Sara Diamond Is Loved By the NHL, Less So By the "Baby" She Desires

Montreal singer/songwriter Sara Diamond explores very human sensations of heartache, rejection, and isolation in her aching new single “Baby.”

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Stream: “Baby” – Sara Diamond

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told you, ‘I love you.’ You said, ‘Naw, I’m fine.” How one should react to said scenario is the subject of “Baby,” the latest song to be released by Sara Diamond. The Montreal native has led a life full of music, starting when her mother helped 5-year-old Sara to land a spot on a children’s recording label, KIDZUP Productions. At age 14 in 2009, Diamond joined the teen pop group Clique Girlz, who has just completed their first album, Incredible. This path proved not to be as promising one, inasmuch as the group dissolved that same year without even formally releasing Incredible. Yet Diamond would not be daunted by this one setback and continued testing other ways to make a name for herself as a performer.

Baby - Sara Diamond — Baby – Sara Diamond

Not everyone may love Diamond, as the opening line of “Baby” indicates, but her hometown hockey team sure does. She has been invited to perform both “O, Canada!” and “The Star Spangled Banner” for the Montreal Canadians at the Bell Centre, including at several playoff games alongside Ginette Reno, a well-established Québécoise singer. Earning this exposure with the help of the National Hockey League has allowed Diamond to carry on with her career. She continues to perform publicly, including recent appearances at a TEDxMontrealWomen conference and the Osheaga Music and Arts Festival.

As for recording her own music, Diamond’s portfolio is reflected in her steadily-growing Soundcloud Page. The earliest entry in this digital catalogue is 2016’s “Firestorm,” an entrancing collaboration with her fellow Montreal musicians, electronic duo Adventure Club. Diamond’s powerful vocals carry the track to tremendous heights, as she vows that there’s nothing that can stand in her path (“show me the world and I’ll take it,” as she describes) with all the hunger and excitement of an up-and-coming artist looking to prove her own worth.

The electronica of “Firestorm” characterizes much of the rest of her early catalogue, which includes dancefloor-friendly numbers such as “Keep Me Close” and “Three Words.” By the time she pieced together her first EP, though, she decided to shift towards the smoother path of pop-infused R&B music. The seven tracks on 2018’s Foreword largely stick to this formula, featuring many odes to testing new waters and pursuing one’s ambitions. Diamond demonstrated plenty of promise with her first formal release, and has continued to do so with the music she has put out since Foreword, most recently “Baby,” her latest single.

“Baby” is backed by a bouncy psychedelic beat that would sound right at home on a Kid Cudi record (it’s no surprise that Diamond has tried her luck at a “Pursuit of Happiness” cover, given the thematic trends in her own music). Lyrically, she establishes a scene which she says emerged “because I thought I had developed feelings for one of my best girlfriends.” In this instance, two characters who have known each other since childhood are now all grown up and “sippin’ on wine.” The thing is, the protagonist in this story has “been drinking alone” for quite a while and is looking to resolve this matter by becoming more intimate with her desired partner.

Needless to say, this is a destructive situation, one in which the subject of this unrequited love is “broken and burning too slow,” pleading with her love interest “why can’t you love me this way?” Yet Diamond does not exclusively play the victim here. One of the most compelling elements of “Baby” is the singer’s acknowledgement that such a situation is destructive for all involved. “I’ve hurt you lately,” Diamond sings, “[and you’ve] got bruises to show [for it].”

It’s painful to hear about such a scenario, even more so when it is never resolved: the first line of the song— “I told you, ‘I love you.’ You said, ‘Naw, I’m fine”— is the last one as well. Yet any feelings of upset that hearing this narrative might have produced are offset by the pleasant, relaxing beat and the prevailing feeling of optimism that Diamond achieves through her singing. The Canadian songstress has a knack for overcoming her unsuccessful ventures— be it the Clique Girlz or an unsuccessful romantic pursuit— and focusing on the promising possibilities that lay ahead of her. “Baby” keeps this trend exhibited in her earlier music alive and well.

Diamond has stated that her goal with music is “to continue to inspire others to look inwards and appreciate the myriad of feelings that come along with being human.” It is fair to say that she has achieved this goal with “Baby,” a single that explores very human sensations of heartache, rejection, and isolation. Diamond’s perseverance in the face of these obstacles gives the track a strong sense of hopefulness and suggests that the 25-year-old singer could have much in store for us as her career takes off in the second quarter-century of her life.

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