Gigi Perez says her incredible breakout success is hitting her “in waves”. Earlier last month, the 24-year-old topped the UK singles chart with ‘Sailor Song’, a lusty folk ballad that opens with a truly captivating couplet: “I saw her in the rightest way / Looking like Anne Hathaway.” Alongside Billie Eilish’s ‘Lunch’ and Chappell Roan’s ‘Good Luck, Babe!’, it adds to a banner year for queer female representation: ‘Sailor Song’ has also scaled the charts in Australia, Singapore and Perez’s native US, where it peaked at number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“I’ve had moments where I’ve broken down crying over the fact people have connected with it,” she says when she meets NME in East London. Today, we’re sitting in a co-working space next to a pretty stretch of canal; Perez, who grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida, says the song’s popularity has been especially affirming because it comes after “the past few years of dealing with the ugly side of grief”. Her beloved older sister Celene died suddenly in 2020, aged just 22.
“It’s a song that really encapsulates what it felt like to be running into somebody – into a lover – as a way to escape from my grief and biggest questions of life and existentialism,” she explains. “And for that to be received with open arms by so many people makes me think that those things aren’t in vain.”
Perez may be more in-demand than ever, but she isn’t entering entirely uncharted territory. Back in 2021, she enjoyed her first TikTok success with ‘Sometimes (Backwood)’, a regretful lament that has now racked up 128m Spotify streams. Shortly afterwards, she signed to Interscope Records (Olivia Rodrigo, Kendrick Lamar), who released her debut EP ‘How To Catch A Falling Knife’ in 2023.
Though it contained glimmering folk gems including the queer unrequited love song ‘The Man’, this deal didn’t work out. Perez became a free agent and released the standalone singles ‘Normalcy’, ‘Please Be Rude’ and ‘Sailor Song’ independently before joining Island Records (Ariana Grande, Chappell Roan) in September. Today, she says returning to a major wasn’t a hard decision because “I knew I wanted to do the artist thing in a way that I can sustain and set up a future for myself”.
She has also swotted away far-right trolls who lobbied her to change the ‘Sailor Song’ lyric: “I don’t believe in God, but I believe that you’re my saviour.” In a defiant TikTok post, Perez said calmly: “My songwriting is not a democracy and that applies to every artist’s work.”
Here, Gigi Perez discusses her visceral response to music, devoutly Christian upbringing, and plans to release an album in 2025.
“I’m here to nourish, build, and be in this community – I’m not willing to sacrifice that for anything”
When you shared your TikTok saying “my songwriting is not a democracy”, did it shut up any of the trolls?
“It did not shut anybody up! But I think it set down a standard because at a certain point people were worried that I was gonna change the song. I made that post because I got thousands of DMs saying, “Please say you’re not fucking around with ‘Sailor Song’”. I never was going to, but when I started looking into it, I was like, ‘Wow, there’s so much division over beliefs right now.’
“I do spend time in my comments, because there are good people out there who want to share their story and I want to hear them. But every now and then, I’ll just get this random influx of rigid religiosity. So many people struggle to have any sort of connection to the spiritual or divine, and [their struggle is] met with so much resistance and rigidity. I believe that life is complex and people are complex and they deserve to have the space to explore who they are. That’s what I’m going to be advocating for because I think anything else is just not really coming from a place of goodness or divinity.”
You grew up in a very Christian family. Has it been hard to reconcile that with your queerness? Is it an ongoing process?
“I don’t struggle with my identity as a lesbian. It’s something that was really hard when I was 15 and 16 and 17, but once I fell in love for the first time, I was like: ‘This is so beautiful, this will never be wrong in my eyes.’ And I’m really grateful that I’ve had a supportive family, and also a supportive community around me for a long time.
“But I think that was the first tick in the box that really separated me from Christianity. I must have been 17, and at this point I already knew I was gay, but I also had this kind of conflicting relationship with Christianity and the Christian God. And I was like, ‘I need to go try this [a different belief system], but you know, before I die, I’ll come back’. And that’s how I felt about it.
“That’s very weird to think about [now], because I think after losing my sister, my perspective on what is real and what is not has changed. How can you ever really know? And I guess that’s the kind of thing I’ve been dealing with lately. Like, what you choose to believe in is the biggest deal ever.”
Where do you think your urge to write songs and perform comes from?
“Any time I watched people perform as a kid, I would feel like my stomach dropped – it was like this sickly feeling, but I was also drawn towards it. My older sister was an opera singer and I would get this mix of excitement and insane nerves whenever she would perform.
“This happens to me sometimes still, but I remember one time when I was six years old, I sang a line [of a song] and a tear started falling out of my eye. It just felt surreal, but also like my escape, because I didn’t know what I would do without music. This world is so messed up, but I think that if we didn’t have music, we wouldn’t be here.”
Because ‘Sailor Song’ has exploded so massively, are you having to say “no” as much as you say “yes” to protect yourself and your career trajectory?
“I’m always listening to how my body feels – I think that’s really important. And also, because I was independent for a year, my perspective on the music industry changed a lot [in terms of] what I’m willing to do. I’m here to nourish this community, build this community, and be in it. That’s the only reason I’m here and I’m not willing to sacrifice that for anything.”
Do you have specific goals for 2025? Is releasing an album top of the list?
“For sure, the album is a big one. You know, I came back from London in August 2023 knowing I was going to leave my first record label, and I was like, ‘OK, I’m gonna learn to record and produce.’ It was daunting, but I had been itching to do it for a long time, so it was this whole process of, like, YouTube, Reddit, reaching out to friends [who produce].
“I was like, ‘This is going to be so hard’, but I was so surprised to find that all the years that I spent being in these rooms and recording my own vocals [helped me] to take on this role. It’s crazy if I think about it now, because it’s only been a year and [I’ve produced] ‘Sailor Song’, ‘Please Be Rude’ and ‘Fable’. And that has honestly made me so happy. I used to feel kind of sad that I didn’t have an album out, but now I’m like, ‘This first album is gonna feel right because I’m doing it the way I should be.’”
‘Sailor Song’ by Gigi Perez is out now