solace in life after loss – something Perez only recently began to shelter in herself.

On letting go of the things holding her back, Perez explains she has “nothing to hide.” She says, “I’m just in my room, so it’s really my most vulnerable and it’s my most exciting. In my last project, I released a lot and let go and moved on. I’m interested to see the way sharing my grief over the years goes on.”

However, she accounts for time’s influence on her process of moving on. Perez shares, “I finally got what I’ve been holding in out, but I also still feel all of that pain. I’m about to be 25 and now I’m really starting to get scared because I’m watching myself get older. I’m moving further away from the time that my sister was alive. I’m older than her, but I also think as time has gone on, I’ve seen the different phases of my life unfold. Grief and trauma can really stunt you, but I’m learning to grow from it like true adulthood.”

Now, as she looks at what her future holds, Gigi Perez finds comfort in knowing she’s far from being without purpose but remains with the same passion she had alongside her sister.

Her struggles are but stories waiting to be manifested into songs and she’s eager to watch where her pen takes her. She has grown since that initial approach to the piano bench and while aware of the long way she still has to go as a musician, is finally taking the time to understand what sounds speak to her.

Grief is the pen Gigi Perez holds, but she wields it with grace, determination, and excitement for all to see.

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